The Last Post - Home, Nov. 7

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!

Trip route

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.

Recap of every destination

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.

Dresden
​Sep. 16​ - 18

In comparison to other places I visited, Dresden felt a bit sleepy. Maybe it was just where I happened to stay, or maybe I came at the wrong time of year, but I don't remember it feeling as lively as other places. The infrastructure around the city seemed fairly well organized, cars were limited to a few roads, and I found it pretty easy to get around. But I'm still putting Dresden low on my list, it wasn't very exciting to me.

Leipzig
​Sep. 18 - 21

I quite liked the city center, pretty much all of it was pedestrianized, making for a very nice area to be in. Public transit made getting around really easy, including getting all the way out to the suburbs, which is the first time I got to explore outside of a city on this trip. And I quite enjoyed exploring around Leipzig, I'd put it somewhere in the middle of my list.

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.

Munich
Sep. 24​ - 27

​Munich was another city that I didn't really like. It reminded me a lot of Berlin, in that all the streets are filled with cars, and we all know how I don't like car filled streets. There is a small pedestrianized area in the city, but it was loaded with way too many people for it to be pleasant. The one nice area that I explored was the English Garden, which is a huge park with a handful of beer gardens. As nice as that area was, I'm also ruling out Munich.

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.

Muenster
​Sep. 29 - Oct. 1

The thing I remember most about Muenster was the promenade running all the way around the city center, I really enjoyed just going for a walk around the whole thing. The center itself was alright, although a bit small. I didn't explore too much beyond that other than visiting the university campus, which was alright but not spectacular. Muenster is 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.

Stuttgart
​Oct. 6​ - 8

This was definitely one of the most boring places I visited on this trip. I found it hard to find people doing anything anywhere other than the main strip of the city center. Even that wasn't that great of an area, since there's not much to do once you're more than a couple blocks away from it. Stuttgart is ruled out.

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.

Prague
​Oct. 18- 21

I was hesitant about visiting Prague since I didn't know any of the language or culture going in, but I'm definitely glad I visited before leaving Europe! Most places I went felt quite pleasant, especially the center and the park I walked through. I didn't explore as much as I would have like since I was a bit exhausted by that point, but Prague was definitely a good final city for this trip. I don't expect that I'd ever live in Prague, but I would put it fairly high on my list.

With all that in mind, I my shortlist of places includes:

• Zurich
• Netherlands
• Nuremberg/Erlangen

​That's not to say everywhere else is ruled out, but I have the best memories from these places. They've all got a good mix of good infrastructure and liveliness that gets me excited about the idea of living there.

Expenses

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.

Housing

Speaking of hotels, I definitely saved a lot of money by staying in hostels. I was initially staying in dorms for around $25 per night, which I really did not find to be a pleasant experience. I'm a bit of a light sleeper, so it drove me mad whenever other people were making noise at 4am, or snoring through the entire night. I also found some of these dorms to feel more like prison cells than cozy bedrooms, I really wasn't a fan.

I eventually discovered that many hostels offer single rooms for about twice the rate of dorm rooms ($50 per night or so). They're basically just like small and cheap hotel rooms, and I had a much better experience staying in these rooms by myself without anyone else to disturb me. These rooms also felt a lot more secure, since your stuff isn't easily accessible to strangers (not that I had any theft issues). For anyone who doesn't like sleeping with strangers, I would definitely recommend looking into single hostel rooms over hotel rooms, especially if they offer free breakfast!

And of course, I can't forget to mention how much I appreciate those who have put me up for a few nights and showed me around. If you're one of those people reading this, thank you so much, I'm so grateful for it!

Food

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.

Travel

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.

Final remarks

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!