Ringing in the new year in Moscow probably sounds like a bad idea to many people. I mean, why voluntarily go to Russia in winter? It was definitely cold while we there, especially for the few days when a huge cold wave hit. The reality is that despite the weather Russians are awesome at celebrating the new year. I’ve already written about my impressions of the celebrations in our newsletter but, basically, I had so much fun. Maybe too much…
Ukraine — the Chernoby motherland! Since I’ve spent my whole life wanting to visit and Arcadiy had already been to Kyiv once for a conference, it was one of the first countries to hit the top of our list. Although I always suspected I would love the place I wasn’t prepared for just how much. By the end of our time in Kyiv we were (jokingly?) looking at apartment postings! Kyiv Our goal for Kyiv was to, essentially, live like…
Austria has been on my list of countries to visit ever since Conchita Wurst’s “Rise Like a Phoenix” won Eurovision. How could I not want to visit the place that gave birth to someone so fabulous? Ok, Conchita isn’t the only reason I wanted to go to Austria. It was also going to be a chance to visit more little alpine towns, as well as fill up on all the delicious beer and food that we had in Germany. Salzburg…
Ever since Arcadiy and I started dating, we’ve had an agreement that we’ll spend every Thanksgiving in another country. Since the Thursday and Friday of the holiday are paid days off, it’s easy to get in a 10 day trip with minimal vacation day usage. Plane tickets out of the US are also cheap around then since most people try to spend the holiday with family. Our family is across the country and we go back around Christmas/New Year’s Eve,…
For much of our trip, Arcadiy has taken point on the planning. We both usually contribute city suggestions and do some reading about places during the process, but he has taken on the heft of the work. By this point in our trip he needed a break, so it was my turn to figure out where we should go and what we should do. His one request was to stay in a small German town. I read a bunch of…
We were all very excited to head to Munich. Since Mo stopped by Munich for a little bit before meeting up with us, she was able to take us on a tour of all the important sites in town. Our time in town was fairly limited, especially since we were going to take a day trip to Neuschwanstein Castle, so we needed to get the most out of our time. We spent one of our days wandering through the central…
Potsdam, best known for its palaces from the Prussian kingdom, is less than an hour outside Berlin on the S-Bahn. We only made a day trip out of our visit but it was photogenic enough for its own post. Around Town It may be known for its palaces but Potsdam has so many other interesting things to see. Not far from the S-Bahn station, for example, we found ourselves in a cute little park and had way too much fun…
I had wanted to visit Germany for as long as I could remember so I was really excited to finally arrive in Berlin. It’s beautiful, steeped in history, and has a lot of beer — what’s not to love? Our timing was a bit…interesting…because it was also the 2016 presidential election back home. Given the similarities between German history and some aspects of the 2016 US election, it was a strange place to watch things unfold. I mean, build a…
Arcadiy has been telling me about how wonderful Barcelona is for years. He fell in love with the city after a study abroad trip in college, putting it the “must” category of cities for our trip. We also knew we wanted to spend a large amount of time in town in order to see all of the main sights and still be able to take some days off from touristing. So that’s what we did! Wandering around town As usual,…
Originally, we hadn’t planned on visiting San Sebastian while in Spain. We wanted to spend that time in Granada but it turned out tickets for the Alhambra were sold out. So, based on a recommendation from a friend, we decided to head to San Sebastian for laid-back beach time! Food & Drink We knew we had to try out a Basque cider house while in San Sebastian. It was the off-season so we didn’t get to catch any cider from a…