My very first Eurail trip! It was pretty crazy, went by as fast as the trains here do, and thankfully I got to share the experience with a group of really good friends (that all just met the month beforehand and were like “Hey, let’s travel Europe!”).
This’ll be just the ‘central’ post so the other posts I do can be linked back here because there’s NO WAY I can talk about all of the places we saw in just one post! I’m a talker. heheheh FIRST DESTINATION
#1: Sopot, Poland
So first I joined my friends Ania and Kate up in Sopot for a few days, enjoyed the beach, met up with a friend from school, and took a nice little break after finishing our month at Jagiellonian.
My cousin that lives in Warsaw told me that for summer vacation, Poles are either in 1) Zakopane, or 2) Sopot, so Sopot was pretty hoppin’ while we where there! We met a lot of fun people and hung out in our nice little apartment close to the main drag, I could go on and on about Sopot but this is just a little teaser until the full post. SO FUN.
#2: Gdańsk, Poland
Ok this might be cheating, it might not be, I don’t care we still went there on our Eurail trip so I’m including it – Sopot, Gdańsk, and Gdynia make up a popular tri-city area in northern Poland. We made a day trip to Gdańsk (which is only 10 minutes away via a popular commuter train!) and that was so worth it (sadly didn’t make it to Gdynia – next time!). As always, really good food, a really fun and busy, artsy area especially since it was summer, perfect for a day trip! Definitely planning to go back, too, because there’s always always always more to see. So we went back to Sopot for the rest of our stay then met up with our friend, Damian, on the way to our next city:
#3: Prague, Czech Republic
Prague was so fun. Some of our friends from Jagiellonian had made a day trip there on the weekend and saw everything, but I definitely feel like you could easily stay for three or four days and enjoy everything if you wanted. Prague is huge, too, so lots and lots of walking everywhere. We all agreed that we have to come back because we were only there for one night and it was SO hot the day we arrived that we walked around half delusional because of the heat and dehydration, I walked around eating a nice cold QUARTER of a watermelon for a while without realizing I was getting juice all over myself – that’s how out of it we were. For at least five, maybe six hours. So we have to go back.
#4: Düsseldorf, Germany!
We came over to Düsseldorf to hangout with and pick up our friend, Otto, and had fun just goofing around and enjoying each other’s company – another nice little break before heading to the next big city on our list. Also, his mother is a DOLL and made SO MUCH YUMMY HOME COOKED FOOD, she deserves an AWARD!
I have about zip zilch zero good pictures (except for the one above) of this place because it was raining. A lot. And for a long time, but our friend, Otto, showed us around a lot and took us to our next destination for a quick trip tooooooo…
#5: Köln, Germany
Our first completely soaking wet visit to a new city! We didn’t even have proper rain jackets or anything (yes, “proper”), we thought our coats were water proof rain coats or something but ha-ha-ha definitely not. So we made a quick trip there and visited an incredibly large and tall church, tried to get a bird’s-eye-view of the city, and ended up getting McDonald’s and Subway then heading back home to get some sleep before we left the next morning ☺️ SHOUT OUT TO OTTO FOR LETTING US CRASH AT HIS PLACE!
#6: Berlin, Germany
Berlin is an AMAZING city. All of us were in agreement within the first half hour of walking around that we LOVED the city, the artsy and young vibe that you felt and saw everywhere you looked, each shop or restaurant you went into, pretty much the whole place is any artsy/non-artsy human’s haven. So pretty much Berlin is the place to be.
We stayed here two nights but wanted to stay longer and see more! Berlin is also really big and we did walk around a ton but we’re DEFINITELY, DEFINITELY going back. Some of us even decided that Berlin is “our” city (honestly we all felt so comfortable there and loved the exciting feel the city had), so a few of my friends might end up living there in the future. Casual European things.
This is also where our group split up and departed to their home bases 😢 BUT Kate and I continued to travel just a little bit more before she had to return to the States!
After a quick stop back to Warsaw, we headed to…
#7: Vienna, Austria
Vienna was SUPER CASUAL to say the least. Oh so casual. You know, just hanging out, walking around the city that used to be the main capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Nbd.
We met up with my friend, Heidi, way early in the morning after getting off at the wrong train station (bless her soul for dealing with us two humans) and hung out for the entire weekend! It was so nice seeing her and doing super casual Viennese things, such as taking a stroll through a botanical garden, stopping by an outdoor film festival to grab dinner and drinks (because that’s like an every day thing), or just stopping in to what used to be a prince’s summer home aka something of the like of Versailles, but on the ‘smaller’ summer home scale. Because Versailles and ‘smaller’ go together, you see what I mean.
Those are all things we actually did. Because Vienna. As I said, casual. Like Heidi, Heidi is casual. Lol jk no she’s not, she’s too cool to be casual but I’ll talk more about our time in Vienna later!
#8: Budapest, Hungary
Checkout my previous post on the Budapest flood that Kate and I were there for… We met some really cool people though in our hostel! Pictured above you can see one of the only pictures I have of the city before it became a swimming pool, it’s a really pretty and fun city that we promised to go back to (when our hostel has electricity and it’s not raining)!
…. And then Kate headed home, and I headed back to Warsaw! My home for the next few months here 😊
Thanks to the travel squad for making every single moment more memorable than the last, and funny enough that we drag our jokes out 10 minutes longer than we should’ve because we’re laughing so hard. I miss all of your faces, please come back to Poland so we can do more fun things together (or I’ll see you guys after Christmas!) 😀
And cheers to all of the new friends we made along the way! Whether we met in one of the hostels, on the tram, in line for a club, on a beach, on a boat – thank you for making our trip as fun as it was! We had a great time with all of you and please keep in touch 😊
Also be on the lookout for a Eurail review post. I have a lot of thoughts on Eurail that need to be sorted out.
Anyways, in the meantime, I’ve been vegging out and enjoying doing close to absolutely nothing for a whole week before I start my fall semester program. Sorry for those that get my food snaps but I’ve been cooking a ton and FOOD IS SO GOOD I never want to live without a kitchen again
Also if you’re looking for any new music playlists (just like I have been), here are some really good playlists (that I’ve had on repeat for the past three days) that are on YouTube: here’s a playlist of Purely Chilled’s remixes of popular songs that starts with a solid remix of Ed Sheeran’s Photograph (if you don’t already know, I’m obsessed with Ed Sheeran so, as expected), and here’s a playlist of Boyce Avenue’s acoustic covers which are AMAZING, starting with his cover of Christina Perri’s A Thousand Years. He does a great cover of Ed Sheeran’s Photograph, too. 😉
If you have any ideas for new music/artists/playlists and would be willing to share, I would love to hear!
Liz Happens 