And I triumphantly return to blogger yet again, after three weeks of harrowing adventure.
Do I have to sum up the trip? Ok, I'll try in a very lazy, brief way:
[Later note: Ok, maybe it's not so brief.]

Cammy arrives March 10: Woo hoo! Haven't seen her for 8 months!! Show her around Goettingen for a few days, despite the huge snow fall that is perfectly timed for the day before we leave.

Berlin: Lug our suitcases through the snow all the way to the train station, get to Berlin in the afternoon (it's only 2 hours away). Cold, cold weather and snow. First evening, visit the aquarium with big fish! And crocodiles! Second day, really depressing but interesting self-guided tour along the old Berlin wall. (Thanks for the guidebook, Dylan, we used it like crazy on this trip!) Met the most OBNOXIOUS Canadian girls in our hostel room--Cammy and I were definitely proud to be Americans in comparison.

Prague: Still really cold, crappy weather. Took a bus and walking tour, which was pretty cool, but full of old people who walked really slow, so we basically froze during the walking part, since we had to go so slooowwwly! Found an awesome all-vegetarian restaurant that night, then went out to a bar afterwards that had great live jazz (traditional stuff).

Bratislava: Decided to go to this city at the last minute, since it's between Prague and Budapest, in the country of Slovakia. A very tiny city in comparison to Prague and Berlin; you can walk everywhere. But a very cozy, friendly feeling. The sun came out for the first time, even though it was still chilly! We went to lots of random little museums to pass the time: a clock museum, a really tiny art museum, a weaponry museum with a lookout area (that was the best part). On St. Patrick's day, we went to the Irish Pub in Bratislava and ran into a group of about 30 Irish guys having a stag party for one of their friends. It was fun until they wouldn't let us leave...luckily they were the typical skinny, harmless Irish guys. No match for us!

Budapest: My favorite city on our solo trip (before we joined the tour). Sunny, warm, SO MUCH TO DO! We ended up staying 4 nights, since we had so much we wanted to fit in. Tours of caves, thermal baths, Communist museum, wine tasting...it was definitely a great city. Found another awesome vegetarian restaurant on our last night there. Badly-translated English was also fun to look for. Our favorite item on a menu was "poppyseed dumps."

Turkey: Too much to describe! We stayed in Izmir by ourselves, then travelled to Kusadasi where we met the tour that Cammy's dad was on, then traveled to Antalya and finally Istanbul, all within nine days. SUCH an awesome place. If you stay near the coast the weather feels like Hawaii, but obviously with a totally different culture, with Mosques everywhere and bazaars and men yelling at you all the time, since it's obvious anywhere you go that you're a tourist. Cammy's dad got married to his fiancee, Kathy, at the Temple of Artemis, which is one of the seven wonders of the world! A very pretty and small ceremony. And we saw a total solar eclipse! It was SO COOL! But pretty much one of those things that you don't understand how cool it is until you see one yourself. I definitely have to see another one before I die!

And that's the trip in a nutshell! Got up at 5am to fly out of Istanbul into Frankfurt yesterday morning, and now here I am! School starts on the 18th (I LOVE vacation time in Europe), so I will actually be heading to Norway for five days pretty soon! But if it makes people feel any better, I won't really have any money left when I get back!

I will try to post pics--but I have so many, it's gonna be hard to narrow them down!