Firenze

Wow, I cant believe the last time I updated this was after Berlin. So much has happened since then, I just haven't had the time. Where to begin?
Well, after Berlin Jesse and I headed to Munich on a night train, which wasn't ultra comfy, but could have been worse. After wandering around with our packs for a while, we found a hostel and dropped our stuff. We then headed to the centre of town to find a free tour, like we had done in Berlin. The tour was pretty interesting, though Munichs history isnt as cool as Berlins. Plus it was absolutely freezing, but the big bowls of stew and bottles of beer we had at the end of the tour made up for that. I dont think it is a stretch to say that German beer is the greatest thing ever made. After we tired of Muncen itself, we decided to do some daytrips, and so the next day we headed to Dachau, the site of one of the Nazi concentration camps. All I can really say about that is that it is incredibly sad and depressing, but important to see.
In order to leave ourselves with a more pleasant impression of Germany over-all, we decided to spend our last day in Fussen, at the south of Germany, and the site of the castle that inspired Walt Disney's Fantasyland Castle. Since we were heading to Prague the next day, and our Eurail passes dont work in the Czech, we found a very cheap car rental place and did it up, Eurotrip styles. What a great idea! Driving was a nice change of pace, and we got to Fussen after driving through gorgeous German countryside into the Alps. Though we didnt get to the castle until 5, it worked out perfectly. Walking along the trails around the castle, Jesse decided to go off the path and climb the mountain we were on. Though I was hesitant to follow, after a bit of berating I finally manned up and scaled the steep path up. It was totally worth it: from the top we got an incredible view of the sun setting behind the mountains, over the lake and castles. Talk about scenery. It was great to get out of a city and explore some countryside, and we had a blast. Since we didnt have accomodation booked in Fussen, we decided to sleep in the car...Bad idea. As the temp dropped below freezing that night, we felt it. However, we survived the night, somehow, and set off the next day for Prague, to meet up with Jules and Juz.
Prague was a blast! Not only was our hostel super cheap, it was pretty much the stereotypical Eastern European hostel, with poor electricity, broken windows, giant stone staircases and weird 70s furniture. The four of us spent our days seeing Prague and our nights cooking delicious meals and drinking great Czech beer, all for very cheap. On our last day we drove the Kutna Hora to see the Bone Church, a church whose Ossuary holds sculptures and decorations made from the bones of 40000 people! Gross, creepy, but cool.
From Prague, the four of us road tripped down to Vienna, which was a hilarious drive filled with movie-actor games (mostly between me and Jules), cows breeding in the fields, and delicious Scroggin (aussie trail mix). The hostel in Vienna was very cool, with a nice courtyard and kitchen where we chilled, cooked, played instruments (they had them on the walls, including a Djembe, my favorite drum!). Just a great place to hang out. Jules showed us around Vienna, as he had already been there.
At long last, the time came for us all the part ways again. Jesse took the car back to Munich, Jules and Juz headed to Thailand, and I made my way to Naples via Venice. I will talk about Naples and Florence in the next entry, gotta go get ready for a beautiful day in Northern Italy.
Ciao