A Tour Through Munich and Berlin

Hello Everyone,

So I am getting down to the last few stops on my Eurotrip, and as much as I don't want it to end I feel my body might need it. However I am enjoying every minute that I have here traveling because it really is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

So after getting on my flight from Venice, my Easyjet flight took me back to Stuttgart. It was a short flight so I slept the whole time, which after my time in Italy I really needed (Go read my Italy post to find out more). But after I got into the Airport I found Beth and we headed off back to her place. After a bit of catching up, and putting together Beth's new TV we headed down to her local and got some food. I got to meet some of her coworkers and have a nice meal with them. I also met Gina, who would be traveling with us over to the Bavarian city of Munich. So we all left early because we all knew that we had an early train to catch to get over to Munich in the Morning.

After getting up, and making our way to the train station, I got an underground ticket to get on the same train with them to Stuttgart HBF. There were two things I learned at this point. First no matter where you are in Germany the rail infrastructure is amazing. Second HBF stands for Hauptbahnhof which in English means Central. So there you can say you learned something from reading this blog. The train wasn't to long to Munich, and once we were there it was a hunt for food.

Once filling our stomachs we headed off to my Hostel so I could drop my bag to walk around. It was a quick stop at my hostel after spending a half an hour to find it. I couldn't get in my room yet so I just dropped my bag in a locker and we were off to explore. Just as we left both Beth and Gina seemed shocked at how nice a hostel can be.

But we all walked around for a while going into churches, and enjoying the atmosphere of Munich on a rainy Sunday. We ended up seeing the Rathaus-Glockenspiel. We timed it right so we could see the Glockenspiel move around, which actually was really cool. At this point I was hungry again, and I wanted to get out of the rain, so our next stop was the probably one of the most famous beer halls in the country, Hofbrauhaus.

So I ordered some sausages, and a liter of beer. Now I can finally say that I have had a stein of beer at the Hofbrauhaus. The food and the beer was great, but there was a lot of it. However right as I finished my stein one Beth's Bosses met us there. He wanted to drink and no one else was drinking, so he turned to me and said he was buying me a beer. When he said that I was kinda hoping for a small one, but another liter was put in front of me. Yeah it was a long time at the Hofbrauhaus.

After chatting for a bit we headed off to see some more churches, and said farewell to Beth's Boss. It was a nice afternoon walking off all of the food, and beer from earlier. We all saw some amazing churches and landmarks from around the city. But just as they had shown up we were at the train station saying goodbye. I won't see Beth again until a month before I graduate, so Beth enjoy your time there and I can't wait to see when your home. After that I headed back to the hostel and called it a night since I had a tour the next day.

Up early, and back to the train station to meet my tour guide. We then hopped on a train to get us to where the tour would start. It was only a short ride on the train before we got off at the Dachau train station. As some of you might have guesses at this point I did take a tour of the first concentration camp used by the Nazis during the second world war Dachau. It was amazing to see this, and was a valuable history lesson for me. We need to make sure that something of that scale will never happen again. I found out that every student in the Bavarian region has to go to a memorial of the holocaust to remember that something like the holocaust will and can never happen again. I was very humbled I had saw as we were leaving, and learned a valuable lesson.

From there it was back into the city, and I walked all around. I did find myself walking around the english garden, and found the man made wave that gets surfed in Munich year round. I must have stood at the wave for a good solid hour or two to watch these surfers. After wishing I could do that I headed back to the hostel and called it a night since I had another early and long train to Berlin the next morning.

I got on my train at 9 am and I didn't get to Berlin till 3pm. Yes, the train sucked and it was crazy long. I didn't have any trouble getting from the train station to the hostel. I really didn't go out that night, so I grabbed dinner and met these German guys and watched Germany win their last group stage match of the Euro's. I spent the rest of that night watching those matches. The next morning I was up and off to see the sights.

First it was the Berlin TV Tower, then to Berlin Cathedral and then from there it was only a short walk to the Brandenburg Gate. I stood there for a moment to soak in the importance of that monument to the German people and the world. But to the left of that monument there is the US embassy, and in front of it was one of the most amazing things that I saw during my travels. In another country people are mourning the tragic loss of life that happened in Orlando with candles, flowers, flags, and handwritten letters. It was a moment I won't forget because it was the moment I realized we are all people of the world no matter the flag we stand behind.

From there I saw the Holocaust Memorial, the Berlin Wall Monument, and Checkpoint Charlie. I then proceeded to get lost in a massive park before seeing the Reichstag Building. That building is amazing! I wanted to take more time to see if I could get in to see it all, but that will have to be for the next trip, because I had an early train the next morning, that would take me to one of the destinations I've most looked forward to, Amsterdam.

I am a bit behind on the blog so I will try and get on that soon. I hope you are all enjoying these posts because I love telling you all about my travels. But remember to stay safe and have fun!

-Tucker        

Enactus UK Nationals

Hello everybody,


So I know that I posted just three days ago about my time in Sweden, but I felt the need to write this post sooner rather than later. Since I'm writing this the night before we have our first meeting back since our journey to Nationals, I thought I would explain my experience at the Enactus UK Nationals with you all.

So my journey to nationals didn't start in the UK like most of my teammates. Mine started on a beautiful Swedish morning in Stockholm. At this point in the morning I was already checked out from my hostel, and I had my morning cup of coffee. I found a bench overlooking the Gamla Stan, and began to truly memorize my script for nationals the next day. I had read the script over and over again since I received the finalized script, but I didn't quite have it fully memorized yet. So for about three and a half hours that morning, I spent reading my script out loud on that lovely park bench. Where my bench was it was a busy footpath, and a lot of people walked past me as I was learning my script. My only thought was those people thought I looked crazy. I managed to get most of it down before I got on my train back to the airport for my flight to London for Nationals.

The flight went well, and after a getting back over the UK border it was a quick stop at the airport Boots to get some essentials for me for nationals the next morning. I called the rest of the gang to let them know I was on the way to the hotel, and to my surprise Keith still hadn't showed up so I was doing ok on time then.

So after a quick tube ride and a half a mile walk I managed to get to get to the hotel were everyone was. It was great to see Anthony, Alex, Laura, Lenni, and Keith again, but meeting there was for business and we got right down to it after I showed up. Then for the next three hours we practiced our script and folded annual reports. Annual reports, I might add, were the best of the whole competition. So big shout out to Tom S for the report. We managed to get some food and once we got back we all practiced our lines till we passed out.

After a great night sleep we managed to get ready to show Enactus UK what we did this year. I donned the suit Anthony was grateful enough to bring to London for me. And after a shower and shave I looked sharp in that suit. We all looked sharp that morning, and right then I knew we were ready to go. We did one more run through and I was confident we were going to do a great job during our presentation.

 
After meeting the rest of the crew (Tom D, Tom S, Catherine, Laura, Shashank, Toby, Emily, and Andrew) at the Hammersmith Novotel. We found out we were in the same league as Newcastle, GCU, Warwick, and Bedfordshire. When we saw that we knew it was a tough league, but we would do our best to come out on top. Then after Newcastle presented we were up. We were all on nevers for the three minutes of step up time, trying to remember lines to make sure that our presentation was prefect. After a bit of a rocky start we pulled it back and finished strong. I personally could have done the Q and A better, but we learn from our mistakes. However I could not have been prouder than I was with how we did.

Although we didn't make it to the semi-final round we were able to show Enactus UK what we were doing and who we plan to impact in the coming months. It was a weird weight off of my shoulders, but right there was when I realized that I am an Enactus UK Alumni, and an Enactus Plymouth Alumni. It was a bittersweet feeling, and I knew it's going to be a lot more work with my team back at PSU, but I'm ready for it. And I think it was also knowing I'll be leaving my project Recreo, however I know the team will continue to impact more people in Plymouth. But after finding out our faith we had a team dinner, and that made me mood change real fast. It was great to see everyone celebrating our achievements this year.

We got up the next morning and headed to nationals once again to see the semi-finals, and the finals. We were able to showcase our projects at the Project Fair, and get some great feedback from other teams. We stayed and watched the final presentations, and every team deserved to win it but huge congrats to Enactus Nottingham for winning it all. You guys will kill it at the World Cup. After that we headed to our hostel and got ready for a night out on the town in London. And it was well worth the feeling the next morning to have such a great send off for Nationals.

But I just want to take a second to thank everyone at Enactus Plymouth for a 'phenomenal' year. It was an honour to work with everyone of you, extremely skilled students. For those of you reading this who just joined, know your time spent here will be some of the best memories of your life. For committee this year, you all showed why you deserved your roles and made this team what it is. And for the Recreo Team it was an honour being your team leader this year. It was a pleasure to get to know you all, and I know you all will do big things with the rest of your lifes. But keep working hard and this project will be great in the coming year. But thank you all again, I wish you all the best in your future endeavors, and I hope I get another chance to work with you all!

Ok, so that was the last of my travel posts for now since I'm back in Plymouth. But there will be more of those to come in a few months time. I hope you're all having a great day, and remember to be safe and have fun!

-Tucker        

Being a Tour Guide and Adventuring Around England

Hey everyone,

So it's taken me a bit longer on writing this post because I wasn't sure how I would be going around writing it, but I think I have figured out how I want to write this, well I think. But I'm still playing a bit of catch up from the holiday season for writing in the blog, but I'm back at it now.

So after Mama Liz and Ed left London on New Year's Day me and Haley were left to adventure on our own before we had to get our train down to Plymouth later that day. We made our way around the city and over to Paddington Station. After dropping some bags off at the Left Luggage booth we explored the area, which there wasn't much. We ended up seeing 221b Baker street, and great Beatles store, but the best thing we saw or I saw was a Dunkin Donuts, which I haven't seen since I left. We then made our way down to Plymouth after a bit of a wait in Paddington. After spending the money that I did it was nice to just be able to know I was headed back to Plymouth where things were a lot cheaper.

So the next morning after a bit of a pause with not having anything to do but be a tour guide for Haley, we headed out to see what Plymouth had to offer us that day. It was great to see the city through Haley's eyes because she had the same reactions to when I saw the city for the first time. One of the first things that we had to do was head to see the Mayflower steps it, Haley made sure of it. Then we made our way around the rest of the Barbican. After we headed to the Co-op to get some food for dinner and when Haley saw some the brands I think I saw her mouth the words "Why don't we have this in the States?"

 The next day we ended up taking another large walk around the city and this time it was sunny which felt like a first, due to all the cloudy weather. We took quite a bit of a walk and headed over to Royal William Yard where we got dinner and called it a day.

The next day was a rather low key day we started late and then we went to the National Aquarium. I was surprised at how large the place was, but still not as big as the Boston Aquarium in my book. But we walked around for a bit then went and got some local seafood right next to the Aquarium. I got mussels and Haley got fish tacos which she told me I need to go back and get, cause they were so good. We then made it to the hotel and called it a night in preparation for our trip to Bath the next day.      

We awoke early the next morning to catch our train to Bath, to see the Roman Baths. I had gone to Bath before the holidays, but wanted to save the Roman Baths for when Haley made it over here. So it was a nice simple train journey to Bath Spa and then we went exploring around the city. After getting some awesome bagels for Breakfast/Lunch we ended up in one of the many parks in Bath enjoying the views of the River Avon, that flows through the city. We then finally got into the Roman Baths, which really took me back thinking that there was a civilization here thousands of years before I was even born, and I think it took Haley back too, although she became a tour guide for me showing off all the Latin she learned in high school or what she remembers. After that we got dinner and we made our way back to the train station and got the train home.

The next day was the in between day where we found ourselves having a bit of R&R between all of our traveling and seeing what's going on around the city to just take a day for ourselves. It was nice we got some food and beer at a local pub and just kept it a nice low key day, for tomorrow we were going to see Stonehenge.

After getting up extremely early we caught our train to Salisbury. I booked first class tickets, (cheaper than normal tickets and we have no idea why) and we got everything complementary on all the trains to Salisbury. Once we arrived we found our bus which took us from the station around the medieval city of Salisbury, which along the way we found out the Magna Carta was in Salisbury Cathedral. After a short ride on the bus we found ourselves on a windy hilltop getting our audio tour guides, and it was off to see one of the wonders of the world. For the first 10 minutes I kept finding myself thinking that I was actually seeing something with my own two eyes, that some people only see in textbooks. But it eventually rubbed off and I enjoyed the moment that was filled with a lot of wind and large stones.
After seeing Stonehenge we then found our way back to Salisbury and then to the cathedral. The cathedral was beautiful, but it was the Magna Carta which I was most intrigued about. Being I want to go to law school after I get back to the states, it was a moment that I won't forget seeing the document that basically started my future profession. After seeing so much history for the day Myself, and Haley got a nice Italian dinner in town and got back to our train. We ended up making it back to Plymouth in one piece all nice and happy in first class.

But just as it seemed that Haley was here she was gone as we headed back to London to get her on her flight home the next day. We stayed the night before her flight in London, and although it was raining it was a nice night. We took the tubes into Heathrow and after about an hour or two wait we had to say our goodbyes, or as I like to say it see yah laters. It was a bittersweet moment as we both didn't want to leave each other, but we knew we had to. Although with her time here I will never forget some of the things I got to experience with her. Haley, I know you read every single post so thank you for coming here and being my travel buddy, my partner in crime, but most importantly my best friend, and I look forward to traveling more with you when I'm home.

So now some housekeeping. I know this post was a bit behind as well as I have been a bit behind the eight ball as it has been said recently. But I have a few more posts that I will be posting through the next week to two weeks so keep your eyes peeled for those. Other than that have fun in the snow back home in New England!

-Tucker

 

 

Happy New Years......Three Weeks Late

Hey everyone!

Well I first want to say thank you to everyone who reads this because I just recently hit over one thousand views on the blog. When I started this I never thought that I would hit this many readers so I just want to say thank you all and I hope the new years will bring more stories that you want to read about.

Now that's out of the way I need to address something else I haven't posted anything for a bit. Well more like three weeks and it's because of a massive travel spell, so now it's time to update you all. I hope to not leave so much of a gap from when I post. So thanks for not getting on my case for an update, so for now on I'll try and make then a regular thing.

So the last time I wrote to you all was christmas day, so I'll pick up from there and see what I can fill you all in on. I guess this post will start on Boxing day and again we ventured out into the city, Mama Liz, Ed, and myself. We took the tubes from Greenwich to all the way to Westminster once again, but this time we ended up getting off at a different stop. And after a short walk we ended up in front of one of the most noticed buildings in the UK as well as the World, Buckingham Palace.

It's amazing to see something that has so much history as that Palace has in the scheme of things. That building is older than my country! (I've found myself saying that time and time again since I've been over here.) But once we say that Mama Liz was on a mission to see Harrods, so we made the walk from Buckingham Palace to the famous Harrods, seeing embassy upon embassy on the way there and not to mention a Ferrari dealership. But we made your way there, but when we got there no one cared to tell us that Boxing day in the UK is like Black Friday back in the US. Needless to say it was a madhouse, but we managed to fight the crowd to get the the Tea Room that Mama Liz wanted to eat at. We had some great tea's and then we headed back to Greenwich to call it a day.

The next day we ended up seeing Trafalgar Square, and we began to go through the museums. First it was the National Gallery where we saw some Van Goghs in person, and sat in front of the same painting that Bond did in Skyfall. (For those Bond fans you know what one I'm talking about.) After that we made our way to the British Museum to see some really amazing artifacts, but before we did that we found a restaurant that I haven't seen since I left and we stopped right when I saw the words "Chipotle", on the door. Once we were filled with mexican food we made our way to the British museum and then made our way back to Greenwich, but not after having a pint or two along the way.

  The next day all three of us were up early and we made our way over to see the London Tower, and for those of you who don't know that's where the Crown Jewels are, but with the line so long we didn't get a chance to see them. But we did manage to take a boat cruise of the Thames, but not after seeing Tower Bridge and all of its glory. But after our cruise we wandered around Westminster till we got tired and then we headed back to Greenwich.

Again the next day we all got up early to get our day off on the right foot. As Mama Liz and Ed got breakfast, I went to a local barber in Greenwich and got my haircut, which was probably the best cut I've gotten so far since I've been here. But then once again after breakfast we went back into the city. This time we ended up going to see Churchill's War rooms, which was a very interesting experience to learn the history of the UK from that time period. We also saw 10 Downing street, but didn't get a chance to see the Prime Minister though. But after all the fun and games in Westminster we got back on the tubes and headed to West London to see Fulham FC take on Rotherham United in a league fixture. It was Mama Liz and Ed's first proper football match and it didn't disappoint at all. it was a five goal thriller seeing Fulham come out on top. At the end of the match we saw how close the stadium was to the Thames and it was beautiful. We hurried back because the next day I had to get up super early to pick Haley up from the airport.

So I got up at the crack of dawn and made my tube journey to Heathrow to get Haley, and once I got her we headed back to drop off her stuff to head back into the city to explore. We went back to see all the places that I had seen earlier in the week, but I didn't care because Haley loved every minute of it. But we headed back to Greenwich and called it a night. The next day was New Year's Eve Day, so we went back into london (see the theme here), and we ended up in King's Cross Station and got a little wizardly as we saw platform 9 3/4, and from there we went to Piccadilly Circus so Haley could get her Hunter boots. But we walked around the Piccadilly area for a bit, then headed back to Greenwich where we had dinner and went out to celebrate the New Year. We went to the bar called the Gypsy Moth and right before 12 we went to the Thames and saw the London sky light up with fireworks.

The next morning Mama Liz and Ed flew back to Florida and me and Haley made our way down to Plymouth. Needless to say my time in London was great, but there was still more trips to come which I will get to those in my next post. But that was the holidays here in the UK. It was a lot of fun and I hope you all had great holidays as well. I will keep you all posted on the rest of my adventures as the following weeks progress. But as always have a great day, and keep smiling!

-Tucker