The end of Europe and off to Merry ol' England

After sleeping through our stop in Berlin, we caught a bus back to our hostel and checked in. Our room could have been out of an ikea catalog. It was very nice and clean but nothing German. Even the name of the place, "Circus Hostel", wasn't special. At least in Munich the place was called Jaeger's. 

We went on the New Europe tour and checked out the East Side Gallery. It was interesting that they would patch up the wall and repaint it instead of letting it degrade naturally. But it makes sense that they would want to use a sign of their previous oppression as a canvas for expression.

Unfortunately we did not have enough time to get to any of the galleries or to really explore the city but I would definitely want to come back. 

We caught a train early the next morning for Amsterdam. The train itself was an experience. I went to the bar car to find some nibbles and unknowingly stumbled upon a German bachelorette party headed to the city of sin. They were nuts. Apparently it is customary for people to pay the bachelorette to let her do crazy stuff to them like cut out the tag of your underwear (or if you don't have a tag, a huge portion of the waistband...I am down to 2.5 pairs of boxers on the trip). Europeans are nuts.

Once into Amsterdam we spent about 3 hours trying to find a place to sleep for the night. We ended up staying in a real dive of a hostel called Bob's. I do not recommend the place. We then went out to see the Anne Frank House and explore the city. The smell of pot everywhere and y walking by a window and seeing a woman selling her services even put my sister out of her element. It seemed like everyone we met in the hostel or talked to was in a daze and had no other interests aside from sitting around, smoking weed, and playing video games. While very picturesque with all the canals, it is a filthy city with a very seedy side...rather a number of seedy sides. 

We caught a train the following morning to Brussels, set our bags down in a hostel, and headed back out for Bruges. 

Bruges is gorgeous, clean, and incredibly touristy. We went on a brewery tour, sampled the local cuisine of fries with seasoned mayonnaise (sounds gross but was great), and checked out some old windmills.

Came back to Brussels real late and called it a night. The next day we wanted to wander around and check out Brussels but everything was closed for some national holiday. It was very eery walking around a major metropolitan area in the middle of a weekday and seeing everything closed up and no one around. It reminded me of a horror movie and I was waiting for zombies to pop out from around a corner and start chasing us. Anyway I got the flight to Manchester later that day and took a train to Leeds. I have been here the past few days with a great friend of mine from Australia, Jo Minnitt , and she's been showing me around the countryside, university, and english culture. It has been a great time and I am catching a train in a few hours to Cheltenham where I am meeting up with Alex and to start walking. The weather has been amazing and hasn't rained a drop so I don't know why everyone complains about English weather. I am going to regret saying that because I believe its supposed to rain soon. Oh well.

Pip pip cheerio!