Two Girls and a Eurail Pass

Last Christmas, following years and years of listening to Momma Himm talk about wanting to go to Barcelona and finding reason after reason why she couldn’t (typically resulting from expenses having to do with us) - my brother and I decided to make it happen. With a little help from him and his girlfriend and a lot of help from my squirreled away airlines miles and barclay credit card, we scotch taped airline tickets to Ireland and Spain underneath Gold- wrapped bottles of Irish Creme and Malbec and watched with pure delight on Christmas morning as her confusion of her adult children doing a “stock the bar” present turned to squealing and cheers at the realization that she and I would be crossing the pond the week of her 61st birthday in September to make her dream of coming to Spain come true .  (Mom holding her Irish Crème and Spanish Malbec)  To fully understand Momma Himm’s desire to go to Spain and why this trip was so important, you might need a little background.

Tarrah and I arrived in Munich mid-afternoon fresh faced and ready to get our stein and pretzel on.  I was so happy to see that the train station I had been in two years ago was still the best in all of Europe and hadn't changed a bit.  That being said, I wish I could say the same thing for what was outside the train station. Munich was definitely not my favorite place of my 2014 trip, I wouldn't even say it was top 5 - but it was definitely what I expected - super German, clean, fun, and full of good beer and the type of hearty delicious food that makes you wish you'd splurged on a private room with an ensuite. After exiting the train station, I was startled to see how quickly in just 2 years Munich had changed.  Tarrah and I stayed at the same hostel Natalie and I had stayed 2 years prior which was just a quick few blocks from the train station and a short walk to the famous beautiful Marienplatz (yes the same famous beautiful Marientplatz where there was the unfortun

After cutting our Slovenian adventure short due to absolute and total boredom (and the rain), we decided to throw in an unplanned stop into our trip to Munich by spending a day and night in Salzburg - the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the backdrop to "The Sound of Music", and yet another UNESCO site (so we knew it would be good), Since the decision to head to Salzburg had been so spur of the moment (we were clearly starting to really embrace our leaf in the wind backpacker lifestyle), we rolled into the Salzburg train station without actually knowing where we would be staying.  Luckily for us, the hostel closest to the train station had 2 beds available at a reasonable price ($25 each). Unlucky for us, we would discover that those beds happened to be in a shared room with a very young and sexually aggressive German couple.  (But more on that later.) Since it was still too early to check into our room, Tarrah and I took to the streets to explore and quickly discov

Slovenia -yawn (Warning!  This one is a short one and you may find it as boring as we found Lake Bled) After seeing google images of Lake Bled back in 2015 and making it my background for all tech devices (if you've never googled it, do it now), I'd made it my mission to somehow see the beautiful lake with the castle island for myself and I couldn't have been more thrilled when Tarrah allowed me to add it into our trip itinerary. (Popular google image of Lake Bled) After a quick one-hour train from Villach where we watched some American-bred modern vegan gypsies scare the living bejesus out of everyone on the train, we finally arrived in the long awaited land of Lesce Bled (aka Lake Bled, aka where the landscape from Frozen was created from). We arrived mid-afternoon on Sunday and  had originally planned to stay 2 days, but knew almost immediately upon arrival that 1 would suffice. We took a quick bus from the station to the main part of town and trekked over t

There could not have been a greater juxtaposition between hot, crowded Venice and the beautiful rolling green hills and open air of Villach, Austria. With Lake Bled, Slovenia in our future sites, we had picked the Austrian border town of Villach (pronounced "villa") to chop up the long train journey and get a little Austria into the trip. Not being a particularly big tourist destination, there weren't a lot of hostels available on hostelworld.com (my go to place for all our accommodations outside of Croatia), but I was able to find a private room available at the "Blue Mountain Hotel and Hostel" which sounded like it was pretty close to the main part of town.  (Ha!) We arrived to a desolate train station in Villach at 7pm Saturday night.  Though situated in a beautiful bed of lush green mountains, the area of town surrounding the train station looked akin to Martin Luther King Jr Blvd and I think Tarrah and I both began to wonder if we should just hop bac

After a heartfelt goodbye to Dubrovnik, Tarrah and I continued on towards the last leg of our adventures with a plane ride to Venice where we would have a few hours before catching the train to Austria. (Tarrah and I both wanted to see Venice, but had heard it was expensive, crowded, and smelled so we decided it was best to use as a layover rather than destination). After a fairly quick and easy flight, we found ourselves in the Venice airport.  With only a few hours to spend in the infamous sinking city, we decided the best plan of action would be to get to the Venice train station via bus and store our bags there, purchase our tickets for later, walk around, and return to catch our train to Austria. I have had some bad experiences with the Italian bus system before because in Italy, unlike every other city, you confusingly can't buy your bus tickets on the actual bus.  (I know this because when Natalie and I got on an Italian bus last time in 2014 we weren't allowed t

Of all the places I have been so far in my life, nothing has taken my breath away like the incredible city of Dubrovnik. When my mom was in her 20's she traveled Europe and beyond for over two and a half years going everywhere from the Netherlands to Croatia to Egypt.  Towards the beginning of her trip she purchased crystal from Dubrovnik (it was called Yugoslavia then of course) and carried it in her back back with her from place to place for nearly two years.  She still has them. I never have been able to understand why she would want to carry around a bunch of heavy glass with her throughout her travels (I can barely handle trekking around with my clothes on my back) or why she would hold onto them still after all these years when she could just sell them (she seriously never uses them and they're probably worth something), but after seeing and experiencing Dubrovnik myself I think I finally get it and there's no way in hell I'm letting her sell those things.  

After catching 2 hours of sleep due to our disco dolly Amsterdam antics. we hurriedly clamored down from our attic hostel room and down 5 flights of stairs to the lobby to check out.  While waiting for our bus 197 outside the Rijksmuseum we battled the throngs of tourists to hurriedly snap a few pictures with the IAmsterdam sign before grabbing our seats on the 197 which would get us to Schiphol with nearly an hour and a half to spare. Tarrah and I dropped our bags with Easy Jet, while Cori opted to save the 33 euro and carry hers on (a decision she would unfortunately later regret as we were forced to sprint through the entire airport to make our flight due to the lengthy security and passport process - I imagine there must be a lot of weirdos trying to smuggle things out of Amsterdam). After sprinting through 30+ gates to get to ours, we arrived breathless to be scolded by our two Dutch airline attendants. "You are very late", they said dryly in only the way the Dutch