Today I ditched Frankfurt for the "Venice of the North". I'm not going to lie, I've been dying to go to Amsterdam ever since I arrived in Europe and right from leaving the train station I knew that I wouldn't be disappointed. I caught the tram to an area near downtown swarming with tourists. Just a block away was my youth hostel on a street lined with restaurants and clubs. The hostel had to be one of the worst on my trip but luckily the location made u...

A quick breakfast in the cafeteria again and then I was off to the train station. I walked through the cute little streets of Rothenburg one last time and bid the town a fond farewell before I was on my way to Frankfurt. The trip took only 2 hours or so and suddenly there were skyscrapers towering overhead. A quick trip on the S-Bahn brought me right to my hostel. I booked for a 6-bed dorm but when I went up to my room, it was actually a hotel room with a private...

I started the day off with the buffet in the cafeteria, which turned out to be one of the best breakfasts I've had on the trip so far. There was an organ concert at St. Jakob's Church at 10:40 am, so Rob and I headed up there around 10:00 and checked out the incredible 500-year-old hand-carved alterpiece before taking a seat. The concert lasted about 20 minutes and it was amazing to hear the music echoing through the halls of the church. From there, we headed to ...

The late night caused me to almost miss my train from Prague and just when I thought things were fine and dandy, I hear that DB (the German national railway company) workers are on strike. When we got to the border of Germany and the Czech Republic everyone had to get off at this little town and take a bus to a station in Germany to catch connecting trains. So I got to stand there for an hour waiting for the bus before I finally made it to my first stop. Luckily ...

Since I had seen pretty much everything in the city yesterday, I slept in and then spent most of the day figuring out hostels for the next couple weeks and trying to catch up on my blog. I met a lot of people staying at the hostel (from New Zealand, Australia, Denmark, Greenland and America) and joined the free BBQ outside on the patio for dinner. The hostel has a pub crawl that goes to some of the bars and clubs popular with the locals so I decided to join it si...