Sometimes Munich sucks and you hate it

I had my first bad experience in Munich. My entire time there the temperature was around 90 and only dropped to about 85 at night. And Europeans are not into air conditioning. Or ice. Or even very cold water. So my whole time there I was constantly sweating. 

In desperation for something cold I tried to get an ice cream from McDonalds.

I was told the machine was not working because it was too hot.

The time finally came to leave and I have to admit I was pretty happy about it. I arrived at the train station and my train was cancelled. I think. I really don't understand German but 5 minutes after the train was supposed to arrive everyone left the platform and all information about that train was just gone. So I had to wait an hour for the next train. Which arrived 20 minutes late. In desperation to cool down I bought an ice cream cone. I have never enjoyed an ice cream cone less. It was not cool enough for the heat and too sweet. I eventfully convicted the guy at Starbucks to give me some ice, which was the best part of my time in Munich 

The train for Salzburg finally arrived, I got on, happy to be done with Munich. And then some announcement was made and lots of people grumbled and got off the train. A nice German lady informed me that a bomb had been found near Salzburg, and we were still going to go there but for some reason this had delayed our driver and we were going to leave but at an unknown time. An hour later, two and a half hours after I initially wanted to leave, I was finally on my way out of Munich

Sometimes you fall behind on the blog in Bavaria

After Croatia I headed to Prague and the Berlin which were both really interesting and awesome places! 

Prague was just altogether beautiful and I ate lots if sausage 

Berlin was a great place for the history nerd in me, and I basically spent my time there at various WWII sites

Holocaust memorial

Berlin Wall memorial

Part of the East Side Gallery, one of my favorite parts of Berlin

I also enjoyed karaoke in Mauerpark, which was just a hilarious experience 

Then I bought a watermelon that was yellow. That was weird. 

Sometimes you don't get sunburnt at the beach!

I'm not very good about wearing sunscreen. And the sun really is stronger here. So, I have seen lots of European beaches and gotten very sunburnt in each one. Until I got to Croatia that is! 

I arrived in Zagreb, saw the city for a afternoon, then headed of to split!

Split was awesome! 

I went out on a mission to find the prettiest beach it had to offer, and I think I achieved it 

The water is so clear it's unbelievable. And it was warm enough for me to take a nice long swim! 

The city is beautiful as well, with "Old Town" being comprised of tons of tiny, winding pedestrians streets that I just wandered through for a long time. 

For most of my time is was beautiful but there was a random flash rainstorm/hail storm all of a sudden, luckily while I was safe and dry in my hostel 

There is about an 2 minute time lapse between those two pictures...

Split is known for it's night life so I had to go on a pub crawl, where I met a group of crazy Scottish boys who would at random moments yell "TAPS AFF" which is how Scottish people say "tops off" and they would all take their shirts off. I'm really not sure why. I didn't get a picture if it, I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing... 

This is the one of the few pictures I did end up with. Don't worry mom, that's not me. He is wearing my pub crawl shirt though, after losing his in a particularly crazy "taps aff"

Sometimes Serbian clubs are... Weird

I went out to two clubs while in Belgrade. The first was playing traditional Serbian music and we were turned about at first because we didn't have a reservation. Then we paid some sketchy man €10 each to be allowed to go in.

We walked through a metal detector which I set off but no one cared, and then were showed to a specific 4 feet of space that was "ours" 

The music was pretty typical club music but with the addition of 3 people with microphones who would sing over the techno-y music. Two of them did a lot of singing while another stood in the corner of the stage, occasionally humming into the microphone and texting.

After this we went to a club that seemed much more normal. Until we saw the girls  dancing in thongs on a catwalk 20 feet in the air. 

Sometimes Harry Potter doesn't give you an accurate representation of a country

When I entered Bulgaria my knowledge began and ended with Victor Krum. I had no expectations at all about the Sofia, but I ended up loving it! 

My first day there was "children's day" and as I walked through the adorable main park of the city children and parents of all ages where out having a good time. I saw kids skateboarding, a boy learning to ride a bike, as well as several families riding razor scooters together. 

I sat on a bench eating this with a To-Go slice of pizza, which is the street food of Sofia. Few people spoke English so I just ordered one of the two kinds available and ended up with some sort of dill pickle and turkey (or some other meat?) pizza. Even stranger than pickle pizza was how much I enjoyed the pickle pizza though 

I also enjoyed some fresh squeezed right in front of my face pineapple-mango-strawberry juice 

Bulgarian night life is apparently crazy however we went out on a Sunday night which is not the night to go out, but we did run into a fun pack of transvestites! 

Sometimes sleeper cars are not actually any fun. At all.

Before coming to Europe I had spent very little time on trains, and definitely had a glorified idea of them. My first experience on a night train was from Sofia, Bulgaria to Belgrade, Serbia. Apparently this is not the idea railway and has some pretty run down cars, I quickly learned.

 To travel in the sleeping car you needed two tickets, one to be on the train and a reservation for a bed. When the man came to check my ticket he was obviously drunk. Just hammered. I handed him my ticket and then took a minute finding my reservation, during this time he checked my neighbors ticket. I have him my reservation and he grumbled in drunk, broken English "where is ticket? This just reservation. Need ticket" 

I spent the next 15 minutes convincing him that I had given him I had already given him my ticket, finally he stopped arguing, turned to the man next to me and said "Not my fault. Her fault." And went on smoking in the hallway.

So, it turns out, sleeper cars on overnight trains.. Not really any fun. 

Sometimes you think the customs agent is trying to steal your passport

After my Island hoping I headed to thessoliniki, Greece for a night before making my way north to Sofia, Bulgaria. Due to the economic crisis Greece has suspended all international trains so I instead had to take a bus. As we crossed the border an official of some sort got on the bus to check passports. Most people he just checked and then gave them back, but when he got to me he was holding the only other non-eu passport. After checking mine he kept it and then got off the bus. I was concerned, definitely, but as the bus wasn't moving I assumed I was just getting a stamp, however not being able to see my passport or the person that had it was not comforting. We waiting for about 5 minutes( 5 minutes will never seems as long as when you are imaging someone taking off with your passport) and then the bus started moving. I just about had a panic attack and ran to the front of the bus and began telling the bus driver that I didn't have my passport yet, and before I'd even gotten a whole word out he handed it back to me. I'm not quite sure what the rationale behind this process is, but I entered Bulgaria with my passport and a stamp. After we passed customs we stopped at the duty free shop where I bought a giant bag of m&ms to soothe my nerves

Sometimes you get sunburnt

I have now ridden enough ferries for.. Well the rest of my life really. I went to 3 different Greek islands, each with a very different attitude and I enjoyed each thoroughly. 

Santorini was my first stop, which was full of tourists sightseeing, however after watching the sunset things calmed down quite a bit and the crowd in general was a little older

I quickly discovered through the lack of English direction that Syros was not at all touristy and had a very quite few days here, laying on the beach and eating gyros before heading of to Mykonos.

Mykonos was the opposite of Syros in that as soon as you stepped off the boat there were shuttles waiting to take you to wherever you were staying and club promoters left and right giving you fliers. In Mykonos I spent the day at the beach, a common theme on every island, and spent the nights out at beach-side clubs, my first night never actually going to sleep because by the time that idea came around the sun was out again and I couldn't bear the idea of sleeping inside with all the sunshine outside, so I attempted to nap poolside, I didn't go there to sleep.. 

After all my experiences with various Greek islands I am now attempting to leave Greece... Easier said than done! Greece has stopped all international trains and only one bus seems to leave a day, I am hoping to catch the bus tomorrow morning to start working my way North on my nomadic adventures...