October 2011
12 posts
Fribourg, Switzerland
It was great getting to see my cousin Katherine in her hometown of Fribourg on the weekend of Oct. 21-23. I hadn’t seen her in at least 4 years, when she came over to the states. She fell in love with Switzerland almost a decade ago, attended a Swiss university and has lived here in Fribourg ever since.
The week prior to my visit she had finished her Masters in Social Anthropology and...
Fully immersed
Matt and I were off traveling together again down to Italy on the weekend of October 14-16. We went down to stay with his Italian relatives in a small town called Palmoli, but along the way stopped in Milan to spend the afternoon with his Italian cousin Mike. He lives in Philadelphia but was on a pilgrimage throughout the top holy sites of Italy. We met at the Duomo, toured around inside, he...
Budapest: last stop of our first long break
Catching the 2:09pm train from Vienna it was only a short 2 hour ride until we arrived in Budapest, the last city on our first long break itinerary. A few other small travel groups from Riva stayed with my group in a pretty unique hostel here called “Lavender Circus.” The building was built at the end of the 18th century and used to house nuns of the Clarissa order. During WWII it was used to...
Vienna
Pulling into Vienna around noon we hopped off our train and quickly found the “Wombat’s” where we were staying. Wombat’s is a really nice and affordable youth hostel, and we were lucky to have a nice little market located right across the street. We were starving, so we went straight there and grabbed some delicious doner sandwiches for 3 Euros. This was my favorite market of all I had yet seen -...
Prague: the city of a thousand spires
Upon arriving in Prague around 10am on October 2 (running on maybe 5 hours of sleep) we wasted no time and got right to seeing the city – beginning with a little shopping around Old Town. Matt Smith saw a leather shop here out of the corner of his eye, stopped in his tracks, and was pulled in by the tractor beam. The next thing we knew, he had a great big grin on his face and was wearing a slick...
Oktoberfest - start of our first long break
The start of my first long break with Matt, Kyle, and Alex. We arrived late in Salzburg and stayed in a hostel called the JUFA before our day at Oktoberfest, waking up the next morning (October 1st) at 4am and taking an early train there - the last Oktoberfest weekend for the year! By 7:30 we were in Munich ready for a big day. It was awesome walking off the train and seeing all the guys in their...
