Last week I left my home. Not State College but Paris. I traveled to Amsterdam, Berlin, and Prague for spring break with a group of friends. I know this may sound strange to some of you reading this, but I missed Paris every step of the way! Don’t take that the wrong way; I loved each of the places I traveled to (I will tell you about my adventures in this post) but I honestly got homesick for Paris! That sounds bizarre even to me because I have not been homesick for the US or for State College one time. All of the Paris homesickness set aside, here is some details about my wonderful and eventful spring break trip.

 

Tips to Traveling on Spring Break

First off, do not underestimate trains. I loved travelling by train on spring break! It was a perfect chance to catch up on sleep and do homework (yes I did homework on spring break!). Flights are fast and easy but sometimes a long train ride really helps with rest and planning the next part of your trips.

Don’t stress out about planning every detail of your trip before leaving! Pick places you are interested in going or simply pick places you have heard good things about. You can plan what you are going to do once you check in to your hotel and have wifi. My group decided what we wanted to do the night before so we did not stress out too much about anything but we still did a lot and explored a lot of really cool places.

My last tip is to make sure you are travelling with people who have similar interests as you. My group was about 7 people in Amsterdam and 10 in Berlin and Prague. Luckily, we all had similar things we wanted to do and if we didn’t, we split up, did our own things, and met back up later in the day. Doing this was easy for us since we had a large group so when me and a few others wanted to go museum hopping and shopping, the other five were able to go sit in a café or check out a restaurant.

 

Amsterdam

I feel that a lot of people have a picture that Amsterdam is party central where everyone is high, drunk or with a prostitute all of the time. While that all is a part of Amsterdam, there are a lot of great things to see and do there. My group went on a canal tour in a boat, saw the Van Gogh Museum, tried a plethora of cheeses at a cheese museum, saw a prostitute museum in the Red Light District, and went to the Anne Frank House. We spent about two days in Amsterdam and we really had no downtime.

Overall, I really enjoyed Amsterdam. When you go to Amsterdam, you know you are there. I know that sounds weird but Berlin, for example, did not give off a German or Berlin vibe (I’ll explain that later). I also thought that the museums in Amsterdam were really well kept and very nice to go and see. Some museums can be too much writing/information or not enough but Amsterdam had a really good balance.

 

 

Berlin

Berlin was a very interesting city. The big highlights that we saw were East Side Gallery (Berlin Wall), Checkpoint Charlie, Ritter Sport chocolate museum,  Berlin Cathedral, Bebelplatz, Reichstag, and the Holocaust Memorial/Museum. Berlin was very cheap for food and for museum entry. The museum island was really fascinating and very picturesque.  I don’t suggest you travel here unless the WWII and Cold War period really interest you because some of the biggest attractions surround this topic, at least the ones that I went in to.

Berlin was a love/hate relationship for me. I really enjoyed the museums that we went into. They had great setups. The people were also very nice and very approachable which was a nice and interesting change from Paris was. Metro etiquette in particular was very different since people actually waited for others to get off before storming on. While I really liked the people and the things in Berlin, the city itself was the opposite of what I expected.

In my opinion, you can tell that Berlin was split into a communist and non-communist part even though it was 26 ish years ago that the wall was taken down. There were a lot of construction projects and nothing gave a “feel” that you were in Berlin. My group split up and the one that I was in walked to a place that we thought was East Side Gallery. It turns out that it wasn’t but what we did find was the part of Berlin that was communist after World War II. It was like stepping into a new world I think that if I would travel to Berlin in ten or twenty years, I would probably have a totally different experience since even the museum areas have construction going on and still need some work.

Prague

Prague was a very interesting experience since none of us knew the language at all and the koruna not the euro was used. The exchange rate really worked in our favor with the euro and or the US dollar. Beyond everything being outrageously cheap, we had a really good experience. We went to the Prague Castle, History of Prague Museum, the Astrological Clock, Old Town Square, the Charles Bridge and Wenceslas Square.

I really enjoyed my time in Prague. I actually wish I had a little more time in Prague because it had a lot more to do than what is listed above. The one thing that holds me back from saying that Prague was my favorite place I visited was that I don’t know if I saw that many Czech people. It seemed that it was mainly tourists and people that came from other countries. I don’t think I interacted with anyone from Prague besides the people working in the country.

 

So overall I really enjoyed my entire trip. If I had to rank the trip, I would say that Prague and Amsterdam were my two favorites and Berlin was a little bit of a disappointment but it was still an awesome place to visit and see. It disappointed me because I set a high opinion before going and it did not meet that opinion; however, I went to the other two countries with no expectations. Now I am excited to back home in Paris and I can’t wait to continue exploring here!