Special update!

In a series of unexpected and rather surprising turn of events, I've actually found myself back in Amsterdam after travelling for 2 weeks straight! Just a quick update, thanks to the convenience of car rental, we've embarked on 3 driving trips, from Bratislava to Budapest, Vienna to Salzburg, and this latest and possibly the last of the driving trips from Dusseldorf! There are so many things to talk about right now, and while I'm waiting for my clothes to dry and the others tugged in bed, I'm trying to organise the happenings over the past 13 days in a coherent, step-by-step account. Since I'm probably not going to remember everything at one shot, I will just try to pen it down in point form very quickly!

• Brussels was a good place to start, not too big, not too many attractions, and expectations weren't very high. The grand place was a nice square to be in! Belgium truffles are superb.
• Bratislava, while it pales in contrast with fellow European capital cities, it is fantastic in terms of giving the consumer, that is me, a greater purchasing power. Awesome half-litre beers for 1.20 euro served in a decent pub. Beat that! The cheap hostel, cheap kabab and cheap ice-cream meant we didn't have to think twice about eating more!
• Budapest, this was a bonus, since we managed to drive from Bratislava. First driving experience in Europe made this trip all the more memorable. Budapest is actually 2 districts, Buda and Pest sorta combined into one. More on that in a detailed update to come. The parliment building is one of the most majestic structures around in this city.
• Vienna, Austria's capital and houses what's by far the grandest palace I've set foot on, the Schönbrunn Palace.
  
• Lower Austria, funny as it sounds, Lower Austria is a city in Austria made up of many districts. We covered a few of these districts such as Krems and Melk, where we got to pick strawberries off the ground for free, and saw how vineyards looked like. Wachau Valley, which is located between Krems and Melk was also quite a sight to behold.
• Linz, Austria's third largest city which we stopped by for some quick dinner and a really brief walking trip around the city. Didn't catch much of it, though its city square was nice.
• Salzburg, better known as Mozart's birthplace, but is also home to other beautiful buildings such as Palace of Mirabell, as featured in Sound of Music, and the Hohensalzburg Castle.

It is also interesting to note that the longest river in the EU, the Danube, flows some almost 3000km through the cities such as Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna, Linz and Salzburg. So you can imagine that being able to see the same river in the different cities of different countries must have been quite cool!

Moving from Eastern Europe into Western Europe, we covered Germany for a good six days. Managed to see Munich, Berlin, and just hours ago, Cologne, Bonn and Dusseldorf. Funny things including, not knowing that Koln was actually Cologne, and we only found out when we drove our rented Mercedes C-220 (we would never have imagined driving a luxury car on a budget trip like this, but then again, its Germany, Mercs comes from here!) right in front of a souvenoir shop in Cologne.
There were also not so pleasant things, such as the car rental company employee giving us a very big headache of refusing to rent us the car for us to drive from Munich to Berlin. Our initial plan was to drive 600km from Munich to Berlin, since overnight trains would have cost around 50 euros per person, driving would allow us to save some 30 euros each. Thankfully we were there on a saturday, and the German national rail company, DB had this weekend group tickets which allowed 5 of us to travel for a total of 38 euros, or 7 euro per person! However, the number of transfers on the way from Munich to Berlin was an awful 7 times, and the whole trip took 12 hours, no less!

Well there's so much to write about that if I continue doing so, I risk not having any sleep at all for my flight to Barcelona later! I shall attempt to sleep for 1 hour, and then another on the car to the airport, another on the plane, and hopefully one hour on the train from Reus to Barcelona Central station where my Barcelona friend Pere will meet us! Come to think of it, its really crazy even to think of coming back to Amsterdam just for a stopover for a few hours! But I'm not complaining! My luggage is one rearranged to hold 1 week of clothes, down from 3 weeks' worth, and I can finally bring along the sleeping bag which will be handy for the airport sleepovers.

All right, look out for more updates starting July, hopefully I will find enough time for it!