We arrived in Stuttgart mid Tuesday morning. As we exited the train, we immediately realized Maria was not with our group. Ominously, the train jingled a happy about-to-depart tune. Inside the train, Maria was battling for her freedom. She had unknowingly entangled her bag straps with a chair arm. Her hands full of bags, she moonwalked towards the chair attempting to escape. The chair resisted. Maria made a sad and worried little sound, alerting watching stra...

We arrived in Munich quite early in the morning after devouring our complementary breakfast on (hopefully) our last sleeper train. We locked our bags away like the pro travelers we are before hopping another train to visit a castle. It was on this train ride that our trip encountered the largest obstruction to happiness so far. The language barrier between us and our hapless German conductor lady led her to believe we had scammed our way into using one train...

Two events marked the train ride to Berlin: we ate a lot of cheese and Giana began to suffer from a respiratory illness. Likely my own illness, having retreated into Giana's lungs, was making a comeback. By the time we checked in to our hostel boat (yes, our hostel was on a boat) Giana felt very sick so we got an early dinner and went to bed. The next day Giana decided to rest for the entire day so Maria and I hit up Berlin. We walked from our hostel b...