Hoooonestly I've been on the internet for ages already, so this is going to be short. I've uploaded a ton of photos from this WONDERFUL Berlin walking tour that Derek and I took today. Our guide was so animated and super knowledgable, it was excellent! If you're coming to Berlin, we recommend Brewer's Berlin English Walking Tours, and ask for Barnaby because he's great!!! Not only did he show us the main sights, but he taught me so much about the history of the city which I really appreciated. Now I finally understand the whole East and West Berlin thing properly. [View Full Entry]

---

---

It seems like the cold and flu season as finally caught up with us--or maybe we just caught up with it. Last night the thin walls of our hostel in Berlin echoed with the sick hacking of Derek, my roomates, and other people in other rooms and on other floors. Everyone on the street and in the stores is riding themselves of phelm, and nooooo one is covering their noses or mouths. Derek just coughed. So did the girl beside me. It's only a matter of time before I succumb too..... Ahh! Well, Nelly Furtado was pretty fun. She puts on [View Full Entry]

---

---

I thought I'd do sort of a summary post to cover the past 5 days since Carnival ended here, before we move on to Brussels for our date with Nelly Furtado. We haven't had any incredible, major, exciting adventures, but we have been having a good time just hanging out in one place with our new international dorm buddies and pretending that we actually had a home for once. Wednesday was the first day of Lent, thus, saw the end of Carnival. Darn. Instead of waking up at 1pm to make plans for a night of costumed adventures, I woke up [View Full Entry]

---

---

Well, today is the last day of Carnivale and the last day before Lent. Ellen and Phoebe are going to give up refined sugar. I'm not. Haha, but I can still enjoy the carnivale partying! Last night was a bit tame, but BOY was last night fun! I don't really know how to describe the joy that is Maastricht Carnivale, particularly when coupled with the amazing Phoebe Friesen and assorted international friends, but I'll describe a few adventures and hopefully give you a small glimps into the past 48 hours. So, after sleeping in till 1pm after our marathon day of [View Full Entry]

---

---

This is to be a super short entry because I'm missing some of the amazing partying currently going down here at my friend Phoebe's dorm, but I wanted to let everyone know that Derek and I DID make it to Maastircht, FINALLY, at 12:24am, after 5 trains, over 14 hours of travel, and every connection full of uncertainty. One thing's for sure, internet train schedules cannot be trusted, and neither can the schedules published in train stations or even those provided on the train itself. From now on, we'll get all our info directly from the train info people. It doesn't [View Full Entry]

---

---

Hmmmm... So, you may notice that I'm still in Prague, and NOT in Holland, I like I was supposed to be around this time. Basically, the Eurail and online train schedules were COMPLETELY wrong, and the train we were planning to take to start off our 4 train day didn't exist at all. Nothing in that hour, nothing from that station. Lovely. To make matters worse, we were carrying around huge grocery bags because we had stocked up on cheap supplies here and didn't think we'd be doing so much walking. Yah, that wasn't a good plan. After it was all [View Full Entry]

---

---

Tonight, Derek and I went to the long awaited Czech hockey game, and had a pretty darn good time. It was no NHL game in level of play or level of financing, but at least we could afford to attend (unlike any NHL game). We were up in the balcony, but that was just fine for me because we had a great view of the whole ice surface and it really wasn't that far away. The game was pretty close. In the first, Sparta (our team) and Mountview (the opposition) were tied 1-1 after a period of equally poor play and [View Full Entry]

---

---

As my dad so aptly pointed out, I finally have free access to internet and I haven't used it at all to post updates. I'm not sure why this is, because I can assure you I've been spending ample time online. I guess I've just been enjoying the freedom of random surfing too much to actually buckle down and write a proper entry. Also, I'm not really sure what to say. Prague is quite beautiful and we've been having a good time here, but we haven't really been doing anything that particularly warrents a retelling of, I suppose. On our first [View Full Entry]

---

---

Sigh. I was all ready to come online today and positively gush about the wonderful city of Vienna and Austria in general, particularly how wonderful the people we've met have been, and then an incident occured which considerably soured my mood. After getting up early to pack up and check out of our hostel (we're leaving for Prague today), I headed to the local grocery store, Billa, to buy some breakfast while Derek went to the bookstore. I picked out a yogurt, a coffee/yogurt drink, and a seriously delicious looking apple strudel. I was particularly excited about the strudel because Maria [View Full Entry]

---

---

After a slightly expensive train ride, albeit an incredibly nice, highspeed one with a train that tilted so it could go around corners faster, Derek and I have arrived in Prague. I'm trying not to develop any impressions yet because we got here after 7:30 and it was already dark, and we're currently not in a very nice area of town and train stations are generally not nice places anyways and we didn't even get off at the main one, sooooo let's just say the place hasn't exactly won me over. But, like I say, I'm not willing to judge it [View Full Entry]

---

---