Two weeks of freely traveling around Europe? Yes please. DIS’s two week long break in the middle of the semester was one of the main reasons I chose to study abroad in Copenhagen. I love traveling with my family, but my favorite travel experiences have been with my friends (like my friend Sam) and peers in countries like Spain and Israel. I was excited to see what would happen as I tried to see as many places as I could in 14 days.
Week 1 kicked off in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I stayed there with my friends Maggie, Patton, and Andrea from DIS and six people Andrea knew that were studying abroad in Budapest. The 10 of us stayed in a 20 person room at our hostel- not an experience I would recommend. Luckily, the city of Amsterdam made up for the hostel situation! I thought Amsterdam and Copenhagen would be pretty similar because they both contain an excessive number of bikes and many canals, but Amsterdam had a much different feel. Probably because of all the people sitting by coffee shops and casually smoking marijuana.
I am obsessed with taking canal pictures.
Monday was our first full day in Amsterdam. After getting shut out of a free walking tour, we decided to visit the next spot on our wish list: the Van Gogh Museum. We had bought tickets from our hostel ahead of time and still had to wait almost half an hour with the other pre-paid ticket holders to get inside. The museum was definitely worth it; information about the artist was integrated with descriptions of paintings from throughout his entire life.
Maggie and I taking the quintessential Amsterdam picture.
Unfortunately, the many different floors of the museum led to our group getting completely separated, but I found Dan and Tyler, two of the guys we were traveling with, and we wandered around the city for the rest of the afternoon. We ran into the rest of the group eventually and took a quick trip to the Erotic Museum– while it was amusing, it probably was not worth 5 euro. We did get to see the Red Light District in the daylight though and caught glimpses of some of the infamous prostitutes in the windows.
Of course we made a return trip that night.
After dinner that night, we returned to the Red Light District to see it in all its glory. I wasn’t allowed to take pictures of any of the window peep shows (sorry to disappoint), but it was a pretty unforgettable experience. It was Dan’s birthday at midnight so we offered to buy him some time with a prostitute, but after considering it he declined.
The renovated exterior of the Anne Frank House.
Our time in Amsterdam felt too brief: we traveled to Budapest on Tuesday and needed to leave Amsterdam by 2pm. I decided to cram as much as I could into Tuesday morning. I waited on a pretty long line to go inside the Anne Frank House, but the museum was one of the highlights of my entire trip. I couldn’t believe I was standing in the small rooms where Anne and her family lived for two years as they hid from the Nazis. I can’t wait to re-read her diary when I get home. While the line to get in can be intimidating, the Anne Frank House is a must-see.
The most delicious pancake I’ve ever had.
The second most important place to visit in Amsterdam has to be The Pancake Bakery, a famous institution. I got an apple and banana pancake to go and ate it by the side of a canal. It was heavenly. They have all types of pancakes there, and I really regretted not eating there for every meal. I also managed to visit The Houseboat Museum, which is on an actual houseboat! The interior looked completely homey, and it was strange to realize this normal living room was inside a boat instead of a house.
The outside of the houseboat.
The living room of the houseboat- I guess I could see myself living here?
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I had a great Tuesday morning in Amsterdam, but karma got revenge on me that afternoon. Every travel experience I’ve had has included at least one nightmare, and the worst occurred when trying to get from Amsterdam to Budapest. Instead of flying out of the main Amsterdam airport, we had booked a flight from Eindhoven, a city about 2 hours away from Amsterdam. To get there we needed to take a train and then take a bus from the train station to the airport. Simple, right? Not so much when traveling with 9 people. We got to the train station in Amsterdam later than I’d hoped and had about 4 minutes to buy tickets for the group and get on the train. I was also dragging a 40 pound suitcase with me. I found the track listings, saw our train, and led the group to the platform. We all ran on and made it just as the doors were closing. The car was pretty crowded, so I moved to the next one so I’d have room for my bag. This turned out to be a bad decision. I was quietly sitting and reading my Kindle when the train stopped at the next stop 5 minutes later. Suddenly, one of the girls we were traveling with burst into my car and yelled that we were on the wrong train and had to get off at that stop. As I attempted to extricate myself from the seat, I knew there was absolutely no way I was making it off the train at that stop. I was right. As the entire group I was traveling with watched from the platform, the train pulled away from the station with me left on it. At that point, I was still pretty calm. I knew I could get off at the next stop, get on a train going in the correct direction, and still make it to the Eindhoven airport with enough time to check my bag and get on the flight. My calm was shattered when the passenger behind me informed me that the next stop was in 25 minutes, so I’d have to get off there, get on a train going back to Amsterdam, and then find the correct train going to Eindhoven, losing about an hour of total travel time. After that, there was nothing I could do to get myself to Eindhoven any faster. I asked the train conductors for directions this time and got myself back to Amsterdam and on the right train to Eindhoven. When I arrived, I flagged down a cab, shrieked that it was an emergency and hoped that the older driver was secretly a speed demon. I spent the entire cab ride near tears because I was certain I’d be stranded in Eindhoven, the Netherlands that night since the next flight to Budapest wasn’t until noon the next day. When we pulled up to the airport exactly 45 minutes before my flight’s take off time, I sprinted inside with my bag slamming around behind me (and got yelled at by quite a few Dutch people) and arrived at the check-in desk expecting to be turned away. The attendant checked me in, took my bag, and sent me to security. I made the flight. And spent the rest of the night trying to recover from an afternoon of intense stress.
At least I was greeted by this view of Buda Castle from outside Kendall’s apartment when we arrived in Budapest!
On the Buda side of the river with Pest in the background.
After that near-disaster, I really needed a few days of vacationing with zero complications. Budapest, Hungary gave me exactly that. We stayed at Andrea’s friend Kendall’s apartment, which was beautiful, spacious, and in the perfect location to access the city. Kendall took us all around the city and told us about Budapest’s history, something I knew nothing about going into the trip. On Wednesday we saw Buda Castle, the Holocaust Memorial along the Danube, Parliament, the Great Synagogue, and my favorite building in all of Europe so far: Matthias Church. We also met up with my friends Lauren and Amelia from DIS, so it was great to be traveling with them. We spent the afternoon taking advantage of Budapest’s absurdly cheap prices by shopping, going out to dinner, and buying $2 bottles of wine, then Kendall and her roommate took us out.
Matthias Church- straight out of a fairytale.
Maggie and I on the other side of the river from Parliament.
The Great Synagogue had really cool architecture.
We all slept in on Thursday, something we hadn’t really been able to take advantage of yet during our travels. We had traditional Hungarian food for brunch at the Great Market Hall, then made our way to the Budapest City Park to see Heroes Square. We spent the rest of the day at the second highlight of my travel break- the Szechenyi Baths. The bath complex is over 100 years old and sports three outdoor baths, or essentially giant hot tubs, lots of hidden indoor baths, a gym, and a spa. The second I stepped in the water, I never wanted to leave. It was odd to be swimming around in an outdoor hot tub in the middle of Budapest, Hungary in November (little did I know that I’d be swimming in water that was definitely NOT from a hot tub a week later). Lauren and I both got professional massages for $25- did I mention how inexpensive Budapest was?
Andrea, Amelia, Maggie, Lauren, and I on a statue in Heroes Square.
The outdoors baths at Szechenyi- look at all that wonderful steam.
We stayed at the baths until it got dark, then met some of our former travel buddies from Amsterdam for dinner at a Hungarian restaurant. This began my spree of eating WAY too much food that didn’t stop until I got back to Copenhagen over a week later. That night, we went to a ruin bar, or a bar with an interior that’s decorated with random stuff left over from Budapest’s communist period. We had drinks in an old convertible under some bicycles and a chandelier made from random household objects. It was probably the coolest bar I’ve been to.
Dan, Lauren, Maggie, Amelia and I sitting in our convertible at Szimpla.
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Budapest has become one of my favorite cities in Europe, so I was reluctant to leave on Friday morning. However, I was excited about our next destination- Vienna, Austria! I’m a quarter Austrian, so I was hoping to have a burst of ancestral recognition. We had very limited time in Vienna because we had to fly back to Copenhagen at 2pm on Saturday, so we spent all of Friday taking subways and running around the city trying to fit everything in. We visited St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Parliament, Café Central (where Freud used to hang out), Hofburg Palace, Central Cemetery, and the Opera House.
Maggie, Amelia and I outside of St. Stephn’s Cathedral.
The interior of St. Stephans.
It wasn’t at all worrisome that we almost got locked into the cemetery at night.
The Opera House- sadly we didn’t have time to go see one.
By the end of the day we were exhausted, and a huge dinner of Wiener schnitzel (or chicken schnitzel in my case) didn’t help. We did manage to rally enough to check out some Viennese nightlife.
When you’re in Vienna, or Wien, you have to have Wiener schnitzel!
When I woke up Saturday morning, I couldn’t believe my first week of traveling was almost over. I grabbed a breakfast of grapefruit juice and a plum from the awesome Naschmarkt across from our hostel, then Amelia, Maggie and I headed back into center city. We found our way to the Stadttempel, the only synagogue that survived World War II, and walked along the riverfront. It was a nice, relaxing way to end the week.
The Naschmarkt is like a souk or bazaar and has stands selling clothing, scarves, food, and souvenirs.
The Stadttempel synagogue in Vienna.
I was nervous about our flight back to Copenhagen because it included a very short layover in Riga, Latvia, but I made it back with no incident and got ready to start my second week of traveling. Check back next week to hear about my travel break part 2 in Ireland!