Brussels
As I mentinoned in my last enty, it was already late when we got to Brussels. We asked for the bus and got our tickets for one trip. People were mostly speaking French. And of course we couldn’t understand much. We again got off at the last bus station. Luckily, there was a very old man walking around and he was speaking English. He helped us big time and thanks to him, we could find the way to the flat of our host. It was 10 minutes away on foot, that was no problem, we were already used to walk with our huge backpacks.
Utrecht
We still regret why we hadn’t gone to Rotterdam instead of Utrecht. Well, the most famous city in Holland is of course Amsterdam. And almost everyone who wants to visit one more city besides Amsterdam goes to Rotterdam. That’s why we wanted to do something else. The other city was Utrecht and it was not that far away, so we got on the train again with the shopping we had just made. That was our lunch, we needed that time.
Amsterdam Day 2 & 3
The next day, we woke up early. In the hostel we had a very nice open bar breakfast. Wow, that was cool. As I wrote before, it was more like a hotel rather than any kind of hostel. We went to the city center again. We checked our options. Would it be logical to get an I amsterdam card and pay 33€ a day for it, or just to get an unlimited free for a day public transportation ticket. Later we decided to buy that card. Because we also wanted to visit a couple of museums there. Moreover, there is a free boat tour and free casino entrance was included. That was a rational decision I guess.
Amsterdam Day 1
Again, a long long train ride. From Lyon to Amsterdam. It was too tiring and too long. The train, from Lyon to Brussels was really really crowded. I hate France one more time, in that train. Even though I made a reservation and I paid extra for that, it was no way near comfortable. There was just one really nice thing happened on that train. I met a very beautiful Dutch girl. Her name is Mara and she was having her holiday in Lyon, I guess, and was also practising her French. You know, it like there is a rule that every Dutch guy has to speak at least 3 languages. :p Yeah, so she was one of them. She was claiming that her French and German were just “a bit”. But I don’t think so, because she also told me that her English is also just “a bit”. But it was surely better than mine. So you can guess…
Lyon
Probably one of the nicest cities in France. At least some of my friends told me so. And I had 2 days off, so I decided to go there. But I had some problems and used up my first off day in Furtwangen. So that left me just one day to go to Lyon and then go all the way back to Amsterdam. At that time I didn’t realised that but now I’m getting there. It’s kinda stupid. Why because the train takes about 8 hours from Furtwangen to Lyon and after spending the night there, I had to leave for Amsterdam the next morning, which is going to take again more than 8 hours. And the time between was just 3, 4 hours for me to visit and see Lyon. Yeah, that’s crazy. For an extra 16 hours of train trip just to spend 3, 4 hours… Yeah, I probably am not going to do it again!
Vienna Day 2
On Sunday Sonja and André were going to go to some strawberry collecting or picking up in some village nearby. I was not sure what to do, but Sunday was going to be my last day in Vienna, and there were lots of places that I hadn’t visited. So I decided to go sightseeing again.
Vienna Day 1
Yeah, even though I took the fastest train possible, it took me 7 hours to get to Vienna from Feldkirch. We also had some delay there, so it was almost 10, 10.30 pm when arrived in Vienna. I was going to stay with a married couple there: Sonja, André Koschina. I didn’t have any problems at all to find their apartment. Before I left for this trip, they described the way quite well, so although I am very lousy with finding directions, I had no problems at all. When I arrived there, I found this little note, saying that they are 10 minutes away and if I call them they will be right back. And I did. (:
Liechtenstein
A country with 30,000 population. Probably 90, 95% of the world population has no idea about this word, about this country. But I knew it, and I also knew that I wanted to go there and see it by myself. As I said in my previous Zurich post, I left early in the morning from Zurich for Liechtenstein. There they don’t have any fast train connections, so I had to switch to local trains and arrive in Liechtenstein in that way.