I arrived in Vienna at night with directions of how to get to my hostel. I followed the directions to my best ability for two full hours, hopping from one incorrect tram to another. Finally, exhausted and realizing that every tram I took brought me further from where I needed to go, I stepped into a taxi and took it to my hostel. I checked in and introduced myself to my roommate, who was from Washington and completely uninterested in talking. I noticed he had a...

I traveled to Innsbruck on December 20-23rd, having heard it's a nice stop between Munich and Vienna. My bus arrived at 4:40pm, and my host Pharrell met me at the station at 6. We went back to his apartment, where I would stay the next few days. It was a really nice little one-bedroom apartment, and Pharrell had set up a mattress for me so I would be comfortable sleeping in the same room. He said my snoring and sleep-talking wouldn't bother him, which as it tur...

I looked for a couchsurfing host in Munich because even hostels were too expensive at this time of year, and I was ready to get a taste of the couchsurfing spirit. I couldn't find any hosts in town for the holidays, so I posted my request as a public trip. A woman named Sarah wrote to me expressing that she and her family would be out of town for the duration of the holidays, but that she would be happy for me to stay at her apartment as long as I help take car...

I arrived in Prague in the late afternoon, and czeched my stuff into the hostel before going to take a walk around the city. The hostel turned out to be a bit far from the city center, so I walked a mile or so looking around the neighborhood shops (not realizing I was a short tram ride away from the city center) before settling on a Chinese restaurant for dinner. I went back to the hostel, which costs $8 per night, and used the sauna and swimming pool! The pool...

The train ride from Berlin to Dresden, Germany was bizarre. When the conductor started making announcements over the microphone, I heard a man screaming and shouting in the background. He was speaking clearly enough that the German people in my train cabin could understand what he was shouting about, but of course I don't know more than ten words of German. I asked the people in my cabin what was going on, as they were tittering to each other about it, but they d...