Riding Berlin!

We got to Berlin at about 4pm today! We walked downtown and checked out stuff while we were looking for a place to stay (no couch surfers today). We found a hostel, actually a 1-star hotel by the old American/Russian sector border "Checkpoint C (Charlie)". We left our stuff in the room and the hotel had bike you could rent for 8 euro so we rode bike around Berlin all night! It was awesome! Everything is super nice and clean in Berlin, unlike Frankfurt...We went the old sector checkpoint (from the Gotcha! movie that we watched, Becky) and got our passports stamped with old Cold War border crossing seals. Then, we rode downtown and checked out everything. We found a HUGE park with cool tree covered paths and found this place were a guy was grilling steaks, rolls, and corn on the cob...so we bought two steaks, rolls, and corn, for 9 euro! We sat by the river at a little table and had an awesome meal! We saw a walking band that would just stop and play, so we watched the sun set on the river and listened to them for a while. We rode around a while longer and explored the city, Berlin is really nice! Not much traffic and plenty of things to do! We rode back through the old "Soviet Sector" in East Berlin to our room and washed all our clothes in the shower. Goodnight! Tomorrow we will be staying with Andreas in Goteborg, Sweden!
Reminder: More pictures here-  http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2317767&id=38420372&l=1488399748

Frankfurt and Berlin!

So, last night we made it to Frankfurt, Germany at about 11:30 p.m. We found a hostel that was extremely close to the train station. The station, the hostel and everything else in Frankfurt was really nice! But, the hostel was in the "Red Light District." We have never seen anything like what we saw last night! And the craziest thing was that it felt completely safe. Nobody said a word to us, but it was just crazy that everything that was going on was happening right on the street. We saw prostitutes, people cutting drugs, getting needles ready to shoot up. People with knives everywhere snorting drugs out of the cracks in the side walks! There were even rooms that you could go in to get a needle and do your drugs in there. We had actually walked a little bit too far down the road and saw more than we would have if we had seen our hostel the first time. It wasn't that bad near our hostel. This morning we slept in, because we are starting to feel snotty and kind of sick and felt like rest and slowing down would be in our best interest. Also, as close as the train station was, it was raining pretty hard and we didn't want to walk to the train station while it was pouring and get all of our stuff soaked. It finally let up, so we caught the train to Berlin!

Parma to Germany!

Sasa's place was really nice! He works for the European Union and as a photographer, so he gets tons of pay. He took us out to breakfast and gave us a map of Parma, so we checked it out for a little bit before we headed off to Zurich, Switzerland to get to Germany. Parma was really cool, with nice buildings and parks, but it was super hot (forecast said 104F)! Sasa warned us the day before that it would be hotter than crap. We got on a train that we thought was the right one, but it wasn't so we jumped off, but Hayley got smashed in the door! There is a funny picture of her "door mark" on facebook. We got a train to Milan from Parma to get a train to Zurich to catch one to Frankfurt! We have made it that far and are on our way to Frankfurt for the night. We found a hostel in the red light district for 20 euros a night...Tomorrow we are going to make our way to Berlin!

Venice!

We made it to Venice! We stayed there for two nights just off the island of Venice, because property there is some of the most expensive in the world and we figured everything else would be too! We had the internet and requested a lot more couch surfers, including one in Parma, Italy for when we left Venice. Then, we showered and got some sleep! The next day, we woke up just for breakfast, but went back to sleep until about 1pm...it was much needed! We headed out to the real Venice by train (about 20 minutes) it just had to cross the water out to the island. We got there at the perfect time! About 3pm everybody was leaving and there were a lot of cool shops and it wasn't beaming sun straight down on us. We got a map and went exploring. We made our way to the famous Rialto bridge, seeing a lot of canals and bridges on the way. Madonna made a music video there (and through the canals) there were lots of cool alleys and buildings. There hasn't been a newly constructed building in Venice in forever (~200 years). We stopped for some pizza and a Pepsi on our way to Piazza St. Marco, which is a huge square and church. We found the church that one the Indiana Jones movie was filmed (the one where they go into the church and break through the "X" in the floor to find the Holy Grail). Then we walked around taking pictures and checking out the many Murano glass shops, because Venice is famous for their awesome glass blowing. We found a cool canal with the sun setting right in the middle of it, so we went down to the end of it and watched it. It was awesome! We hopped on train and went back to the mainland for the night. The next day, we slept in again and headed for Milan, Italy on our way to Parma. We walked down the "Haute Couture" streets in Milan and looked at all the rich people, we didn't buy a thing! Then we got the hottest, slowest, train in the world...again. When we got to Parma, we called Sasa Maric, our host for the night and he came to the train station to pick us up! We ate pizza and got huge Coke, talked about camera stuff all night because he is a photographer. Tomorrow, it's time to get the heck out of Italy!

Pisa and Florence! (Pictures Coming...)

We got to Pisa about 10:30pm and found a hostel (no internet for a few days, so no couch surfers either)! They only had one bed left, ONE BED, so we payed $30 and shared a bed on the top bunk with rails around it. It was really nice and brand new with a full kitchen and 2 bathrooms with hot showers and WiFi for free! No A/C though! So, we went out to the Leaning Tower of Pisa at about 1am. We saw rats, bats, and ate pizza in Pisa! It was awesome, handmade, and $5. The tower was sweet at night nobody was out there, and we could do whatever we wanted, so we double-handedly straightened the tower...at least it's straight in all of Hayley's pictures of me, because she lined up the shots on the tower and not the ground :) We went back to the hostel and took cold showers and woke up with wet pillows because it was so miserably hot! We kinda slept in (about 8am) and sent out a bunch of couch requests, most of them have said no by now, but...we went to Florence and got tickets to see the Galleria Academia which is the museum with Michaelangelo's statue of David (that killed Goliath). The line was 3 hours long unless you already had tickets, so we found another museum that sold tickets to that one and went back later without waiting in line! It was nice, but you were not allowed to take pictures of it AT ALL. So I took some "sneak attack" style until security reminded me that it was strictly forbidden. 800 ISO and shooting from the hip, they came out nice! We checked out the rest of the gallery and the city, deciding that we are ready to get back to America: The land of a ton of food for cheap and free refills on drinks for 99 cents! We hopped on the EuroStar Italia train to Venice!

Alps to Rome! (Pictures Coming...)

Ok, got to get caught up here! We fell asleep on the train back into Switzerland :) We were woken up at the last stop of the train, which just happened to be the one we needed, Chur. I was woken up by a Swiss train worker guy yelling at us in German to the heck off the train! He woke us up so fast I didn't even know where the heck we were, but we were the only ones an the train! We checked out Chur again, went to a Victorinox store. We got a bus (with our Eurail pass) over the Alps through the St. Bernadino pass. It was pretty sweet we got off in Bellinzona, a city with a bunch of castles that we still are not sure if it is in Italy or Swizerland... The train there took us to Milan, Italy where we finally got our night train to Rome! It was 150 degrees in that train when we hopped on, we shared a room with a guy from Denmark and a guy from Africa that spoke French and we finally got the AC turned on. When we got to Rome, we were dropped off at Roma Tiburtina station, which is the most run down homeless shelter on Earth! We left our bags there in security and went exploring. We walked all of Rome! From the far east side all the way to the Colosseum, Paletine Hill, Roman Forum, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Piazza Navona, and through the Vatican and St. Peter's Square! Then, we found out the Vatican was closed to visitors on Sunday, so headed back across town to see the Boca de Veritas, Circus Maximus, and the Colosseum again. We stayed the night in a sweet room to finally catch up on some sleep and showers. We washed our clothes in the sink and were ready for battle the next day. The line to get in the Vatican was around 4 hours wait in the sun, but we booked a tour for $26 that gave us "no-line" entry and number coded audio tour of each item/room/painting in the whole place! We just saw something cool, typed the number in the headset thing and it told us all about it. Even sneak attacked some pictures inside the "Absolutely NO Photos Allowed" Sistine Chapel! We headed back across town to get our stuff from the nastiest train station on Earth, caught a train to Pisa, and relaxed as it stopped at every single city between  Rome and Florence over the next 3 dang hours! Next up is Pisa!

Switzerland!

Switzerland was AWESOME! We took a train from Brig to Chur that went over the Alps at the Oberalp Pass. It was sweet, we had two restaurant style booths to our selves (one on each side of the train) and I was like a dog running back and forth to each side taking pictures. The windows were about 4 feet by 4 feet squares but they slid down into the wall so you could have a huge open hole to hang out of. It was the best thing for the ride across the mountains. We got to Geneva, Switzerland at about 6am checked out the big lake in Geneva heading toward Brig. That's where we got the cool train to Chur. Before we left Brig, we got some Coke and a huge "baguette" of bread to break apart as we rode across. We stopped in Andermott and I really, REALLY wanted to check out a river in the Alps, so we found one not too far of a walk away and cooled off in the freezing cold water. It was sweet! Then we headed on to Chur and over the Oberalp Pass to take a million more pictures. We went over some awesome mountains, bridges, tunnels, etc. and went through the Grand Canyon of the Alps! Switzerland is Überexspensive! Their money is Swiss Franks (Francas) but they convert straight to US Dollars (1=1)...McDonald's there is $12 for a combo! We book a night train to Rome for the next day so we had the whole day and the night in Switzerland. We decided, since we have the rail passes, we should just go to Austria for the night! We messaged a couch surfer in Innsbruck, Austria and he said to come on over, so we headed over there from Chur. He said he would pick us up at the train station! But, when we got there he wasn't there so we found some WiFi and checked my mail to find out that he sent us a message saying "Sorry I have friends coming over tonight and can't host you"...So we got a room at the Goldene Krone in Innsbruck...it was crappy. We are on our way back to Switzerland now, then in Chur all day until our 6pm sleeper train to Rome!