Euro Trip #1 – Amsterdam, Paris, Schwitzerland and Rome
First post on our Euro Trip but hopefully not the last (lack of internet connection, time and patience has proven that I’m worse than I thought keeping this stuff updated).
Anyhow, first stop was Hamburg. We had a single night there which turned out to be rather surprising: apparently, a Schlager + Flower festival (yes, damn weird combination!) was going on when we got there, so we joined the fun and chugged a few beers. Ended up at a place called “Pearls“; do your own Googling if you want to know more!
Next was Amsterdam. 3 nights in the most crazy city in Europe is an experience! Loose legislation on drugs combined with the Red Light District is not your typical capital. Well, afraid of going into too much detail, let’s just say that we had a great time. Mind blowing…
Other places to note is a small place called Lille in France where we had to do a stopover, Paris which was beautiful on bike (but damn those arrogant frenchmen) and Basel in Schwitzerland where we went to town with a school class from Bayern. We also visited Schaffhausen, where a friend I travelled New Zealand with was living. It was so nice to see Jenny again and we had a fun night out (although it was Sunday). It’s funny how you can get so connected with a person by just knowing her for a month, but at times I really felt that we’ve known eachother our whole life. I hope you read this Jen, and in that case, thanks for all the fun we had together 
After, we took a night train to Rome. We hoped for an onboard bar and a coupe full of girls, but ended up with a spanish family and a sweaty night (aircon didn’t work I’m pretty sure). In Rome, we arrived early and booked into a 3-star hotel as all hostels was totally full (summertime equals a lot of backpackers). Hendrik had a great idea to rent two scooters and see Rome from the road, so we went to a small shop and got two 125cc Vespa’s for 24 hours. Caution: Traffic in Rome is insane! It’s scooters and motorcycles that rule the streets and at times you honestly we’re afraid of crashing into another scooter going 90 km/h five centimeters from you. None-the-less it was great fun that got the adrenaline up and running (for 10 hours straight you’re feeling pretty tired after the day is over!). And yes, we did see the Colosseum, Spanish stairs, the Vatican and a range of other old ruins and buildings.
Right now we’re about to leave to Venezia and then after to Wien. Let’s see how that end up being; hopefully just as fun as the trip has been so far.
While i remember: InterRailing is actually somewhat harder than we first thought. You have to do reservations and shit most of the time, so it usually ends up being sporadic route changes because we didn’t take the reservations into account. That’s part of the fun tho – the unknown of tomorrow (or even tonight).
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