After 23 days of backpacking Europe, there were of course I few things I couldn't tell Rena right away for her sanity and for her not to hop on the next plane to whatever place I was in. As we were traveling, I kept a running list of things that would be best off to tell Mama after the fact when I'm back in Cork. This list is hilarious, but in the moments they were happening Mama probably wouldn't have found them as funny then as she would now. Hopefully...

1. The Flying Pig Hostel in Amsterdam. Amsterdam was our first hostel experience and honestly it was a bit of a shock. It was a 32 mixed bed dorm, bunk bed style. Holly and I were on the same bunk, but Hannah was assigned a different once. Yeah no. That wasn't going to happen. Hannah snuggled with me because the male to female ratio was really high and creepy. This hostel also had a smoking room and bar. Luckily we had to be up and out by 6:30 to catch our train to Germany.

2. In Germany we went over 100 MPH on the Auto Bon.

3. We've brushed our teeth in train stations, got changed on train carts, and wore dirty clothes. Zero shame.

4. We were in Brussels a day after a huge protest and a few small bombs went off.

5. Finding our way to the Grand Hostel in Berlin was really sketchy and hard to find. The whole time we were waking we were thinking "oh this could go both ways..." After walking around with our bags for eight hours and getting a little lost we found it. It was really nice and the grown ups staying at this hostels. It also had awards from HostelWorld saying it's top three in the world. Phew! We sat down and filled out some paperwork and the guy at the desk said, "I have some bad news..." Our hearts sank, but it was just that the hostel was overbooked and he put us in a different room, gave us free linen and free beer as compensation. It actually worked out best in the long run because the room was really clean, nice and only had eight people instead of the six person that we booked.

6. Getting our passports stamped in Slovania and crossing the boarder into Croatia was TERRIFYING. We didn't know what was happening. All of a sudden the police got on the train, but then we found out that the police were the ones to check and stamp our passports, not the train people. We were so scared we thought something happened.

7. Our train to Zagreb from Split was cancelled. This resulted in a bus to Zagreb. This was really nerve wracking. We arrived to the train station and we couldn't find our train number anywhere. We asked the ticket window where the train was and she said it was cancelled because of rail work. This TOTALLY freaked us out because Croatia was our biggest hurdle and the furthest from Ireland. It was also the only place where we didn't know anybody. Most places we are going we have friends also studying abroad and of close enough to Ireland that it wasn't too worrying. Luckily, this happens often and the rail company hires a nice coach bus and takes us to the train station. It actually got us there faster and the bus ride was beautiful! They even stopped for a half an hour and we could get some fresh air.

8. Sleeping in Villach train station, sorry mom! I didn't tell you this one on purpose. The train station had a casino in it, so just picture that crowd. It was so horrifying that we decided to book an extra hotel in Nice where we also had another over night train layover. Rolling with the punches!

9. Train strike in Italy. On arriving to Venice we found out that there was a train strike happening while we were there causing some cancelations. Fortunately we were able to book around them and all worked perfectly.

10. Oh Roma! Or as the Italian grandmothers kept telling us, "watch out for those Romans!" The vendors at the Vatican were out of control and in one of the gelato places there was a five year old trying to pick pocket. The vendors were being so outrageous towards the three of us a bunch of teachers in charge of a high school field trip took us into their group and told them to leave us alone.

11. So staying in Nice was a very last minute plan after our awful experience in the train station in Villach over night. We booked this hotel, it was close to the station and the reviews said it was clean and safe and that's all we really are about anyways. It was just a place to rest our heads for a few hours before our 6am train. The reception guy seemed nice, then asked us if we wanted to smoke and have a drink with him.... HORRIFIED, we ran up the steps locked our door and didn't leave the room until the next morning for our train.

12. For this whole month I managed to make one of each travel sized bottles of shampoo, conditioner, soap and toothpaste last the entire time. How often do you think we showered?

13. When people asked where we were from we said Canada... No need to tell anyone too much about ourselves. Everyone likes Canadians, eh?

14. 

We survived our train rides on dried figs from Croatia and interesting and weird snacks from convenient stores and markets in different places.

15. 

I had the worst blisters on my feet, Holly had to tape them with toilet paper and hockey tape. Just because Keds and flip flops are cute, look good in pictures this doesn't mean they're good for 5 hours of waking everyday. We all regret not bringing real sneakers, we all had some CRAZY things happening on our feet.

16. 

On the feet note, our feet smelled so bad. So so so bad. I think we ended up as those gross smelly roommates nobody wanted and warned us about...

17. Our last hostel in Paris was the Woodstock Hostel. There was a cat and VolksWagon bug in the lobby. They asked for a 5 Euro deposit for sheets (as in we'd get it back...), but we didn't want to give up the Euros since we only had so much left and didn't want to go to an ATM again so we 

slept without sheets in Paris hostel.

18. We totally smelled. On the Paris Metro to the airport a guy moved away from us.

19. I rotated 2 t-shirts, 1, long sleeve and a tank top for 23 days. (I also wore the same shirt for the last week- to bed and out).

20. My standards have definitely changed for sleeping arrangements. Clean and safe are top, other than that if there's a shower cool if not, no big deal because we probably wouldn't have used it anyways.

I hope this makes you all laugh and inspire you to backpack, definitely something you can only do in your twenties. By my thirties I hope I can swing the five star hotels I walked by in awe! Not to worry, our trip went so smoothly I don't even consider these to be big issues, just funny little hiccups!

I can't wait to tell you all these stories this summer!

Love,
Al