Amsterdam was a great start to Europe. We visited the Van Gogh Museum, which they did a great job with. I really enjoyed it even though I'm not a huge fan of that Post Impressionist Style. We also did a bike tour and learned a lot about the city. After three days of drinking coffee and getting lost we were off again. From here I went to Cologne for three days on my own. I did a walking tour, wandered a fair bit taking pictures, went to the Ludwig Museum of Modern Art, and saw a music show. I saw Musee Mecanique and they were so fantastic live! Cologne is a very unique city, such a mix of people creating a cool experience. After this I met up with Eliza in Munich. Munich is a great city, we just wandered, drank beer, and hung out in their gorgeous parks. This is the part where our biggest travel mistake was made. There was some confusion of how long we were supposed to be in Munich, and without even double checking we ended up staying an extra night. All seemed well... or so we thought. We headed to Berlin, got settled, and spent our first day wandering around the city, getting our bearings. We woke up the next morning to an email from the hostel we booked in Dresden saying we had missed our booking! We both were under the impression that Dresden was after Berlin rather than before, so unfortunately no Dresden this time around. As embarrassed as I am to tell this story I felt I should share, as we're still laughing at how silly we feel missing an entire city. Despite this minor hiccup Berlin was really cool. We explored a museum, saw the East Side Gallery, rented bikes, and did a walking tour. The walking tour was great, we learned so much about the history of Berlin, the bulk of it being WW2 related. We got to walk through this monument which was created to acknowledge those who were killed in the war. It was such a powerful thing to see. Being from a country in which the war was not fought on our nation's soil, it's so easy to forget what happened and just how bad it was. We also saw the university where the first book burning happened and their memorial for that. You can look down into a room of empty bookshelves and beside it is a plaque with a quote from Heinrich Heine "that was only a prelude, there where they burn books, they burn in the end people." After Berlin we were off to Poland. First stop Warsaw. Warsaw is such an interesting place. 85% of the city was destroyed during the war and was built back up by the people because they were still under communist regime. Virtually none of it is original which gives it a very bizarre feeling. Still a very cool city. Next stop, Krakow! Krakow wasn't really affected by the war, so it feels very old and authentic which I really liked. I also really enjoyed how small it felt, there was never too many people around and I never felt like I was getting smothered as a tourist. While here we did another walking tour, and went to Aushwitz. It was such a mind boggling experience. It's so upsetting and by no means an easy day but so worth it. To learn about what happened and see it too. They do such a great job of telling you what happened, it's something everyone should try and do at some point. After Krakow we headed for Czech, and you'll just have to wait for my next blog post for that one!
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