Berlin by day, Dresden by afternoon, and Prague by night

I know, I know. We’re in Prague?? We arrived yesterday in Berlin and didn’t quite love what we saw. We stayed at a hostel straight out of a horror movie. If you ever want to stay in a not so nice neighobhood of Berlin, visit Amstel House.

On our ride to Berlin from Copenhagen we were met by hundreds of UEFA Denmark fans on the way to their game in Germany. Tailgating on the train, we were stuck sleeping in the luggage compartment. But it’s all good because they were quite entertaining.. and maybe more importantly, I found  a 5 Kg container of NUTELLA! 

Our 6 hour train ride.

This morning we left Berlin with crossants and baked goodies in our stomachs and pockets for Dresden. We arrived in Dresden at 10:00. The town was spectacular. Burnt down in WWII, Dresden kept its original aspects for the rebuilt city. Statues were glued back together, some with missing arms, and the old stone buildings were burnt black. We walked through the town before enjoying at typical German meal of brautworsts and German beer.

Breakfast

Dresden

We arrived in Prague a couple hours ago to a beautiful hostel. I highly recommend the Czech Inn! We’ll be exploring the city tommorow, heading to an annual beer fest down the street tonight, a pretty good intro to Czech life we think.

Na zdraví!

Country Two: Denmark

The last couple of days have been spent hiking in Nesbyen and in Oslo celebrating Fredrik’s Pappa’s birthday with the Thorsen gang.

Hiking through the last of the snow in Nesbyen. Defrosting snow makes for wet hiking. We made a fire to warm our feet, make hot coco and hotdogs.

The Thorsen Family

Yesterday we spent eight hours traveling by train to Copenhagen, Denmark with our Eurail global pass. We wasted no time exploring. Arriving at 16:00 we started out eating a traditional red hot dog. From there we settled in at Copenhagen Dan Hostel with a view of the waterfront. Six other roommates.

Red hotdog from a street stand. Notice the bread on the side? Not so convenient yet Danish I suppose.

Dan Hostel. Room for eight

We noticed right away the significnant amount of bikers roaming the city. Not just tens but hundreds. The city has invested a lot of time and money creating a very efficient way of transportation with their own large lane that lights up when it’s their turn to cross the street and bike stands on every corner.

One of many bike racks lined with hundreds of bikes

The second thing we noticed was the amount of leisure going on in the city. Maybe it was just because of the spectacular weather, but young and old gathered on every seafront and park, beers in hand (lots of beer) lounging the day away.

This morning we started out searching for food. It seems like searching for decently inexpensive food is constantly on our minds, especially since we want to avoid the McDonalds and Burgerkings on every other corner. We ended up eating Danish sandwiches (which all seem to include curry?) and gelato in the royal park.

From there we walked through park after park to arrive at The Little Mermaid on the seafront.

The Little Mermaid from H.C. Anderson’s original fairytale

We then proceeded down to Nyhavn where the locals continued their lounging. What a beautiful sight. Sailboats lined along the harbor, resturant after restuarant crowded with tourists and locals alike. Copenhagen is a beautiful city filled with nature, parks, seafronts, royalty, modern areas, and 19th century structures.

Tonight we went to Tivoli, the 100 year old amusement park located directly in the center of town. I might have wimped out on one of the rides, leaving Fredrik to feat an upside-down plane ride.

In Tivoli’s China town. Obviously Fredrik needed to do his Ash Ketchum pose

Being us, we were the only “adults” on the merry-go-round.

All in all, we both agree that we walked ten miles today. Literally. And that we both had a great time. Two countries down, at least five more to go.

Tomorrow we’ll let our feet rest during our train ride to Berlin, Germany. We’ll be meeting up with our friends Bianca and Lennart from Flagler College. Let the journey continue!

Through the Fjords to Bergen we Go

We woke Saturday morning to find that we were a wee bit late for our train to Bergen. We took the train to the snowy mountains of Myrdal where we got on the tour guided train of “Flåmsbanen” down to Flåm. The ride was absolutely fantastic and the snowy peaks we had just left turned into rolling hills with wild flowers and green grass.

The view from the first train ride

Flåm was a tourist town, with souvenir shops on every corner. There, we ate our picnic  before 

The Beginning: Norway

I flew into Oslo, Norway on May 15th to be picked up at the airport by Fredrik. Very proud of showing me his un-American stick shift skills, we drove through Oslo and his town of Hosle. That night I met his parents, Bjørn and Hege, sister, Cathrine, and her boyfriend, Niclas for the first time over a dinner. After lots of sleep we went on a great hike to kolsåstoppen.

May 17th, Norway’s constitutions celebration day, was incredible. An early breakfast at Cathrine’s apartment in downtown Oslo, with her friends and then the parade through Oslo passing by the Queen and King’s Castle.

Children’s parade in downtown Oslo

        Niclas, Fredrik, me, and Cathrine. Cathrine is in her traditional Norwegian dress.

Today we drove to Fredrik’s mountain cabin in Nesbyen, an amazing drive where we saw Alpaca of all things, and SNOW!

Breeding Alpacas? Norway is. Most hilarious creature I have ever come across

3 Smart Travel Apps

There are countless options of travel applications for your smart phone. With so many choices, it’s a given that many of the applications are either expensive and/or useless. I hope this post will make it a little bit easier for you to find useful travel apps. I have selected three applications that I know we will be useful this summer while traveling!

At the age of twenty, I have been fortunate enough to travel small parts of Europe, North-America, North-Africa, and Asia with my family. My family is firm believers of a travel app called TripAdvisor. Over the years I have come to see just how useful this app is. TripAdvisor is a great way to figure out where to eat, where to stay and, maybe most importantly, what to do in the places you visit. One of the reasons TripAdvisor is such a great device, is because of the bluntly honest reviews, written by other travelers. These reviews give a much better perspective than what is normally found from typical tourist brochures. This free app is usable for most Android and smart phones and works just as well as their website. The app is usable on the run, and uses your current location to find attractions, restaurants and hotels that are near you.

We’ve chosen to travel Europe by train, and from experience, I’ve learned that the timetables and schedules at train stations in Europe can be extremely confusing. Rail Europe is yet another free application for android and smart phones that we believe will be useful on our adventure through Europe.  It is easy to use and gives you detailed and useful travel information.

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XE Currency is yet another free application for mobile devices that is convenient to have at hand when travelling foreign countries. It gives you a live overview over the currency rates. So, if you are ever find yourself wondering how many dollars you are going to pay for an item, you very easily plug it into your phone, and it will tell you. I, myself, have found this application very useful at many occasions, living in the US as a foreigner with a Norwegian debit card. Every now and then at the checkout, I get asked if I want to pay in US dollars, or in Norwegian Kroner, which is at a set rate. Knowing what the actual interest rate is, could save you a few bucks. Another great feature on this application is that it saves the last uploaded currency rates, so it’s usable even when you’re not connected to the internet.

But, please keep in mind that these applications, as well as many others, require an internet connection, and when travelling, try to avoid using your 3G feature at all cost. The 3G service is unfortunately incredibly expensive, and the last thing you want when you get back from your trip is to receive a big fat phone bill. In the not too distant future, we will put up a post on how to find free Wi-fi throughout Europe.

-Fredrik

Finding the Best Airfare Price

Maybe the most expensive part of any trip is the airplane ticket.

My mission is this: Find the absolute cheapest round-trip ticket from Miami, Florida to Oslo, Norway in May in one hour.

Start: 8:46 PM

There are endless search engines that can make finding a ticket cheap and easy. Doing your research is important and can save you at least $100. I found that skyscanner is by far the most organized and cheapest search engine. Lots of flight search sights are misleading, giving you the base price without adding on taxes and fees, or giving you multiple flights in pop-up windows, frustrating me to no end. Being flexible on my flight dates and airport saved me money, and skyscanner made it easy to compare these aspects.

I typed my flight information into over ten different search engines.  For students and teachers, STA Travel is worth looking at. It had an organized chart showing all prices with ranging dates, outlining the best deal. Besides skyscanner and STA Travel, Airfare Watchdog, cheapoair, and KAYAK can all be useful as well, depending on your destination.

Tip: Make sure to take a close look at overall travel time. For my journey, it was an average of 15 hours travel time. For the same price, there were multiple flights taking 29 hours or more. For in-country flights there is usually not a big difference, but when traveling through multiple countries you must be much more careful about this point.

9:38 PM Final Outcome:

$1,031 round-trip ticket found on skyscanner, bought through cheapoair Miami(MIA) -> London (LHR) -> Oslo(OSL)

Happy Savings

Complete List of Tourist Offices of Europe

One of the first steps of planning our eurotrip was to choose what countries we wanted to visit, and what we wanted to see in each country. A resource we found useful for gaining information in this process was tourist offices. To contact these offices, we found their email address under “contact us” on each website (links provided below). We sent questions and/or ideas regarding our trip. Are there any upcoming cultural events? What’s the best mode of transportation? How do I find an English-speaking tour in Venice? Is there an attraction that I must see? Below is the list of

Map of Our Journey

Approximate travel route.

About Our Journey

A month into college, Fredrik and I discovered our joint desire of traveling Europe. Neither of us wanted the typical Eurotrip with London, Barcelona, Paris, and other tourist destinations. Both being adventurous and somewhat spontaneous people, we decided to plan the trip.

Fredrik has lived in Oslo, Norway until this year, when he started attending Flagler College. So, we figured this would be a natural place to start our trip. Me, born and raised in South Florida, jumped at the thought (and still jumping) to venture on unbeaten paths.

I’m a double major in graphic design and business. My photographer dad introduced me to his creative ways at an early age. This means that I will have my sketchbook and camera beside me throughout the trip, posting them on our blog as often as possible.

Stay tuned for more of our upcoming journey, ways to save money while traveling, and links we’ve found helpful for an adventure of a lifetime.