Here it is, The Last Post! This includes a summary of each place I visited, my final remarks about my trip, plus a handful of other things. I know it's been over a week since my last post, and over 2 weeks since I've returned to the US, but I wanted to give it some time to see what really stands out in my memory of this trip. Without any further ado, here you go!

Because I had learned German in high school for 3 years, I wanted to visit German speaking countries since I would be able to better understand the language. That includes Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. I also really wanted to visit the Netherlands because I've heard a lot of great things about its infrastructure, and Dutch is easy to understand having already known English and some German. At the end of my trip, I decided to visit Prague because I had multiple people recommend it to me, and I had one more travel day on my Eurail pass.

Berlin
Sep. 13​ - 16

All the streets are filled with cars, making for a loud and unpleasant place to be around. I find the architectural style very imposing and bland, caused by both a huge building scale and boring colors of buildings. There are some nice areas around, such as the park I found or that one pedestrianized street, and I had some of my favorite foods in Berlin. But that doesn't outweigh the negatives, I'm ruling out Berlin as a place for me to live in.

Nuremberg/Erlangen
​Sep. 21​ - 24

This was one of my favorite places on this trip. Nuremberg has a nice big city center that is completely pedestrianized, I really enjoyed it. It has lots of canals running through, plus it's a somewhat hilly area that I appreciated. And just north of the city is Erlangen, home to the main FAU campus that I really enjoyed exploring. I wish I had explored more of Erlangen, but it was enough for me to put these 2 cities near the top of my list.

Hamburg
​Sep. 27 - 29

Being a waterfront city, Hamburg reminded me a lot of Seattle where I grew up. Except I think the city itself was nicer than Seattle from what I remember, I haven't actually been into Seattle for several years now. Getting around was fairly easy, and there are a handful of pedestrianized areas, but there were still more car roads than I would have preferred. The one park I happened to explore was absolutely gorgeous, it was very well maintained and wonderful to explore. I would put Hamburg somewhere in the middle of my list.

The Netherlands
​Oct. 1​ - 6

I'm just lumping the whole country together, since it's a relatively small place and it's all blended together in my head anyways. This was definitely one of my favorite parts of this trip, Dutch cities are really well organized, and it's super easy to get around everywhere. Almost everywhere I went was pleasant to be in, and each city has its own unique aspects that keep it interesting. The Netherlands is near the top of my list.

Zurich
​Oct. 8 - 13

Although I was initially a bit put off by the touristy city center, Zurich really started growing on me as I explored around more areas. There are some gorgeous parks on the surrounding hills with fantastic views of the city and surrounding area. Those vantage points gave me a completely different perspective of the city, and how much more there is than just the city center to explore. And having views of the mountains makes it such a better experience for me. Although it's an expensive place to live, wages are also significantly higher to offset that, so that doesn't really turn me off the idea of living there. In fact, Zurich was arguably my favorite city of this entire trip.

Alps
Oct. 13​ - 16

Also another highlight of this trip, taking trains through most of the Alps was fantastic. Even though I was a bit early, the trees that had changed colors are still vivid in my memory, and the variety of all the mountains were terrific. There's loads of little villages scattered around, which I think is a bit too separated from the rest of the world for me to want to live there. But the Alps still make for a great trip, and make Zurich even more compelling.

Vienna
​Oct. 16 - 18

There's a pretty stark difference between the outskirts where I stayed, and the center of the city. The streets are built almost entirely for cars, to the point where many sidewalks are omitted at intersections. The center itself feels more like a wealthy museum with a very grand architectural style that I personally do not care for. The parks around were nice, but I really wasn't a fan of Vienna, so I'm ruling it out too.

Now that this trip has concluded, I'm sure some of you are wondering how much a trip like this costs. After getting home, I put all my bank transactions into a spreadsheet for a bit of analysis. I tend to be fairly frugal and try to find ways of saving money where I can, plus I stayed with multiple people on this trip who housed and fed me (thank you again!), which really helped reduce the amount I spent on this trip. Here's the total amount I spent on this trip, which includes all my flights, accommodations, food, travel expenses, etc.

$4540

Roughly $1500 of that was transatlantic flights, so excluding those expenses, I spent a total of around $3000 on the rest of this trip. I was there for a total of almost exactly 8 weeks, which works out to around $55 per day. If you think that's low, keep in mind that I got a lot of help from staying with people during many days.

I also separated each expense into 3 categories: travel, food, and housing. Excluding transatlantic flights, I spent a total of $1280 on travel, or about $23 per day. Food was a total of $500, or about $9 per day. And housing was a total of $1260, or about $23 per day.

If you ask me, I think that's pretty good for a 2 month trip! Especially if you consider that just hotel rooms are normally around $100 per night, or twice my daily expenses including travel and food too.

As I mentioned in some of my first posts from Germany, I had a lot of anxiety about ordering food in a different language. Counter intuitively, I actually found it more difficult since I knew some German, which made me unsure of whether I should try speaking in German or just ask to speak in English. I learned pretty quickly that I don't know nearly enough German for most orders, especially those that require specifying ingredients. I really just didn't want to do the wrong thing or look like a fool.

I have to admit, that anxiety never really went away, it always made me uncomfortable whenever I needed to get food. But I did become much more aware of it over time, and figured out how to push past it and just get some food, even if I did look like a fool doing it.

Also, I really dislike how much Germans insist on using physical currency rather than cards for most food places. I haven't had to deal with coins in many years, and I quickly learned to hate fiddling around with tiny coins and figuring out how to make exact change. Credit cards have been around for decades, and they make transactions so much easier, so having to use cash everywhere was definitely off-putting for me.

Regardless, I did manage to get some very delicious food in some places. Despite not liking Berlin, it was actually where I had some of my favorite foods, including currywurst and doners. Fries with mayo was also popular all over, which I of course had plenty of. I had a stroopwafel in the Netherlands which was fantastic, and fondue in Switzerland. I'm sure there's several other cuisines that I missed out on this trip, but I had enough to make me miss them already.

Public transit on this trip was so much better than what I've experienced in the US. Getting around without your own car is a totally viable thing to do in Europe, I rarely had issues getting from one place to another. I usually just got day passes for whatever city I was in, which makes it especially easy to go anywhere at any time on any vehicle. Even transiting outside of the main cities was easy, because public transit actually exists outside of the cities themselves. And there aren't stigmas about public transit just being for poor people like it is here, public transit is truly for everyone.

Also, travelling between cities by train is fantastic, I'm starting to hate flying now that I've seen how good trains can be. You're not cramped into the small box of a car, or the tiny seat of a plane, there's plenty of room to stretch your legs and move around if you like. Trains often have great big windows to watch the scenery go by, rather than the tiny windows of a plane 6 miles in the air. You don't have to get to the station 3 hours before departure, because there's no security lines to wait in, or long distances to your gate. I have showed up to the station with less than 10 minutes before departure without feeling stressed, because I know how quickly I can get to the platform. It's such a great way of travelling!

Speaking of trains, the Eurail pass has been fantastic. The amount of flexibility it gives is remarkable, I've had a few instances where I missed a train for one reason or another, but I could easily just hop on a different train without having to rebook tickets or anything. There's lots of different passes you can get, the one I chose worked out to about $30 per travel day, which saved me a lot of money in Switzerland! And the app that comes with Eurail is amazingly good at finding routes between places, since it looks at routes offered by every rail company, saving you a lot of planning time. That was definitely one of the best things I bought on this trip.

Overall, I'm really glad I decided to go on this trip! I've had the idea of moving to Europe for a while now, but it's been an intimidating idea. Being able to visit so many places, and forcing myself to live there for a couple months made me much more comfortable with the idea of moving to Europe.

However, after thinking about it a lot, I think I would only do it if the right opportunity presents itself, which would need to include a way of easily making friends and getting help where I need it. I've talked to multiple people who've moved to different countries without that kind of opportunity, and they've found it to be very difficult.

My ideal opportunity would be a PhD at a European school. That would mean I'm surrounded by people who all have common interests and backgrounds, so making friends would be relatively easy. And from what I've heard, most schools provide a lot of support for international students, such as housing options and language classes. And PhD students tend to get paid for living expenses, which would help even more. That's not to say a PhD is the only opportunity I'd take advantage of, but it would definitely be preferred.

Time will tell what ends up happening. I would like to start a PhD next year, but it's getting to the end of the normal application cycle for next year, so my options may become a bit limited. If I can't start next year, the following year is also an option, or I may find a different opportunity. Nothing is certain right now, so we'll just have to see how it goes.

And with that, this blog has concluded! It's been a fun trip, and documenting it all here has been a great way for me to share my thoughts and more easily remember all that happened. I hope you all enjoyed reading it, I appreciate all the comments everyone added! Take care, everyone!

Ok yeah, I know, if England is the "last country", then Prague couldn't have been the "last city" during the "last days". But I make my titles what I want, so too bad if you're a stickler for blog title posts!

It's been a bit since my previous post, sorry for the long delay! I really didn't have a whole lot to talk about other than my travels, since I was visiting family and I prefer to keep personal life off the internet if possible. I know it's mostly family reading this now, but I intend to keep use this website for more than just blogging, meaning anyone could come here and read this. I was also getting a bit exhausted by the end of this trip and wasn't really motivated to write another blog post.

But I'm finally back in the states now! This post will be the second to last post, in which I cover everything I've done since leaving Prague (I visited family in England for a week). The next post will be the final post, where I'm going to recap the whole trip, and I'll compare all the places I've visited. Stay tuned for that!

Also, this post has a lot more text than pictures, sorry if you prefer it the other way round! But I wasn't really visiting any new places, so there wasn't much new to photograph. But anyways, here's all that's happened in the last week of my trip!

On Thursday of last week, I had a flight from Prague to England to visit family once more before heading back home. I checked out of my hostel for the last time on this trip, and made my way to the airport. This consisted of 2 legs, first an underground train, then a bus. And the station near my hostel was very deep underground, must have been around 100 meters! There were no stairs, only escalators that felt like you were on them for an eternity.

The platform had some interesting decoration on the wall, there are loads of dimpled panels sort of like a golf ball. Those dimples are actually great at reducing drag, but these were only at the platform where the trains are stopped, not through the entire tunnel where they're actually moving. So I think these are just more decorative than functional, but they still look cool!

Then I hopped onto the bus, got to the airport, and got some food for lunch. In most airports I've been through, there's a "secure side" of the airport that requires you to have both your travel documents and bags checked at a central checkpoint. However the Prague airport does it a bit differently, only your travel documents are checked before the "secure side." Your bags are instead checked at the gate. So each gate has its own x-rays and metal detectors, which I think is a silly way to do it.

For one thing, it's wasteful. Those scanners aren't being used for the majority of the time, since they only can be used when people are boarding at that gate. A central location can have all of its scanners in use all the time, meaning fewer are needed.

Second, it's slower than a central security checkpoint. If everyone is getting funneled through this single small checkpoint, one or two slow people can hold up the entire line of people behind them. Since central checkpoints tend to have lots of scanners in parallel, a couple slow people can't hold up everyone since the next scanner over is moving.

Another annoying thing is that the gate information is withheld excessively. The gates at the Prague airport are separated into terminals A-D, with a handful of gates in each terminal. At the main entrance to the airport, I found a sign with departing flight info, but it didn't show which terminal to go to! So I just had to pick a random checkpoint to go through and hope I ended up close to the right terminal.

Only after that did the signs saying which terminal the flights were at, but they didn't show which gate number! So I made my way to the terminal and found another sign with flight info, which said the gate number wouldn't be posted until an hour before the flight. Seriously? Why is the gate info so secretive! Gates are usually chosen well in advance, it's not like they don't know what gate each flight will use.

I finally got onto the plane and settled in. I ended up having a whole row to myself, which was nice. And it was crazy windy at that time, even just sitting at the gate, the plane was bouncing around! Bits of paper were flying around outside, the ground crew were struggling to stand straight, and foliage was getting blown sideways. I spotted a windsock that was completely horizontal, I've never seen that before.

Since we took off into the wind, we got into the air pretty quickly! I nabbed a few photos during the flight, the first 2 are below and above the clouds in Prague. The last one is over  England with a fantastic reflection of the sun.

I landed at Gatwick and got through the border control pretty quickly. Definitely helps that I've got a British passport! I was visiting my grandma first, and she was definitely happy to see me again. I can tell it's difficult for her to be living on her own now, so I was glad I could lift her spirits by visiting.

After staying with her for a few days, I can tell we have very different cooking styles. I'm not a huge fan of cooking, so I usually make a lot of food in one batch so I've got leftovers for a couple days. But my grandma prefers cooking for every meal and not having any leftovers, so we did a lot of cooking while I was there! We also made a big batch of sausage rolls, which we've not done together since I was much younger. It was definitely good to spend time with her.

While I was there, I also took a number of COVID tests. I was required to take one 2 days after arriving in the UK, which was Saturday. The US also requires a test within 3 days of departure, meaning at least Sunday. Since those don't overlap, I had to take 2 separate tests to meet those travel requirements. On top of that, I also had a bit of a sore throat on Friday (which turned into a mild cold), so I took yet another test right away on Friday. All came back negative, so I can be pretty certain I didn't have COVID while I was in England!

However, the same can't be said for many other UK citizens. The UK is going through a large spike in cases right now, and it really does not seem to be getting managed well. From what I heard, masks are not required on public transit, only "strongly recommended." And guess what, many people on the public transit weren't wearing masks! Only about a quarter of people actually had them on. Frankly, that's ridiculous. A message to people in the UK: wear your mask in public places!

After spending a few days with my grandma, I took a train to visit my cousins in Purley again. I took the same route as last time, but had way more trouble with the trains this time. I got to Victoria Station just fine, after which I had one more train to the final station. I hopped on the train and waited for it to depart. About 1 minute after the scheduled departure time, the driver made an announcement that the train had been cancelled. What!? How can you just cancel a train right as it's about to leave?

Everyone on the train instantly hopped off and quickly made their way to a train on the adjacent platform. I didn't actually know where it was heading, but figured it must be the same route since everyone was getting onto it. I didn't have time to figure out its destination, because the doors had shut just a few seconds after I got on.

As it left the station, I read the display showing its route, and the station I needed wasn't listed. Great, now I'm on the wrong train! It was at least heading in the same general direction, so it's not like it took me away from where I was going. I got off at the next station and looked for a different train that went to the right place. I found one on my phone, and went to the platform to verify the route info. Same destination and stops, same platform, same time. Great! A train arrived at that platform 1 minute before the scheduled departure time, so I hopped on.

Now, you'd think that if my phone agreed with the information at the station, and a train arrived at the correct time at the correct platform, it would be the correct train, right? Well apparently not! This train didn't actually go to the station I needed either! What the heck?? How could this possibly be the wrong train??? I hopped off at the next station and finally got on a train going to the right place. How was this so difficult!?

In addition to that trouble on my way to Purley, I had troubles on my way out as well! My flight on Wednesday was scheduled to depart at 2:45pm, so I found a public transit route that left around 10:30, and got me to the airport around noon. I had 2 transfers, each around 10 minutes, which is plenty of time if everything runs on schedule. Guess what, my first train wasn't running on schedule.

It arrived at the Purley station 7 minutes late. My transfer at the next station was 12 minutes, meaning I had 5 minutes to get to the right platform. Shouldn't be a huge problem, I thought, train stations are easy to navigate now that I've done it in 4 languages over 2 months. But as this train went on its route, I could tell it was moving rather slowly. That's probably because it was delayed and now had to wait for other trains at the following stations, so there would have been no point to going any faster.

But it would have been nice if that were communicated! Not knowing that made me even more worried. Now I was thinking I'd have to run to catch the next train, and I was getting a bit stressed. I probably would have been less stressed if I knew it was going to be too late, since I could then just find a different route. But not knowing made it more stressful, since I had a flight to catch.

At one point, the train just stopped on a bridge for 5 minutes. No announcements or anything, just sat around with me getting more and more anxious about whether I'd make my flight. When we did finally arrive at the station, it was about 20 minutes after the scheduled arrival time, so obviously I missed my transfer.

That wasn't a huge problem, I had scheduled extra time just in case anything went wrong. I found another train that departed about 15 minutes later, which thankfully went to the right place that day! I got off at the station for my last transfer to a city bus, which went direct to the airport. I got to the bus stop, the bus came after a couple minutes, and it drove right past me.

You've got to be joking! I'm already delayed, and now the bus won't pick me up? This is ridiculous! It turns out that stop wasn't in service for whatever reason, so I ended up just walking all the way to the next stop. Thankfully that one was being used, and I finally made it to the airport over 30 minutes later than planned. That left 2 hours before my flight, which was making me a little nervous since I had to go through check-in.

I had tried checking in online the day before, but their system was "unable to verify my health documents" meaning I had wait in line. And oh boy did this line move slowly, it took about 30 minutes to get through. It looked like more of a bag drop than a check in counter, so I was getting really paranoid over the idea that I would have to check in elsewhere after waiting in this line, and possibly miss my flight. I seriously did not want that to happen, because all the ticket prices got jacked up 4-5 times what I paid since the US is opening its borders soon.

Fortunately everything went smoothly after that. I was able to get checked in and get a boarding pass, and even got through security super quickly. I still had an hour and a half before the flight left, which was plenty of time to get a quick lunch, although there were nowhere near enough food places in the terminal. Most of the shops were selling stuff like jewelry or clothes. Seriously, who buys those things at an airport? I go to airports because I'm flying somewhere, not for fashion apparel!

Once I'd finished eating, I wanted to head to the gate. And you know how the Prague airport didn't share the gate info until an hour before the departure time? Apparently Heathrow likes to do the same. Seriously, what's up with this? And I know for certain that it's not because they hadn't yet decided which gate the plane would be at, because the gate was was printed on my boarding pass!

Dear airports: Please have the gate info for all flights available at all locations at all times. Thank you.

Anyways, I finally got onto my plane and got back to the US with no more transit issues. I got another row to myself, which was definitely nice for such a long flight. I bought the overpriced internet access since it wasn't an overnight flight. That definitely helped me keep my sanity being stuck in a seat for almost 10 hours. I took a few more photos on this flight, and got some cool views.

Well I'm definitely glad I visited Prague, it's quite a nice city! Definitely a nice place to spend my last few days in mainland Europe. I'll admit, I didn't spend a whole lot of time out and about. I've gotten a bit exhausted of travelling, so I spent a decent amount of time just relaxing in my hostel. It's been a fairly nice place to stay, though it does have it's weird quirks. For example, you have to get buzzed in at the front door every time you want to enter, and the shower head in my bathroom isn't held up high, you have to hold it yourself. But it's otherwise been good, free breakfast is always a bonus!

Anyways, as I said, I went and explored the city center, which is a really nice area. It's very heavily pedestrianized, very few streets have cars driving on them. Those that do are very low density and move slow, so it feels very safe. There's also lots of streets with tram lines running through, there seem to be a lot of trams from what I've encountered. I also came across several small alleys that reminded me of Diagon Alley!

I came across a bridge going over the main river, which was exclusively for pedestrians. It was also surprisingly warm, I was expecting a cold breeze coming from the water, but apparently not! There were a handful of artists on the bridge drawing caricatures of people. And the views from the bridge were very nice, the leaves are definitely starting to turn colors more now!

While I was crossing the bridge, I noticed a large hill with lots of trees on it. I quickly looked at a map, and it's a large park area, so I headed straight for it. And I'm certainly glad I did, this park is gorgeous! Very well kept, and there are a handful of flower gardens at the top. It was a really nice area to walk through, although it was quite steep on the side!

There's an observatory at the top, and I noticed this sundial right outside. But this doesn't look like any sundial I've seen before, it seems way more advanced. There's a sign next to it with information in Czech, but a lot of it has faded. I tried using Google Translate on a picture of it, which was very difficult to read, but it called out something about time zones. There are 2 different sundials, so I wonder if they're calibrated for local time and GMT (it was cloudy, I couldn't verify). There's also a figure 8 thing on the left, which I suspect is some kind of calculator or something, I'm really not sure. Anyone have any ideas?

One other thing I really wanted to visit was the Prusa Lab. Prusa is a company that makes really good 3D printers, and they're based in Prague, so I wanted to visit while I'm here. And holy moly is their building ugly! But that's okay, I've seen pictures of the inside, which is a lot nicer. I don't think their building is open to visitors, so I didn't try to go in, but that certainly would have been cool!

And that's all I've done in Prague. I've definitely enjoyed exploring around here, it's a very nice city to be in. I did feel a bit more uncomfortable than normal since I don't know any Czech, but everyone I've talked to knew at least a bit of English, so it hasn't been a problem. Definitely glad I came here!

And that's the last of mainland Europe for this trip! I'm flying back to England tomorrow, so I'll get to see the airport here too before I leave. Since England isn't part of the Schengen area, there's extra rules in place for travelers. Everyone needs to fill out a form with information about where you've been and where you're staying, plus everyone has to take a test on day 2. There are other rules too, but I think those are all that I need to worry about (I've done the form and scheduled my test already). These rules are a bit different from when I first came in September, so hopefully I'm following them right!

I will follow up with at least one more post when I'm in England. Don't know if I'll have anything new to say there, so there might not be much else after that. I'll try to make it clear which post is the last one, so keep an eye out!

Welcome to the Czech Republic, a place I know very little about! The main reason I came here is because it was recommended to me by a few people, and I had one more day on my Eurail pass, so I decided I should visit while I'm here. It was also one of the few places near Vienna that I could find a cheap flight to England, so that was another motivator.

I don't even know an ounce of the language, but that hasn't been a problem so far, everyone I've interacted with spoke English well. From what I've heard, English isn't as commonly learned as other countries I've visited, but I've also overheard several people having conversations in English here. So I'm hoping I can get through easily enough for the next couple days!

The train ride was fairly decent. I'm not certain, but it seemed to me like I may have been sitting in the wrong car or something. I did double check, and it was a second class car, but it felt a lot more like first class. All the seats were made of a black leather-like material and were fairly wide, only 3 seats per row. I also had to shift around at a couple stations since I was sitting in seats people had reserved, even though there was no indication of that. Was I meant to reserve a seat? I was never told to, and no one ever checked my ticket to correct me.

Regardless, I made it without getting into any trouble, so I'm not gonna worry about it. The scenery passing by was nice, still close enough to the Alps to get some hilly terrain. And the trees do seem to be turning more yellow and orange now, you can see that in a couple of the photos.

The hostel I'm staying at is just east of the city center. It's not an a&o since that was a few km from the center, and I wanted to be closer than that. The interior decoration is definitely quite old, the pictures on the listing even showed CRT TVs in the rooms (but those appear to have been updated). I did notice a faint smell of smoke when I first came in, but it's not too strong.

I also noticed the prices for hostels around here are crazy cheap. Normally dorms have been around $20 per night, but I saw several here for less than $10. One was even $6 per night! The single rooms weren't as dramatically cheaper, best I could find was around $30-40 per night, but still less than the $50 or so per night I've usually found elsewhere.

I didn't have a lot of time to explore today, so I left the city center for another day and instead explored the area just north of me. There were a couple small parks along the way, each roughly a couple blocks in size. Not really big enough to get away from buildings and streets, but still nice regardless. I also passed by the Zizkov TV Tower, which apparently has large metal babies climbing up it.

I found another much larger park just west of that, which has a few beer gardens in it. I was exploring around it just before sunset, which made for some nice lighting. It's on a hill and is large enough to get away from all the city life, so I quite enjoyed it.

It also seems that everyone around here owns a dog, there were so many around! I came up to one area and heard lots of barking, I counted 15 dogs all in one spot! And it wasn't a dedicated dog area or anything, they all just happened to be there. And there weren't even 15 people, there were more dogs than humans!

I've walked through several streets around this area, and they seem to be pretty light on car traffic, which is definitely a bonus for me. There is a lot of street parking, but most of the traffic seems to be well routed through a few larger main roads. As a pedestrian, those main roads are easy to get away from, so that's definitely been appreciated.

Another thing I noticed were piles of trash around these dumpsters. I believe these have a large storage container below the ground, so they're bigger than what you see on top. But they still appear to be too small, I passed multiple spots like this where people have had to pile up trash around the containers. Seems to me like either the garbage trucks don't come frequently enough, or there aren't enough of these dumpsters around. But hey, at least it's sorted!

And that's all I've got from Prague so far. I can't yet say whether I like it, but I definitely don't hate it at all. The infrastructure seems well designed, albeit maybe a bit underfunded. It definitely seems to be a cheaper place to live, and it shows in some places. But it's been a decent experience overall so far, I'm looking forward to what I find next!

I've got mixed feelings about Vienna. It's quite varied depending on where you go, so it's been hard for me to make a complete assessment. Some things are nice, some things aren't, and to be honest, I've overall not really been a fan of Vienna since I've gotten here.

Let's start with where I'm staying, which is another a&o hostel about 2km from the city center. I again got another private room, which was especially after the Innsbruck hostel I stayed at. My room is very similar to all the other a&o rooms which are reasonably nice, no complaints there. However the location is pretty crap. It's right on a major road running through the city, and holy moly is there a lot of noise that comes from it. A hundred cars moving at speed makes a lot of sound, plus people honking at each other and the occasional sirens get quite annoying quite quickly.

And these roads are really not pedestrian friendly. The main road does have crosswalks with traffic signals, those are fine. However the adjacent side streets are much worse, there are very few intersections that even acknowledge pedestrians. Here's just one of many examples, there are no labelled crosswalks, and cars just cruise right on through. Your best option as a pedestrian is to wait for a clearing, but because these are right next to a major road, big enough gaps are uncommon. I've felt pretty uncomfortable crossing these sometimes, cars have hardly ever slowed down when I was crossing. These intersections are terrible in my opinion.

Obviously Vienna is not the only place that's gone overboard with paving everywhere, I just realized it today. Since these pedestrian streets are usually rather wide, there's plenty of space for some natural terrain, which would just make it so much nicer.

I kept making my way to the city center, which took me through a park area. I must admit, Vienna does make very nice parks, they felt very lively with all the people around, and there was clearly effort put into making these nice. Each area had it's own unique feel, so if you get bored of one, go to the next!

I got to the city center, which is thankfully much more pedestrianized. However I didn't really care for it all that much, it feels like more of a tourist area than a place to live. There's lots of historic buildings around, and loads of people around. There's also a large number of horse carriage tours going through, it definitely just felt like a place for tourists, so I didn't enjoy it all that much.

And that's about all I've got from Vienna. I was feeling rather tired from all the travelling and wasn't really enjoying myself too much, so I decided to just head back to my hostel. So as I've said, I've got mixed feelings about Vienna. There are good and bad areas, and I may have just gotten unlucky with where I'm staying, but nothing has struck me as being super nice except for the few parks I went through.

While we're here, I can give an update on my travel plans. I've only got one more travel day on my Eurail pass, so we're close to the end! I'm heading to Prague tomorrow, and will be there until Thursday. Then I'll be flying to England for another week to visit family once more before I head back home on the 27th (my flight only cost about $400, half the price of when I came here!), at which point this trip will have concluded. We're almost there, just the final stretch now!

Well hello again! My apologies for keeping you all in the dark for the last few days, but my trip through the Alps was pretty packed and I just didn't have the time to give updates. I was only staying in each place for one night and travelling for most of each day, so I got to see a lot very quickly! I'm now in Vienna for a couple days, so I've got a chance to catch up. And this is another long one with lots of pictures! A friendly reminder that for the smaller photos, you can click on them to see a bigger version to see more detail.

​Last we left off was on Tuesday, where I was staying one more night near Zurich. I finished booking accommodations and travel, which included the following plan:

• Wednesday - Travel to Zermatt, southwest side of Switzerland
• Thursday - Take the Glacier Express to St. Moritz, southeast side of Switzerland
• Friday - Travel to Innsbruck, west side of Austria
• Saturday - Travel to Vienna, east side of Austria

And surprisingly, everything went according to plan! I took a heck of a lot of photos along the way, and spent a good amount of time today picking out the best ones to put here. For example, this awesome view of the Matterhorn right after I arrived in Zermatt.

Most of the rest of the photos have much more green trees, so if you prefer the look of orange and red trees, just pretend they are!

Most of the trains I took through the Alps were just regional trains, but they had especially large windows so you could get the best views. One problem I did encounter while taking photos was glare and reflections. Some trains had lights on the ceiling (even though it was plenty bright without them!) whose reflections unfortunately popped up in some of the photos I took. My phone case is bright blue on the back, which is also very apparent in many photos unfortunately. So you'll just have to look through the reflections since there wasn't much I could do about them. Or you can look very close to try and see me in the reflections!

The best train was on Thursday, when I took the Glacier Express through most of the Swiss Alps. This is a fairly famous train route aimed at tourists, and is thus fairly expensive. But the Eurail pass actually gets you a free ticket for the whole journey! That saved me about $150, so definitely worth it!
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However you do still have to pay for a seat reservation plus a meal if you want it, which each add another $50 or so. There are several meal options, but I just decided to splurge and get the 4-course meal to not feel like I was missing anything. Although I unfortunately didn't find the food to be spectacular, but it was still decent.

One of the most famous bits of this trip is the Landwasser Viaduct, a tall bridge going over a river and straight into a tunnel. This is on the east side of that route, it's fun to see your train just disappear into a hole in the wall.

As I said, the train is called the Glacier Express, which I think is a bit more relevant in the winter since there weren't many glaciers to see on my journey. I did spot one right outside Zermatt at the top of some mountains. This isn't the best photo of the glacier itself, but the rest of the area looks pretty cool.

These next sections are collections of photos with features in common, rather than being ordered chronologically. That felt like a bit of an easier way to group them together, since each area of the Alps had several features in common. And this allows me to give a bit more context to them than if I had just thrown them all into a single gallery of photos.

This first set is of several rivers we passed by or over. Obviously there's a lot, since water is what formed the shape of the mountains.

Some of these rivers have carved very deep gorges over many many years of erosion.

And what do you get when a river flows down a steep mountain? Waterfalls!

And if the rivers flow into an open area, you get lakes!

And if the water is in the air, you get clouds! I actually got really lucky with the weather on this leg of the trip, Wednesday and Thursday were super sunny. It did get a bit cloudy on Friday and Saturday, but it made for some really cool photos too, especially with the sun behind a thin layer.

There's lots of small villages and towns the we passed by on the trains, these people live in some very cool places. Though I can't help but think they're a bit more challenging to live in, due to being far from major cities and often having steep hills to overcome.

The most challenging of which are probably these lone buildings completely isolated from everywhere else.

Though mobility really depends on your mode of transport. Why not fly and skip the hills? I spotted multiple people paragliding, and even a few helicopters.

One of my favorite areas was this rocky river, where huge cliff faces were exposed by this river with a gravel bed. Looked like a super cool area!

One of my trains also passed right through Lichtenstein! I think I was only in the country for a total of about 10 minutes, ha! We passed through the north side, which didn't have a great view of the main city, just a farming area. However I did manage to get a photo over the river that separates Lichtenstein and Switzerland.

Ok, I've run out of ways to group these photos, so here's the rest that I wanted to post. Yes, I know it's a lot of photos, but this is after I cut back on many of them, there's a lot you haven't seen here!

I've also got a few notes on each of the places I stayed at, the first being Zermatt in the southwest of Switzerland. This is right next to the Matterhorn where I got the first photo in this post. Obviously it's a big tourist destination, and therefore is quite expensive, most of the places I looked at for accommodations were around 4x more expensive than what I've usually found in Germany.

I found a hostel near the edge of town and stayed in one of the dorms since that was the cheapest option. And it included free breakfast! The dorm itself wasn't the nicest, all the beds were mushed together so you had neighbors on both sides. Fortunately it was only half full, so I didn't have anyone trying to cuddle in the middle of the night.

I did quite liked the town itself, it's a very small area that is very pleasant to walk through. I didn't actually spot any cars around at all, the only vehicles were these little electric taxis that could hold only a few people. Others had been modified for moving stuff instead of people. And because they're all electric, they're super quiet! This was definitely a nice area to stay for a night, even if it is super expensive.

St. Moritz was also quite expensive to find accommodations since it's another tourist area, but it's definitely not as nice as Zermatt. It's a lot more spread out, so cars are fairly common there. There are at least bus routes to take you places, though I found them a bit challenging to use.

For example, when I first arrived I needed to take the number 9 bus to get to my hostel, so I hopped on the next one that came by the station. It was actually going the wrong way, but it's near the end of the line, so I figured it'd just turn around and go the direction I needed. But nope! It suddenly changed to become a number 6 bus and ran a completely different route! It did happen to go to a stop near my hostel, but gave me a good deal of confusion.

​This hostel was at least a bit nicer than the previous one, I was in a 4 bed dorm with bunk beds, along with 1 other person. They may only be filling the dorms half way for COVID reasons. Apparently our neighbors were making a lot of noise just after dinner, and they apologized by giving us each a cookie. But I didn't hear it at all since I had my noise cancelling headphones on, so I got a free cookie!

When I got to Innsbruck, I actually explored around a bit more since I arrived a bit earlier, and it was already on my list of places to explore. I definitely didn't explore enough, but I wasn't really a huge fan. My hostel was in the outskirts of town, which is a very car heavy area with a couple major roads running right outside. The only restaurant in walking distance was a Burger King that was clearly not designed for people to get to by walking. The sidewalk doesn't even really even connect to the building, you have to walk across the drive through lane. And the closest intersection didn't have a crosswalk on the side I needed, so I instead had to go around the entire intersection and cross it 3 times. Not good for walking.

To be fair, the center is much better designed for getting around by foot. There's a few blocks with pedestrianized streets, so those are pleasant to be in. The roads that do go through the center had very few cars on them, they seemed mostly intended for public transit, so bonus points for that!

However I have to immediately take those bonus points away, because the public transit was so unexpectedly difficult! My main problem was the number 2 tram line, which runs from the center of the city out to the hostel I stayed at. Except for when it doesn't! There are apparently different destinations for the number 2 tram line, which go in completely different directions from the city center. And I didn't realize that until after the second time I got on the wrong tram, and went even further away from where I wanted to go!

Why the heck do those trams get the same number if they take completely different routes!? Number them differently, please! I found a chart listing transit times for a particular stop, and apparently the tram going in the wrong direction was the more frequent one. The one I needed only came every 15 minutes, so I spent a lot more time waiting around than I wanted to. Definitely not the best public transit experience I've had on this trip.

Similarly, the hostel I stayed at was also not great. At check in, they have guests fill out an online form, which was way longer than it needed to be. It kept asking survey questions like "how did you hear about us?" and "what kind of activities do you enjoy?" Apparently this is so they can recommend things to do, but I didn't get any recommendations from anyone. I also really needed to pee and didn't think I would get held up by a stupid survey at check in, so that got me extra frustrated.

Next, they don't even accept credit cards, you have to pay in cash. Even though I had already payed a reservation fee online. If you can accept online payments, why not cards, eh? I only barely had enough cash on me to pay it. The worst part was that they take your passport until you check out. I really wasn't comfortable with that, but I was too frustrated at that point to argue, and I was really needing to pee and just wanted this check in to be over with. Supposedly they hold your passport to prevent people from stealing room keys. I can understand wanting to prevent key theft, but taking people's passports away is far from the best way to do that. A deposit would make way more sense and be way less concerning for people who need their passports to travel anywhere.

After spending probably 15 minutes just getting checked in, I finally got to my room, which was another dorm to save on cost. Innsbruck was also pretty expensive for accommodations, and this was the cheapest option. And it definitely showed, the bathrooms felt super old, the doorknobs were wiggly, it didn't feel very nice in a lot of areas. The bathroom area was separated into 4 "rooms" with the rightmost one having a shower and sink, and the middle two having toilets. These all had doors with locks, so far so good. The leftmost one had 4 sinks, presumably for everyone to brush teeth or whatever, as well as a shower with a partially frosted glass wall. And the door to this room did not have a lock. So if someone decided to have a shower in there when you wanted to brush your teeth, you got to look them straight in the face while you did so. Not cool at all, such a lack of privacy that I'm not okay with. Fortunately no one used that shower while I was there.

On the bright side, I did find a nice park area near the center of town to explore. It actually had a lot of figures with lights inside them, such as deer or a knight in armor. It was a cute area, very nicely kept.

And now I'm in Vienna! I'll save my comments on it for the next post, this one is plenty long enough already. It's also pretty late, so I'm gonna get some sleep. I'm staying one more night here, so I'll do some exploring tomorrow. Take care!

​I think Zurich is growing on me. I was a bit hesitant about it after my first visit to the city, but I'm liking it more now that I've been able to explore around on my own. I got to explore some really nice areas yesterday, which gave me a new perspective on the city that I didn't have before. I also got to explore around some university facilities, which definitely peaked my interest.

As I mentioned in my last post, I visited a research lab yesterday that's part of ETH. The professor I'm currently working with got me in contact with this group, since their work is somewhat related to my project. They do some funky things with waves moving through objects, and use actuators to cancel boundary reflections, or even simulate reflections as though the object were larger than it is. My project is more focused on the measurement of these types of waves, but it's still cool nevertheless!

​​​They allowed me to take pictures, and they've got some really cool hardware! There's a granite block with thousands of reflector dots on it, a circular 2D experiment, and a pool with over a hundred sensors and actuators (which has its own server room full of FPGAs for controlling it all). I think my favorite is the 4m tall robot arm (depending on how it's positioned), which is used to measure the granite block.

This group, along with several other ETH research groups, work in a hangar of an old military airport just east of Zurich. Apparently this area is being turned into an innovation park, and these groups managed to get access early on. We briefly went through to look at all their projects, and there are some really cool ones! An electric plane, an autonomous race car, a hyperloop team, etc. There's also a full machine shop here, it looks like an awesome place to work!

​After meeting with the group and being showed around, I decided to visit the ETH campus. There's actually 2 main campuses, one in the middle of Zurich and the other on the north side of town. The one in the center of Zurich seems to mostly consist of one big old building, which doesn't really appeal to me. The north one is in the Hoenggerberg district, which includes a small mountain (large hill?) on which the ETH campus has been built. There's been very little non-ETH development in this area other than a handful of farms, so the campus is fairly isolated.

And because it's built on top of this hill, it gets some fantastic views of the city and surrounding area. You have to go a bit outside the campus for the best views, I found the forest on the east side to be the best location.

I couldn't stop taking photos, it was just such a great view! Here's a collection of some of the best ones. Some of these are wide panoramas, which the previews don't show, so I recommend you expand them to see the full image.

And of course, I also explored the campus pretty thoroughly. I didn't find the buildings to be super interesting, but they're a lot better than the boring old light gray found in so many other places. There's also lots of greenery around the campus, so it doesn't feel overly covered in asphalt. The places that are covered feel very pedestrian friendly, getting around is really easy by foot. There's also lots of busses that stop at the center of campus, so it's really easy to get in and out of campus using that.

There were a decent number of students around, though it doesn't seem like classes have started yet. Despite the fact that people were on campus, I really didn't see any cars driving around, which is awesome! The main highway on the west side of the campus leads straight into a parking garage, meaning people don't have to cruise through campus while searching for a spot. Excellent!

I also explored around the forested area on the east side of the campus, which was quite nice to walk through. There are a number of logging roads running through, which make for nice pathways. It also has a handful of campsites spread around, there were a few groups with bonfires going. I really enjoyed walking through here!

And that's all I did around the ETH campus, it's quite a nice area! I really like that it's built on top of the hill, being able to see everything all around was just fantastic, it made me realize how much I appreciate being able to see mountains. It also gave me a new insight on the city, being able to see how far out it spread. I realized that the center is only a tiny portion of what exists, and that I really should have explored other areas before making a judgement on it as a whole.

For example, when I first explored around the city center, I noticed there was a handful of car roads running through it. I had assumed the center would be the most pedestrianized area of the city, and further out areas would have a lot more cars. However I don't think that's the case, from my vantage point above, most of the roads I could see actually seemed quite devoid of cars. If anything, cars seemed more prevalent around the center than anywhere else.

I explored a bit more of the city outside of the center, and it seems that car traffic really is limited to just a few main roads running through the city. The side roads have very few cars running through them, the public transit vehicles seem to be much more dominant. There's a lot of streets like this with trams lines running through, but practically no cars around. It's safe enough that crosswalks aren't even needed, people can just quickly check whether a tram is coming, then cross wherever. I like this, makes getting around even easier!

After having explored some more around the city, it definitely seems like cars are much less common around Zurich than I'd thought. The public transit is very thorough and frequent, I found it really easy to take it from almost anywhere to almost anywhere else. And it's actually not super expensive, a day pass for Zurich is 8.80 Francs, very comparable to other places I've visited on this trip.

I was exploring around on Google Maps and found a funicular railway (I didn't even know what it was called!) that went up the Zurichberg, another small mountain (large hill? really doesn't seem big enough to be a mountain...) on the east side of Zurich. I've never been on one before, and I think they're pretty cool!

It's like if a tram and an elevator had a child on a hill side. There's a rail going straight up the hill, with 2 cars pulled up the rails by a cable. The cable is actually attached to both cars to balance the load, so one goes down while the other goes up. It's a single track all the way, so there's a split in the middle for the cars to get around each other. There's multiple stations along the way, meaning they have to be spaced apart fairly accurately since both cars are connected. And inside is a panel with buttons to request your desired stops, just like an elevator. Neat!

Once I got to the top, I discovered it was another forested area with logging trails running through, so it made for a good time hiking through.

And of course, since it's on top of a hill, there were some more fantastic views to see.

I think this picture is my favorite.

I would have loved to stay through the sunset, but I had to get back before dinner, which ended up being almost a 2 hour commute from the top of the hill (trams don't really go up there). I caught a couple glimpses of the sunset from the train, which had a really rich red glow to it, but I wasn't able to get a photo of it. Oh well.

​So Zurich has definitely grown on me now that I've explored around some more. I really appreciate the hills and mountains all around, the forested park areas, the public transit, etc. It is known for being an expensive place to live, but it seems to me that it really depends on your lifestyle. For example, restaurants are rather expensive, but groceries seem to have fairly normal prices for most things (I skimmed through a couple grocery websites). I also looked at apartments around here, and they're fairly comparable to where I went to college. I definitely wouldn't call it cheap, but I think you could live here without needing a fortune.

Today has been pretty laid back, I sort of wanted a day to relax and catch up on things like this blog post. This is also my last day near Zurich before I head to the Alps! I've been waiting to book travel and accommodations in case anything came up, so I need to get on top of that. More to come later, take care!

Welcome to Switzerland! I've been busy for the past few days and haven't had a chance to write a post until now. I still have to keep this one a bit shorter, because I need to get up early tomorrow for a lab tour. Here's a recap of my activities from the last few days.

My train ride into Switzerland went smoothly, didn't have any delays or cancelled trains like I had when going into and out of the Netherlands. My first train went direct from Stuttgart to Zurich, then I had another train to the people I'm staying with near Lake Constance. And I finally got to see some mountains for the first time on this trip! The train route was fairly windy so it wasn't super fast, which was actually a benefit since it gave me a better chance to nab photos. Here ya go!

I must admit, I've been missing having mountains and hills around. Flat terrain gets a bit boring after a while because you can't see beyond the buildings or trees next to you. Whereas with mountains nearby, you can usually see them between the gaps, so there's just more to look at. It's also nice seeing more green on these mountains, because I'm used to Colorado where it gets very brown for much of the year.

The people I'm staying with are a family who live out in the boonies near Lake Constance, who are related to my mom's neighbor. It's a bit of a farming area, so there's lots of crops and animals around this area. It also means it's hard to get around without a car, which is a bit of a downside for me, especially since I'm not driving on this trip. But they've been kind enough to take me around when I need it!

On Friday evening, we had dinner with some neighbors who came over, one of whom doesn't speak English very well. So the conversations were usually a mix of English and German depending on who was being talked to. Except it's not just German, it's Swiss German! They have a very strong dialect that is very difficult to understand, a lot of words are pronounced differently from what I'm used to, so I couldn't really follow the conversation. But it was still a good evening regardless!

Yesterday I took a train into Zurich, which takes roughly an hour. After arriving, I headed south towards Lake Zurich, which took me through the center of town. The main road down the middle is more of a tourist area, so there's lots of shops selling things that are way to expensive. Anyways, I got to the lake, took a picture, then headed straight back to meet with another one of my dad's coworkers for lunch.

It turns out his background is fairly similar to mine, we both got degrees in physics, so I had a really good time talking with him. We walked around for a bit, then went to a restaurant in town. And I was pretty astounded by the prices. For reference, 1 Swiss Franc is very close to 1 USD, so they're basically the same value. A burger cost 32 Francs. And that was one of the cheaper options! A veal chop was 62 Francs! Holy moly! The final bill between the two of us was over 100 Francs even before a tip, I'm definitely glad he paid!

I've heard that Switzerland, and Zurich in particular, is an expensive place to live, but that was even more than I'd expected. It did also look like a fancier restaurant, so that probably contributed a lot to the price. But that was still quite the shock to see! At least the food was good.

After we parted ways, I met up with another member of the family who gave me more of a tour around Zurich. The weather wasn't so nice earlier in the day, but it started to clear up in the afternoon, which was certainly welcome. I didn't take many pictures except for a few view points, of which there are some really nice ones.

As for the streets, they're decent, though it really depends on where you go. There's a mix of pedestrianized streets and car roads, and I think I've made my opinions on cars pretty clear. Even though most of the streets seem to be pedestrianized, I felt like I couldn't get as far away from the car roads as I would have liked. But it's still a lot better than Munich or Berlin, most streets have lots of people walking around on them.

There's also not much greenery in the city itself. There are a decent number of trees around, but hardly any places with grass. Pretty much everywhere is either covered in asphalt or bricks, there's very few places with natural terrain around here. Also, a lot of the buildings are in the boring light gray color that I don't care for. And the faces of many buildings are rather flat, so they're not all that great to look at, if I'm honest.

So far, my initial impressions of Zurich haven't been fantastic, but it's definitely not horrible. I do like that the lake is right next to the city center, and has visible mountains nearby. It also doesn't feel too quiet or overcrowded like I've found in other places, and the pedestrian streets that do exist are quite nice. I don't think I've seen enough to give a thorough judgement.

After we explored around town, we decided to get dinner at the Street Food Festival. Apparently this is an annual event in town which is almost over, so I arrived just in time! It's hosted a bit away from the city center, and has a large tent with lots of food vendors selling all kinds of dishes. A single website has the menu for each vendor, so it's really easy to get what you want. I got a curry for 15 Francs, which I think is a more normal price than the restaurant I had lunch at.

After that, I took a train back to the house. As much as I complained about the city center above, I did actually enjoy exploring around, and there are some really nice areas around. I think I need to look around more by myself to get more of a feel for it, which I might be able to do tomorrow after getting the lab tour.

Today, we had some adventures near Lake Constance. We met with their grandfather for lunch, which had some pretty nice food. After that, they took me on their boat and we motored around the north side of Lake Constance to see a few places on the coast. It was pretty fun, although rather cold with the wind blasting my face for most of the trip.

Fortunately we had a good way to warm up afterwards: fondue! Cheese and bread is usually a good combination, but melted cheese is even better. This was a pretty nice meal to conclude the day, in stereotypical Swiss style!

That's most of what I've done since getting into Switzerland. As I said, I'm getting a lab tour tomorrow morning, after which I'll try to explore more around the city on my own to get a better feel for it. I'm also working on planning my trip through the Alps, I'll likely take the Glacier Express since that's actually free with the Eurail pass (except the seat reservation fee). Should be a good way to see the mountains, so I'm looking forward to that!

Well Stuttgart has been a bit boring, to be honest. Maybe I'm just starting to get worn out after travelling for so long, or maybe the Netherlands has skewed my opinions, but nothing in Stuttgart has been particularly exciting. I spent more time just relaxing today, which has been nice since I think I got a bit worn out trying to see as many places as possible in the Netherlands.

My explorations today consisted of visiting the city center, and the university campus. The city center is another pedestrianized area, but it's not as extensive as I'd hoped. The center is surround by a main road that is basically a highway, which is loud and unpleasant to be near. Thus I found myself keeping closer to the middle to avoid that main road, which seems to be what most other people do too. In fact, I found a city map showing the pedestrianized areas in the middle (orange), and they don't extend out to that main road since no one wants to be there anyways. The pedestrianized area is really just one street through the center, and not a whole lot more.

Although the buildings are somewhat modern, there's still a lot of boring gray concrete. It's not as overwhelming as a place like Berlin, but I find some of these buildings to be outright ugly. A lot of these buildings are really flat too, which isn't helping the aesthetics. 

The few areas I've seen outside of the city center are really dead areas, nothing is happening there. Even on my way out of the main station yesterday, there was practically no one around, and this was right next to the main train station! The place I'm staying at is about a mile from the center, and it's difficult to find anyone doing anything. I find this to be odd, because there's loads of buildings around, with both housing and some shops. Where is everyone?

Looking at a map of Stuttgart, it's rather splotchy in which places have been developed. I think that's largely because it's a hilly area, so it's less practical to build on some of the slopes.

After exploring the city center, I made my way to the university campus with the S-Bahn. There's a route leading directly there from the city, so it's easy to get to. Also, side note: a day pass for the Stuttgart public transit was only 5 euros, whereas other places have usually been 8-10. So it's definitely cheaper to get around here!

And sadly, it seems school here is still not in session here, so it was a pretty dead area too. And that really wasn't helped by the older architecture around here and lack of upkeep on some of the buildings, some of these buildings were actually a bit gross. That's definitely not the case for all buildings here, there were some more modern and clean buildings, and also a lot of nice green spaces throughout the campus. But the older buildings near the center of campus were really not appealing to me.

​Right, this is a long one! I've been busy visiting numerous places in the Netherlands before leaving, so I haven't had time to sit down and compile thoughts until today. I left this morning, and just arrived back in Germany this evening. It was a long train journey, so that gave me lots of time to write all this down. This post is a mix of both my adventures from the last few days, as well as my thoughts on the infrastructure in the Netherlands. Buckle up for a read!

On Monday, I went back to Amsterdam to have lunch with one of my dad's coworkers. I had to take the train, so I rode a bike to the Dordrecht station. There were a few times when I got a bit confused on where to go, such as taking left turns at intersections or one way roads. I also ended up taking a couple wrong turns since I hadn't memorized the route, but I made it in the end. The bike storage at the station is up some stairs, which has a neat feature on the side for taking your bike up. Rather than bouncing up and down the steps, a groove has been carved into the side for your bike wheels to ride in, making it a lot easier to go up and down. Cool!

​I arrived at the Dordrecht station a bit late, so I missed the train I'd intended to take. The next best train got me into Amsterdam a lot later than I'd anticipated unfortunately. But I eventually met up with my dad's coworker for lunch, and I'm certainly glad he paid because he took me to one of those restaurants with small portions and high prices. A small glass of juice was 5 euros! At least the food was good, even though there wasn't much of it.

After finishing lunch, I explored around Amsterdam some more. I haven't really talked a lot about the infrastructure in the Netherlands, so I've compiled all my thoughts and observations into this post. I've spent the most time in Amsterdam, so a lot of my examples are from there, but the same ideas seem to apply to most Dutch cities from what I can tell.

The city center is very heavily pedestrianized, there's very few cars around. It is possible to get through by car, but it really isn't feasible for long distances, and I think that's intentional. Many of the streets are narrow, so only 1 car can get through at a time, making most streets one way for cars. The narrow design also makes people drive slower for safety reasons, especially since there's often many people around. So driving on these streets often ends up being slower than other methods of getting around, which discourages driving. I imagine it can also be more stressful, since you'd be constantly worried about hitting something or someone. This photo I took is actually one of the wider streets I found, many are even more narrow.

​These smaller streets usually have brick surfaces, which makes cars much more audible. Another really neat design feature is raising the road at pedestrian crossings to the same level as the sidewalks. This does act a bit like a speed bump, but I think the more important aspect is psychological. For someone driving here, it feels like you're driving over a sidewalk meant for people, rather than a road meant for cars. This makes drivers more conscious about the fact that people are around, so they're more aware of their surroundings.

​All of that is not to say driving in Amsterdam sucks, it just sucks in places that discourages cars. There are several roads going through town that are clearly designed for lots of cars. They look a lot like normal roads you'd find anywhere else, though they usually also have bike lanes on each side. Importantly, these major roads are cars are relatively uncommon, you'll only find one every few blocks or so. That's because you don't need to drive your car to the front door of your destination, you have legs that can take you the last few hundred meters or so. That's something that really frustrates me about the US, it's expected that you park right outside your destination, which can make everywhere overcrowded with cars.

Intersections with these roads also seem to be handled pretty well. Cars, bikes, and pedestrians are all controlled by traffic lights to ensure there's no collisions. To my knowledge, bikes aren't allowed to turn left by getting into the left turn lane with cars, but instead have to go straight across, then turn left and cross again, just like a pedestrian would go diagonally across the intersection. For this reason, bikes and pedestrians seem to get grouped together with the traffic lights, but are still physically separated to minimize risk of colliding with each other.

Also, there usually aren't traffic lights for pedestrians crossing over the bike lanes, only for crossing car lanes. I think this is totally reasonable, because it's easy for people to make eye contact and non-verbally communicate when there isn't a windshield in the way. It also isn't nearly as dangerous as pedestrians crossing in front of cars, because bikes aren't 2 ton death machines. They're much smaller and travel more slowly, so risk of collisions are much lower. And even if there is a collision, the slower speeds and lightweight bikes means injuries will be dramatically reduced when comparing to cars. So a traffic light to coordinate these crossings just isn't necessary.

​And of course we can't talk about Amsterdam without talking more in depth about bikes! Yes, they're incredibly common here, and for good reason. Almost everything you need is within cycling distance, and the Netherlands is very flat (flatter than Illinois, I checked!), so it's fairly easy to get around. One downside of it being so flat is that it can be rather windy, which can work for or against you. Additionally, the Netherlands has some fantastic bike infrastructure like I've discussed, almost every major road has dedicated bike lanes, many of which have physical separation from car lanes to further improve safety.

Non-major roads often don't have dedicated bike lanes, but they're really not needed since those roads tend to have very few cars. The few cars that do drive on these roads drive slowly because of the reasons mentioned above (narrow roads, brick surfaces, etc.), so they're safe places to cycle. I've cycled a few times around Dordrecht, and once I'd gotten used to the new-to-me infrastructure, it felt very comfortable to get around.

Once you get to your destination on a bike, there's usually a place to lock it up. Here's an example from the train station in Dordrecht, it has loads of places for bikes to go. There's actually 2 levels of bikes to maximize density, which I wasn't sure how to use at first. To get your bike onto the second level, there's a rail that slides out and swings down, allowing you to sit your wheels in the track. Then it rotates back up and slides into place, neat!

​For popular locations, bike lots like this are common. It's not unusual to see hundreds or even thousands of bikes all locked up in a single location, I found it a bit breath taking the first time I came across the sea of bicycles. I can't stop imagining how much space would be taken up if each bike was replaced by a car. I guess that's how you get humongous parking garages at places like airports or train stations!

Speaking of trains, that's another really good mode of transit around the Netherlands. It's a fairly small country, so all the cities are relatively close to each other, meaning commute times are fairly short. For example, the distance between Rotterdam and Amsterdam is a quarter of the entire country's length, yet the train ride is only an hour or so. The train network is very extensive and trains come fairly frequently, so getting around is really easy. I found it feasible to just show up to the station and pick a train from there, rather than scheduling ahead of time. They come frequently enough that you don't wait for too long.

As I mentioned in my last post, every station has turnstiles for getting into and out of the station. Usually people carry a card on them that has an account balance on it. The amount deducted is based on when and where you check in and out of each station, so you can hop on any train without prior bookings. Interestingly, checking in actually subtracts 20 euros from the balance, then the difference is put back in once you check out. I assume that's to mitigate people trying to cheat the system.

The metros use the same exact system, it's actually a bit hard to tell the difference between the trains and metros sometimes. Although one neat feature I've found on newer metros are lights around the doors. They've got LED strips that can be set to any color, which makes for useful status indicators. When approaching a station, they turn white to indicate which side that platform will be on, green to indicated when the doors can be opened, and red to indicate when the doors are closing. As someone who likes LEDs, I really like these doors!

​The trams also use the same card system, except they have scanners inside rather than at each stop. Best to make sure you don't forget to check out, otherwise goodbye 20 euros! But I didn't have any issues once I'd figured it out, they're just as easy to use as anywhere else. And a great feature of trams is that they often go through city centers where other transit modes can't, so that makes getting around even easier!

​Ok, that's most of the inner city infrastructure I wanted to discuss. Overall it's really good here from what I've seen, I'm definitely happy I visited! Here's another collection of photos for those who want to see. Once I'd finished exploring the city on Monday, I headed back to Dordrecht for the evening.

​On Tuesday, we went to Delft. Bas actually works in Delft, so I rode with him in the morning and walked around the center of town until lunch. Delft apparently has a large student population, and I'm guessing they were all on campus since it was really quiet around town. Lots of shops and restaurants were closed, and there weren't many people wandering around. I've heard it can get more lively on the weekends. Delft is relatively small, so I'd finished exploring pretty early on. Here's more photos of the city.

​I still had time to kill before lunch, so I looked on a map for the nearest green area and went there. This was a large park on the east side of the city, and it was quite nice to explore through! There's a small lake in the middle (large pond?), which has a few streams branching off that make for some pleasant areas to wander around.

​It also seems like horseback riding is somewhat popular through that park, I came across a few horse trails and someone riding their horse down one. I also happened to come across a petting zoo that was completely open, so I had a gander round. There were bunnies, chickens, a turkey, some peacocks, ponies, etc. A few families were visiting with their kids, it looked like they were having fun.

Once lunch came around, I met up with Bas and we went to the TU Delft campus to meet with a PhD student named Bruno. We had lunch with him at the main cafeteria, then Bruno gave me a bit of a tour around the campus. He took me inside a couple buildings, which was really nice to do since I haven't been able to do that on this trip. And the buildings actually had students in them! Finally! It's been a bit disheartening for me not seeing people around campuses on this trip, so this was a welcome sight!

However, the weather wasn't so welcome, it rained pretty much the whole time I was exploring the campus. I did bring my rain coat, and my shoes are waterproof, but my pants and hoodie were not. The rain coat had a tendency to guide all the water straight onto my pants, so it definitely looked and felt as though I had wet myself. The bottom of my hoodie and the end of its sleeves also got water on them, which wicked its way upwards making those areas wet too. Water even followed my sleeves into my pockets, so I had no dry place for my hands. It's been a few years since I've been in rain like that, it reminded me of why I moved away from Seattle!

Anyways, exploring through campus was otherwise alright. There's definitely a mix of old and new buildings, and I like that it's one centralized campus rather than buildings all spread through the city. Here's a collection of photos I took from around the campus.

​The campus is also built in a straight line with a main transit corridor running through the middle. One side has a 2-lane road that I think is only for public transit, including busses and trams. Although the tram line hasn't been finished, so it's just busses for now. The outer edges have bike lanes and pedestrian paths, which are great if you're only going a short distance. And through the entire corridor are crisscrossing pathways for people to get to the other side. I think it makes for a fairly efficient means of getting around campus, although it can be a bit of a pain getting from the north side to the south side.

​Once I'd finished exploring around campus, I had some more time to kill, and decided to visit another nearby city: Rotterdam. Apparently a lot of TU Delft students live there too, and just commute with the train. I can see why, it's a really easy route and only takes 15 minutes or so (plus commuting to and from the stations). I didn't know much about Rotterdam going in, other than it's a major port city and is fairly large. It also has a bit of a skyline, there are several sky scrapers in a somewhat typical modern US city style. I'm not a fan of US cities, so I didn't really think I would like Rotterdam.

But surprisingly I actually did like it! I've got some reasoning below, but I first want to show off some pictures I took around the city.

So what made me like Rotterdam? Well let's first discuss what I don't like about typical US cities. My biggest gripe is that all the streets are designed for cars first. And I mean all the streets. It's hard to come across areas that are designed for people, cars just seem to get priority everywhere. And most of these streets are designed for similar levels of throughput, often 4 lanes or more, meaning it doesn't really matter which street you use as a driver.

This makes for an unpleasant and dangerous experience for anyone not driving, because the 2 ton death machines are everywhere at all times. If you want to walk 5 blocks, you'll probably have to cross 2 lanes of cars just to get there. Not only do all those crossings increase your chance of getting injured, but it will also take longer since you have to wait for the traffic signal at each intersection. And you can just forget about cycling, you will be run over. It's not a question of if, but when.

This is not the case in Rotterdam, not at all. The streets have been designed for all modes of transit, usually with more of a bias towards pedestrians, cyclists, and public transit. This is achieved really well by having each street designed for different levels of throughput for different modes of transit. The center of the city is completely pedestrianized, so there's no chance of you getting run over.

Outside of the center, most streets are relatively small and still designed for pedestrians and cyclists, but cars are allowed to come through. These use a lot of the same techniques I discussed above from Amsterdam (narrow streets, brick surfaces, etc.), which ensure it's not dangerous for people. Then there are only a few major roads running through the center that are intended for higher density car traffic. These are usually not places for pedestrians, other streets are dedicated to that. Importantly, there's only a few of them, not every single street like in the US.

​​Let's also talk about buildings. As I've said before, I really didn't like the buildings in Berlin, but I actually do like the buildings in Rotterdam. There's 2 big reasons for that. The first is the difference in architectural style between each city. Berlin has Soviet style buildings with incredibly bland colors (mostly light gray with hints of brown), and very flat faces that aren't nice to looks at. By contrast, Rotterdam uses a much more modern architectural style, with more vibrant colors and non-flat faces. I find this style much more enjoyable.

The second big reason requires a distinction between size and scale. For me, size is how big the entire structure is, like the difference between a sky scraper and a house. Scale is more about how big the individual features are, such as the height of each floor, or how big the doors are. For example, a hobbit hole has a small scale, tall people can't fit without bonking their heads like Gandalf. Whereas a cathedral has a large scale, you probably couldn't hit the ceiling if you threw a rock straight up.

From what I've observed, Rotterdam has a much larger size than Berlin, but Berlin has a much larger scale than Rotterdam. Buildings in Berlin just felt incredibly imposing, especially since many buildings had few windows, making it feel like you shouldn't be there. Rotterdam may have had large buildings, but the scale felt more human and accessible. I also really appreciate the buildings that have lots of windows, they feel more inviting like "come look inside!"

One downside I realized in Rotterdam is that there aren't a lot of green spaces around. The closest park I could find from the city center required me to take a tram to get to. And when I did get there, it was a a bit small and didn't seem to offer much. That's not to say it was bad, it was a decent park, but it was less than I was expecting from such a well developed city. It was also rather devoid of people, which is not what I expected from such a large city.

​But I otherwise had a surprisingly good experience in Rotterdam, to me it feels like an improved US city. I've always associated skyscrapers with unpleasant, noisy, ugly, car-filled roads, but Rotterdam has completely thrown that out the window for me. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would, I'm definitely glad I visited!

After that, I headed back to Dordrecht. I don't have an app that tracks how many steps I take per day, but my Google Maps timeline says I walked about 14 miles yesterday. A quick Google search says it's roughly 2,000 steps per mile, though I've got a longer stride than most, so I probably took around 25,000 steps yesterday. My legs were pretty sore after all that!

And that brings us to today! I've left the Netherlands, and just arrived back in Germany. I didn't get to see everything I wanted to see in the Netherlands, but I certainly saw enough to give me a good idea of what it's like. I would have stayed longer, but I need to be in Switzerland this weekend, someone I'm meeting isn't available later.

I was originally intending on staying in Cologne and Frankfurt on this trip, but I've not heard great things about them all. Plus I don't have much time before I need to be in Switzerland, so I've decided to just skip them for this trip and go straight to Stuttgart. I was also recommended to check out a town called Tuebingen, which is just south of Stuttgart, so I might make a short trip out there before going to Switzerland.

The train journey today was definitely not the best. I had originally planned a route that required a couple transfers, each being about half an hour between each train. So even if a train was a bit late, there wouldn't have been any issues. And on my first train to Arnhem, everything went well, it arrived on time with no problems! Arnhem isn't the nicest station to have a long transfer at, there's not much shelter around and it was cold and windy. I ate a sandwich that Erika bought for me as I waited. And waited. And waited. My train wasn't showing on the screens, so I checked my phone to find this.

​You've got to be joking! I just stood around for 30 minutes waiting for a train that wasn't coming! Ugh. Well on the bright side I've got the Eurail app, so taking a new route was easy. This one had a shorter transfer time of only 10 minutes, which would have been fine if this train didn't have any delay.

It had a 30 minute delay. Agh! Why were my journeys into and out of the Netherlands so difficult with the trains!? This second route required me to hop off at Duisburg, but I stayed on until the end stop in Dusseldorf, where a high speed train went direct to Stuttgart. Fortunately I didn't have any problems with that final train. I think they must get priority in certain areas, so there's less chance of them having delays.

Anyways, the trains themselves were pleasant rides, the worst parts were waiting at cold and windy stations. I took a few photos for those who like them.