ONE. MONTH. LEFT.

where did this come from?
what is this magic? o.O

Hamburg (28th June)

low budget & low sleep & high adventure trip nach Hamburg!

Departure: Saturday 23:25 Köln
Arrival: 5:30 Hamburg
--we watch the sunrise at the harbour

- walking around the empty city
- walking around the city waking up
- walking around the city slowly getting crowded with people
- walking walking walking for 15 hours (with short breaks for food)

- amazing weather (we are in awe the whole day. is this really Germany?)
- it only starts raining at around 9pm, so we find a place with coffee, wait for the bus and write postcards

the HafenCity is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen

6am: a tired but happy and excited selfie
(girls power with Anna and Monika)

how to start a day: 1) find a place where they have a coffee and bathroom, 2) sit ourside and enjoy beautiful Hamburg

sobluesoblue

I fell in love with the Hamburg canals and bridges.

it felt like the end of the world

if you are waiting for a sign this is it. who needs more?

our lunch place
seagulls
(do you think the fact people from Hamburg say "moin" instead of "guten morgen" has anything to do with the fact that the city is full of moin-moin seagulls?)

- sitting by the lake, watching supercute and fluffy ducklings
- discussing why the evolution decided to make the mistake and take away the arms from the birds.
(no.hands. how weird is that?)

sunshine-hippie graffiti all around the city. we counted at least 27 of these smiley faces.

Rathaus with an exposition of random photos of Prague inside (we didn´t figure out why or what it was for.  it didn´t even say the name "Prague" anywhere. but there was a picture of "železářství" in one of them so we are sure it was Prague.) 

you know, a six meter big stone / art ...in a church

<3

St. Michael´s church from the bottom.

...and from the top.

a windy picture from the top of Hamburg

Sunday 23:15 departure from Hamburg
Monday 6:00 arrival in Köln
8:00 arrival in Bochum
- run run to the dorms → shower -> 10:00 - 19:30 school →20-22:00 Sprachcafé

- megabus is a dream coming true for students who want to travel cheap
- I am really becoming an expert with what to pack for such trips. My scarf turns out to be be a perfect sleeping bag/blanket.

- I forgot to say how awesome the trip to Berlin was! It was very awesome.

- My English and German teachers went to Berlin just the weekend before I did. The next weekend they went to Prague. I can´t believe we missed each other just because of a few days.

- Exams are coming. Time when there´s no time to sleep is here.

- German officers are as annoying as the Czech ones. How dare I to ask them to do their job!

Berlin

- departure: Köln Thursday 23:35
- arrival: Berlin Friday 6:00
(I feel like a master of sleeping positions on the bus now.)
(Also, second one-euro trip worked very well. I just need to remember that megabus saves mony on the heating.)

- raining
- found the U-bahn and bought the tickets like a native Berliner!
- getting a life saving coffee and brushing the teeth in a Berliner cafe (and Tracy Chapman playing in the background)

- raining
- walking around the city for more than 12 hours
- raining
- everything is under construction. they even run out of yellow giraffes so they had to use red ones!

Gedächtniskirche - bombed during the war and left that way

French Dom

German Dom. (I read the story why they look the same but I am not sure how it went anymore.)

THEY ARE BUILDING A F***ING NEW PALACE IN THE MIDDLE OF BERLIN!

AND they have a sample wall.

Alexanderplatz and the famous clock.

My favorite building in Berlin - the Berliner Dom.

Museums. Beautiful museums everywhere.

my favorite building again.

More museums. 

the television tower

neue Synagog

Very interesting museum about the history of Berlin.

THE WALL.

Angela Merkel´s place. Seen from the Bundestag.

Bundestag.

Brandenburger Tor.

Ritter Sport chocolate (museum and shop).

Cycling around the city and drinking beer at the same time on this vehicle. Only in Germany.

My umbrella didn´t survive Berlin weather. (I guess no himym story for me.)

Bundestag with Daniel and Honza. (I totally did not forget to take the pepper spray from my backpack when going through the security control. not. at. all.)

- the sun in Berlin never goes down. and so the people never go to sleep.


(the Egyptians seem to have a elaborated network all around Germany. Or: how we met Amr´s friend in Berlin so that he could give us a bag from Egypt for Amr.)


(oh god this was a hard one, picking up just a few pictures for this post)

Brussels (15. - 16. 6. 2015)

- my first very alone trip ever (I guess)
- and it went great: I found my bus; I only got lost slightly and only a several times; I managed to meet up with Aneta when she finished at work (-> I had a place to sleep) and I had a tun of fun
- also, I tried to be a typical tourist and took a tun of pictures (the ones here are a selection from a selection from a selection)
- hooray to megabus and very very low budget trips with tickets for one euro and sandwiches in the backpack for two days

- It must be SO confusing to live in a bilingual city, never knowing who is going to understand you and who´s not. Especially with such different languages as French and Dutch are.

- note to myself for the future: never believe the weather forecast (or maybe it´s just Belgium - April weather in June, going from hot hot sunny to I-am-never-going-anywhere-without-a-jacket-ever-again about back and forth about a hundred times a day)

Grand-Place

one of the many many beautiful parks in Brussels

an astronomical clock, I suppose? (the music from it was really bad though)

The capital city of Europe.

Not the best picture of me but definitely the most Belgian one. A waffle and the peeing boy. Who is really really really small. Even when they tell you to expect him to be smaller than you expect, you don´t.

And he has a hidden secret peeing sister. A very nice Brussel´s girl saw a lost look on my face (I usually have that when trying to figure out maps) and not only did she helped me find myself but also told me about this. (It took me about an hour to find her in this smallest street in the city but I did and I got to see other parts of Brussel as a bonus while looking for her.)

European Parliament. So many enormous and monumental buildings in this "European" area.

(It felt like they decided to repair EVERYTHING in Brussels in those two days.)

A random story from another day (trip to Bonn): I was trying to find out how the big yellow thing is called and a Polish friend said "žuraw", which is the Polish name, which I didn´t know and thought (for real) that he said "giraffe" which I find very fitting and I think everybody should start using this name for this (whatever its real name is).

thank you, very helpful.

Typical buildings of Brussels´s streets.