And so it begins

After a little consternation, much thought and meditation, I decided a week or two ago to stick with the previously scheduled month of travel. Not only did everyone I talked to recommend that I stick with it, but my previous insecurities about it have mostly faded I think. I'll make it work, right? Plus for the first two weeks, from July 19-August 3rd, I'll be traveling with Alex Ruhland and Andy Bean, a couple other friends who are also doing the program. They're fun people, and it'll be great to run around with a couple others for a few weeks. Three's company, right?

This afternoon we all sat down at the Mensa (one of Humboldt University's student cafeterias) and planned it all out. So far the agenda is as follows: Prague, Vienna, Munich, Strasbourg (France), Cologne, and then Alex and Andy are heading back to Berlin for their flights out, leaving me completely free to go wherever I want from August 3rd to August 19th, when my own flight takes off from Berlin.

The planning for all of this will, of course, end up being about 200% harder than I anticipated way back in January when I was dreaming up all these far flung, grandiose plans. I found a PDF of the Eurail net train schedule timetables: the thing is about 138 pages long, and full of weird symbols substituted for actual words to save space in the manual. On top of that, the departure and arrival schedule for individual cities won't give you the details for, say, Berlin to Prague, so you have to find the connecting city (in this case Dresden) and then figure out the next leg of the journey and match up the two (or three or four) separate timetables to one another, assessing if you want an overnight train, if there are additional reservation fees on top of the Eurail pass, what sort of cabin you want. The list goes on.

And then the accommodations. I don't even want to think about finding places to stay and figuring out where the hell they are actually located in all these strange, foreign cities. We'll leave that to simmer in the back of my head for a day or two before figuring it all out.

Challenges for sure, but they're by no means insurmountable. I've also managed to spend a lot less money here in Berlin than I was expecting to--Berlin is surprisingly cheap compared to other cities--so I've actually got a much bigger budget for the travel portion than first anticipated, which is awesome. I sort of anticipated coming out of the other side of this next to broke, which would be fine. After all, what better way to spend all of your money, right? But if I play it right I may have some left over at the end.

Krakow was a great preparation for all of this. Not only did I get to sample what train travel is actually like, but it was also a miniature dry run for the real thing. I learned that while it is terribly unpleasant to spend four days on the road with only one set of socks, it is completely doable, and washing laundry in the sink is surprisingly effective. The pack I have isn't large by any means, but it'll do the job. I had it packed to maybe 75% capacity for Krakow, and even that was completely fine, maybe just a bit too much.

Still have no idea where I'm going for the solo half of the trip. The length of this excursion has a weird way of seeming bigger and smaller in my mind depending on what sort of mood I'm in; right now the two or so weeks I have to myself doesn't seem nearly big enough. I've got a friend who lives in Budapest (Emoke from work), I may send her an email or something and see what she's up to, but aside for that I'm drawing a blank.

Earlier I was fixated pretty heavily on Scandinavia, but I think it'd be cool to see more of Germany as well. My German has gotten to the point where I'm pretty confident in most conversations. I'll forget/not have a word here or there, but if I can't work around it somehow the people I talk to mostly know the word in English already. It'd be great to spend more time here and speak it a little more.

Plus, I'd be 100% immersed in German if I traveled around here by myself. Here in Berlin I only speak German when I'm at my apartment, out in the city on my own, or in class, but I speak English all the time to my friends. It'd be a lot of fun (and really beneficial to me) to be around native Germans ALL of the time and talk with them.

But we'll see! More to come.