Vienna:
*Hosel Ruthensteiner is by far the best hostel I stayed at during my entire trip. The staff and other hostelers where all friendly and sociable. The facilities were in top shape and the rooms were spacious with comfortable beds. The downsides to the place are that the showers are push button, a lot like the sinks in public restrooms, where you push a button and get a certain, but unknown, amount of time before the water flow just stops. But the showers do have hot and cold water so that's a plus. The other downside was that you had to provide your own sheets or pay two euro extra to rent some out during your stay.
*Definatly check out the Schönbrunn palace, you can easily get there by the subway and it's absolutely amazing. There are statues of Greek gods in the garden accompanied by a small zoo and a hedge maze. In addition there is a magnificent fountain with a large hill behind it and at the top of this hill is something that looks along the lines of the Brandenburg Gate.
Prauge:
*The Czech Republic uses the crown as it's currency instead of the euro. Five crowns converts to something close to twenty US dollars, so traveling around here can be relatively cheap compared to the rest of Europe.
*Prauge is a wonderful mix of the old and the new, the beautiful and the ugly. You'll see magnificent cathedrals and castels, confusingly modern architcture, and depressing remnants of Soviet architecture.
*DVDs in the Czech Republic have no country coding. For those of you who don't know, DVDs have an encoding that makes it so that they will only work in DVD players from the same country. This is done in an attempt to hold back piracy since movies are released in different countries at different times. But DVDs in the Czech Republic don't have this encoding, so they will work in any DVD player, so buy away, they're cheaper than back home!
Berlin:
*I highly recomend the Wombat's hostel in Berlin. There are Wombat's hostels also in Munich and two in Vienna, but I didn't stay at any of them so I can't really speak for those. But the one in Berlin is awesome, it's attached to a resturaunt that will serve a pretty decent all you can eat breakfast for 3.50 euros. There is also a bar with a sun terrace on the seventh floor. On top of all of this the most beds you will have in a room is six or possibly eight.
*It will take you a very long time for you to see everything in Berlin and, since there is so much constrution going on in Berlin, most likely once you have seen everything there will be something new that's been built for you to go see.
*The housing market is very low in Berlin, something around half of the apartments in Berlin have no one in them. This means you can get a really nice place for really cheap.
*The 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is coming up and for the occasion all the artists who painted murals on the longest stretch of the wall, and whom are still alive, are being flown in to repaint the murals because of the large amount of graffiti that has been put up over the murals (while I was there I even saw a girl who had her friend take a picture as she wrote her name on the wall). So go see how it is now before it changes forever.
Amsterdam:
*Amsterdam is small, you'll never need to catch public transport anywhere, you can probably see everything you want to see in two, possibly three days.
*Most people come to Amsterdam for the weed and hookers, if you're one of those people then you'll love the place, but because of this most fellow travelers in your hostel won't be extremely sociable unless you want to share a bowl.
*Amsterdam was, in my opinion, one of the most boring cities I visited. If I could do this trip over again, one of the many things I would change would be that I wouldn't go to Amsterdam. The Netherlands is amazing and the Dutch are generally likable people, but Amsterdam isn't much like the rest of the Netherlands and you won't likely meet many Dutch people there.
Now I have some general travel tips for people going through Europe:
*BRING A LAPTOP. It may be yet another thing you have to keep a close eye on, but it will make your life so much easier. Most places offer wi-fi and of those places a majority of them offer free wi-fi. But witout a laptop you'll be paying an arm and a leg if you're trying to keep in contact with people back home via the internet. Plus, something I wish I had known, it is next to impossible to find computers available to the public that have MS Word.
*Bring a cell phone. Things are so much easier if you can just pick up a cell phone to call home, make a reservation at a hostel, or meet up with a friend. Yes there are pay phones, but I can speak from experience that they are a major pain in the ass.
*Use the subway. With the acception of Amsterdam, I used the subway in every city I went to. You can buy day passes that allow you to take all the public transport for twenty-four hours and usually ends up paying off. The public transit runs mostly on an honor system, in that they don't check you for a ticket every time you get on. So yes you can get away with quite a few free rides, but there are also people under cover who will randomly hop on the transit and ask everyone to show their ticket and if you don't have one then you are SOL, the stupid tourist line doesn't usually work.
*Book your flight with the flight company itself instead of a booking agency. Changing a flight is much easier when there is no middle man.
*Pocket change is much more important in Europe. The one and two euro comes in coin form and when you go to a ticket machine for the train, subway, tram, or bus many of the machines will only take coins and not take bills.
*There are many passes you can buy that allow you to travel on all forms of some sort of transit for a certain amount of days or a certain amount of time. I thought to not buy the Eurail Pass because I was told that unless I was hoping from place to place very frequently that such a pass would be too expensive and paying for the trains at the station would be much eaiser. But the trains themselves cost amounts up in the double digits usually if you want to go from one country to another, so I ended up using Eurolines buses for my whole trip. I wish I had bought the pass they sell because it would have saved me a fair bundle, the pass costs about the equivalent to four bus trips and I could have used the pass much more than four times.
*Night buses and trains can be great, you get a night of sleep without having to pay for a hostel. Trains are even nicer in that they have sleeper cars occasionally which is quiet the nice change from a seat on a bus. But I was told of some girls who took night buses and woke up with a stranger groping them, not all trains are like this and it doesn't occur frequently, but it is a risk that occurs for female travelers.
*A towel is very valuable since most hostels will not provide you with one, but make sure that it is fast drying because you don't want to have a wet towel rolled up in your pack, that is unless you like the smell of mold on all your clothes.
*Bring a padlock because not all hostels provide a lock with the locker they give you for your pack.
I'm sure there's more, but currently nothing comes to mind. At this point I see this trip as a good experience, but there are many things I wish I could have done differently that would have made this trip more enjoyable. I now consider Europe checked off my list and I will travel else where before returning to Europe, though I do plan to someday return. But when I do I plan to have plenty of money saved and I will be willing to tavel in a more comfortable, touristy, luxury style of travel. This hostel traveling isn't exactly my thing.
*Pocket change is much more important in Europe. The one and two euro comes in coin form and when you go to a ticket machine for the train, subway, tram, or bus many of the machines will only take coins and not take bills.
*There are many passes you can buy that allow you to travel on all forms of some sort of transit for a certain amount of days or a certain amount of time. I thought to not buy the Eurail Pass because I was told that unless I was hoping from place to place very frequently that such a pass would be too expensive and paying for the trains at the station would be much eaiser. But the trains themselves cost amounts up in the double digits usually if you want to go from one country to another, so I ended up using Eurolines buses for my whole trip. I wish I had bought the pass they sell because it would have saved me a fair bundle, the pass costs about the equivalent to four bus trips and I could have used the pass much more than four times.
*Night buses and trains can be great, you get a night of sleep without having to pay for a hostel. Trains are even nicer in that they have sleeper cars occasionally which is quiet the nice change from a seat on a bus. But I was told of some girls who took night buses and woke up with a stranger groping them, not all trains are like this and it doesn't occur frequently, but it is a risk that occurs for female travelers.
*A towel is very valuable since most hostels will not provide you with one, but make sure that it is fast drying because you don't want to have a wet towel rolled up in your pack, that is unless you like the smell of mold on all your clothes.
*Bring a padlock because not all hostels provide a lock with the locker they give you for your pack.
I'm sure there's more, but currently nothing comes to mind. At this point I see this trip as a good experience, but there are many things I wish I could have done differently that would have made this trip more enjoyable. I now consider Europe checked off my list and I will travel else where before returning to Europe, though I do plan to someday return. But when I do I plan to have plenty of money saved and I will be willing to tavel in a more comfortable, touristy, luxury style of travel. This hostel traveling isn't exactly my thing.
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