First stop of the trip was Marseille, France. On the France part of the trip, my friend Chris and I took a 11 hour train ride from Murcia to Marseille. Marseille was one of the most beautiful cities I have been to and the water was absolutely gorgeous to be around. Not only that, but it was amazing to see the prison where Monte Cristo was "technically" at. After spending a beautiful day in Marseille, we took at train to Nice. In Nice, we stayed two nights in a hostel sharing bunk beds with a brother and sister from Michigan. It was definitely nice to see some American faces. I had always wanted to visit Nice and overall, it was really pretty. I can't imagine what these cities would look like in the summer. Being able to smell the salt water and just being around an ocean felt so nice. After Nice, we took a day trip to Monaco. Monaco is definitely fancy. Although it was off season, there were a lot of tourists and Mercedes Benz being driven around.
Overall, of all the cities we visited in the French Riviera, the nicest one was Marseille. It had a good balance between a city and a beach town.
On our way back from Nice, we had to stop in Marseille to take our respective trains to our next place. I ended up taking a high speed train to Paris and a night train from Paris to Munich. Sleeping on the night train was probably the best sleep I've had in a long time. In the compartment, there was two German mother's with their two daughters and an old German woman. All six of us were crammed into a small room with 3 stacked beds on each side. I was assigned to one of the way top bunks, but the old woman tried to communicate to me that one of the young girls wanted to sleep on the top with her friend. In the best sign language and head shaking I could do, I gave up my bunk. Once in Munich, I had to wait from 7 am until about noon for the other three girls to arrive from Murcia.
Munich was a beautiful city. It had a lot of old buildings because according to our tour guide, when Munich was completely destroyed, they wanted to recreate the old buildings and not build modern looking ones.
Our hostel in Munich was a 12 bed mixed room and that night, Manchester was playing against Munich in soccer. Manchester lost and there were 4 people from Manchester, a father and his son and two friends, staying in our room. At 4 am, they came stumbling in drunk and upset from their loss. At about 4:30 am, one of the guys sleeping on the top bunk fell off of the bed and ran out into the hall way. Later that morning, they started having a snoring contest and the dad would continuously get up and hit each one across the head. Later that day, they apologized for all the noise and snoring. After that long night, we went on the walking tour of Munich and learned all about the hidden Holocaust memorials. On another day trip, Megan and I went to visit the Dachau Memorial Camp. It was very unreal to visit a place that has always been talked about in books.
After spending two beautiful days in Munich, we headed out to the small town of Bamberg on our way to Berlin. In Bamberg, we participated in couchsurfing for the first time. We were set up with an older lady who lived in a small town outside of Bamberg with her boyfriend. Not only were Roswitha and Christian two of the nicest German people I've ever met, but spending time in their town and having them show us around felt like being back in the States. Christian is also a large dolphin activist and showed us the documentary "The Cove" which was amazing. In Bamberg, we also tried a variety of typical German food which definitely got the best of our digestive systems. The first night, they took us to a typical community restaurant where we were served beer brewed in the back shed and currywurst. At the time it was delicious, but after awhile got to be too much to handle. On our last night, we ate at a restaurant next to the chapel on the hill. Because it was Good Friday, the restaurant was offering a lot of vegetable dishes, cheeses and fish sticks. The best part about spending time in Bamberg was being able to ride Roswitha's horse Lily. The horse is a horse trained to work with special needs kids.
Once our two amazing days in Bamberg were over, we headed out to Berlin and had to take 7 different trains. In Berlin, it was very obvious that the city was a lot different than Munich. Berlin was more modern and city like. It took us awhile to find the hostel (Hostel Aloha) because it was on the 3rd floor of a rundown building that had graffiti all outside of the door. In the end, the hostel turned out to be well worth the money and very hospitable.
In Berlin, we visited the typical tourist attractions like the Berlin wall, checkpoint Charlie, the memorial to the murdered Jews, Sachsenhausen Memorial Camp, Hitler's bunker, etc. Sachsenhausen was a lot more impacting than Dachau because of the number of people that were actually there and the size of the place. It was also very strange to think that not too long ago a country was actually divided by a wall. One of the highlights of the trip to Berlin was taking the alternative walking tour. On the tour, the tour guide showed us around the different neighborhoods of Berlin and graffiti art throughout the area. It was great to be able to see where locals live and the international communities. For lunch on our tour, we went to a Lebanese place and all got Falafel (the wikipedia photo and description don't do it justice.)
By the end of Berlin, we were all to the point of running out of clean clothes and missing the Spanish language. So after having travelled for 14 days out of a backpack, we headed off to Frankfurt, where we spent a good 11 hours at the airport and then to Alicante, where we spent the night at the airport because the next bus to Murcia was at 7 am.
Overall, Germany proved to be much more than I expected. Before leaving for Europe, I had a set plan of places I wanted to visit and Germany was never on the list. After spending 9 days in this beautiful country, I would not be surprised if I went back later in life. Everyone has this image of German people being cold, but not once did we feel uncomfortable around them. On the contrary, we had about 5 people ask us everyday if we needed help finding anything and even got a map handed to us on the subway by and old man. Whenever you're in Europe, make sure to check out this beautiful country full of history, amazing food, even more amazing people and a lot of artisan beer.
The next post will have a few of the hundreds of pictures taken on the trip. Until then, classes have resumed here in Murcia after a beautiful Semana Santa and with only 27 days left of classes, teachers have decided to actually start handing out work.
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