Germany in Seven Days

Even thought I may have the title of my blog as "German Excursion", I hadn't truly had the "adventure" part yet, that is until about a week ago. I had a wonderful week long road trip with my roommate from college! She flew the 4,000+ miles to partake on a very crazy idea that we planned in the span of only about two months, our plan to visit the majority of the big cities of Germany

in seven days.

When it came to planning, we hadn't much time at all because this was her Spring break from college and it was coming up fast. Luckily, I had just finished up all the planning for my trip to London back in January and was getting ready to leave for that just as we began to plan. It was great how that turned out because all of the information for hostels and finding a good game plan for getting around cities was still fresh in my head. I cannot stress enough the fact that this trip was never truly planned full force. We knew what cities we wanted to go to, the dates that we would travel to them on, and where we would be staying each night, but there was never actually more than that and even that plan changed. 

Frankfurt

Bad Kreuznach

Heidelberg

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Munich

Ingolstadt (spur of the moment addition)

Bayreuth (another spur of the moment)

Dresden

Leipzig

Berlin

Hamburg

Osnabrück

Cologne

Koblenz

Bingen am Rhein (once at the front of the trip and then we ended there as well.)

The above photo is from the roadtrippers.com website. I found it to be very helpful in the long run of planning how much money we would need for gas, total hours we would spend on the road, and how many total miles we would be driving. (The website calculates it for you! There are also options to find accommodations, entertainment, food, etc. along the way of your trip.) Roadtrippers.com also has a app for smart phones. One thing I love about the age we live in now is how much technology make planning something easier, however, I am still horrible at working the technology in the first place.

Market in Munich

My budget for this trip was about €260. That budget covered my hostels, food, gas, and extra things on the side. I was at a bit of an advantage because I have been living with euros and working with its wonderful system for just over half a year now, so it made staying within this budget a bit more easy. Now, I did mention gas in the budget. We drove this whole trip. We took some trains but only to make getting around Berlin a lot quicker, but it does mean that I have to add one more section to the budget: paying for parking. Parking in big cities when you can find a good parking garage is not too bad. Our parking payments from the whole trip ranged from about €10-€2, minus the €15 parking ticket from the lovely police in Dresden. Lacey and I tried to split the cost of parking and gas. It didn't come out even of course, but how could it. One of us would just make up for it with buying the other food or whatnot. As far as food goes, we took some things with us so that if we got hungry while driving, then we had it with us; PB&J kit, oranges, apples, bananas, and some chocolate. We also ran into some pretty neat
little morning markets where we got our breakfast sometimes.

Jaegers Hostel Munich

Accommodations: two hostels and three host families. Our two hostels were in Munich and Dresden, and the host families were mine on the fist and last nights, and a family whom Lacey knew in Berlin and another family whom I know in Onsabrück. It is always fun to stay with a host family when it comes to traveling because they have all the information that you want about the place that you are visiting and some. Our host family in Berlin provided us with so many maps and books on Berlin that I though I was going to have to empty out my backpack just to be able to take them with us into the city. (We ended up only taking one map and a lonely planet book on Berlin.) They also told us great places where we could find lunch, made dinner reservations for us, bought us tickets to a musical, got us in for a tour in the Reichstag building, and bought our train passes for the day.

Our host family in Berlin welcomed us very well.

Overall, even though Berlin was killer when in came to walking for the whole day, it was the best experience I had on the trip when it came to the city. Needless to say, if you've got friends in other countries, do not be afraid to contact them and say "let's meet up." Also, in hostels, don't be afraid to talk to other people! It's how you not only make connections, but friends as well.

If you recall in my posts from London, I made some friends. One of them was from Czech and actually met up with Lacey and I to give us a small tour of his favourite spots in Dresden.

Packing: I really decided to buckle down with this trip because of how many places we were visiting, and the fact that when I went into someones house, I did not want to have to bring in a ton of stuff! I stuck to my 25L backpack and went with a colour scheme of neutrals. 

In my backpack:

1 pair of dark red skinny jeans

1 pair dark wash jeans (as backup, I never actually wore them)

1 red dress (I use this a lot because it can also be made into a cute skirt)

1 pair grey leggings

1 pair black short leggings (to sleep in)

1 pair black shorts (to sleep in, I get hot easily)

grey v-neck tee

grey long sleeve tee

dark grey tank

nicer white tank

blue jean button up shirt

grey and blue stripped cardigan

toiletries

socks

underwear

*On a side note I would like to say that I had made a list of things to check off while putting them into my backpack. I was, however, doing laundry while putting things into my backpack and forgot some things. 

On this trip, in the beginning of March, I would like to say the things that went wrong. Number one being that I forgot to bring both my jacket and my scarf with me on the trip. I had them in my hands and then sat them down to take something else to the car, started talking to my host father, ate breakfast and then left without them. I did not realise this until we were already in out first city and an hour from the house. I had to decide if I wanted to brace the sort of nice mornings with cold breezes or buy a new jacket/sweater. I chose sweater because I've already got enough jackets to dehydrate and Eskimo. The other that I forgot were my two bras. I always travel with three bras (one nude, one black, and one sport), that is where the earlier comment of forgetting things in the laundry comes into play. It was still a great trip nonetheless!

Another something that is great to do while traveling with friends is to have one thing that you have to do in every city. In this case it was Lacey breaking me out of my "I hate taking touristy photos" mist that I was in. We decided to take photos of the two of us with things that we truly thought would not only be fun, but also some of the big monuments. Long story short, we took a ton of selfies....

I think I got pretty good at taking selfies after this trip and I don't regret one second of it!

Bis bald!