During my spring break of 1995 I traveled by train throughout Europe for five weeks with my girlfriend Susan. We began our trip in Manchester, England. From there we flew to Amsterdam (left) where we visited some museums and saw the famous Red Light District. We stayed in a brand new youth hostel across from a small park. I would say that we saw both the best and the worst that Amsterdam has to offer. And in case you're wondering, no we did not indulge in any type of funny business with a certain weed. If you're ever there, be sure to check out the old Heineken museum. There is an hour-long tour and followed by another hour in which hors douvres and an unlimited supply of Heineken are served for FREE!
After Amsterdam we took a train to Hamburg, Germany where it was pretty boring except for a huge fair that was in town for the week. Having spent just one night in the Hamburg youth hostel- by far the worst of our trip, we headed South to the famous city of Berlin. Having lived in New York City my whole life, I was not awed by the sheer size of the city, but I was impressed by the East Side Art Gallery, a.k.a. the remnants of the Berlin Wall (below). We stayed in a nice hostel in a shady part of town for two days before making our way down to Munich.
Munich was the prettiest city of the three we visited in Germany. The town is a mix between the old and the new Germany. Unlike Berlin, there are few skeletons of buildings left from the war and certainly less overall filth. While we were there we visited the old Olympic stadium and some of the famous beer gardens. We didn't get a chance to sit in the gardens though because it began to hail. Before long, the hail turned to snow and suddenly the whole city was covered. On our second day there we went shopping for a cuckoo clock for my girlfriend's mother. We must have looked at a couple of hundred clocks before she finally decided on "the perfect one."
After Munich (below) we took a train down to neighboring Salzburg, Austria. It was my girlfriend's dream to see the place where her favorite movie," The Sound of Music," was filmed so I agreed begrudgingly. Lame, huh? Any way, it turned out to be the most picturesque place we visited in the whole trip, we even had the whole youth hostel to ourselves during our stay.. Since everything was covered in snow, it looked like all the postcards I wound up mailing to my friends. The gardens (above) were beautiful even under all the snow. Following our "Sound of Music" tour and a quick visit to the Stiegl Beerhall, a monk brewery, on our third and last day there, we went East to the capitol city of Switzerland: Bern.
I must admit that I did not even spend 24 hours in this city. Sure it was nice and there were beautiful mountains surrounding us but we couldn't even afford to eat! A Pizza Hut large family pizza was $40 and a McDonald's happy meal was $12! Believe me, I would be the last one to eat this kind of crap in another country but we figured it would be cheaper than all of the other rip-off joints we had already tried. Needless to say, we did not stay long. The next morning we went to the beautiful, sunny town of Nice on the French Riviera.
Nice was a whole new world for us weatherwise. Free from the clutches of old man winter, we threw off the old winter coats and headed out to the beach. Although it was still only around 55-60 degrees, it felt like 90 degrees compared with the frigid temperatures in all our previous stops. After two days in our humble youth hostel which overlooked the city and offered a magnificent view, we went to Monaco for the day en route to Milan, Italy.
Milan was a bust. We were unlucky enough to visit during the one week out of the whole year in which "The Last Supper" was inaccessible to the public due to repairs. Since that was our sole reason for trekking up to Milan, we left the next day for Florence. Florence was beautiful but crowded, everywhere we went we were besieged by a bevy of small school groups. The shopping and dining in Florence were the by far the best of anywhere we traveled. If you're interested in bootleg CDs (they're made in Italy and Germany), go to Italy before the copyright laws change. They go for about $6 each versus the $20-$25 you'll pay for one here. From Florence we made a day trip to the city of Pisa to see the famous tower which was in the middle having weights added to the side of it to keep it from falling.
Our final stop in Italy was Rome. Rome was an amazing place to walk around. The ruins (right) are right in the middle of the city, so one minute you're looking at something built thousands of years ago, and the next you're looking at a McDonald's that just opened. We stayed in Rome for three days, visiting places like the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican on Palm Sunday.
From Rome we traveled by train to Brindisi, Italy on the Southeast coast to take an 18 hour boat ride to Patras,Greece. From there it was another 3 hour train ride to the Ancient city of Athens. Athens was a filthy city. We stayed a couple of days to see The Acropolis, The Parthenon and the Olympic stadium before we got back on the boat and sailed North to the island of Corfu. While there we stayed at the legendary Pink Palace Hotel; a ClubMed type of resort that is completely like something out of a Spring break movie. I felt as if I was in Florida or something because the whole place was full of American college kids. We partyed there for a couple of days and discovered a local beverage called Ouzo.
After leaving Greece and embarking on another 18 hour boat ride, we landed in Venice,Italy where we stayed for a day. The next day we realized we only had a few days to get back to England before classes started. We took overnight trains the rest of the way to save precious tourism time and money. On the way home we stopped off at Nice again for a night, and then we visited Cannes really quick before catching a train to Marseilles and another one from there to Paris (right). We stayed with a friend from UMass in Paris for a day or so and then we caught the ferry from Calais on the North end of France to the Southern tip of England. As we arrived back in merry ol' England we got to see the famous White Cliffs of Dover (below). It was a picture-perfect end to a perfect trip.

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