My First Trip to Western Europe: Germany-Czech-Austria
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Although I titled the post “my first trip to western Europe,” this was more like my first time in Europe as a whole. I went to Bulgaria once for a math competition in 2013, but I didn’t get to travel that much, so it sort of didn’t count. This time I only went with my mom and dad because my brother was busy with school work. It was very overwhelming when we were choosing where to go in Europe since all of the programs looked good! Anyway, we ended up going to the one that went to one of the places that we wanted to go to the most, Hallstatt, a peaceful and gorgeous tiny village in Austria.
Germany
There were three countries that we went to: Germany, Czech, and Austria. We landed and left off in Germany, so I want to talk about this country first. Although we didn’t get to travel much in Germany due to the interest of time, we did go to some famous towns in Frankfurt, namely, Romerberg, Bamberg, and Nuremberg. Bamberg (the bottom left pic) is the old town (more precisely, the town that was renovated to look old), while Nuremberg does look pretty naturally old (top right). In Frankfurt, we all went to the train station that is a model for our Thai national train station (Hau Lam Phong). Lastly, the one on the bottom right is Romerberg or the Romer square. We could see a lot of couple locks hanging, just like the Seoul Tower in South Korea.
Another important and magical spot we went to was the Neuschwanstein castle! The castle is the model for the original Disney princess castle. It was incredible even we looked at it from afar. We rode a horse carriage to the top and walk for a little bit to the castle. The inside of the castle was also pretty, but one side of them was under construction, so it wasn’t as completely satisfactory. However, I heard that not many people could see the castle when it wasn’t under construction. The place itself is very old and needs to be fixed all the time. No need to be salty!
Czech
That was pretty much it for Germany. I wish we could go to other towns in the future. Now, let me bring you all to Czech, which is quite underrated, in my opinion. Although Czech does not sound as familiar as Germany to Thai people, several places in Czech impressed us. The first town that we went to was Karlovy vary, a famous spa town! Its hot springs are full of minerals, and some of the springs are for drinking! We did taste the skeptically drinkable spring for a bit, and it was a little salty and didn’t taste clean at all. Anyway, that might be how it was supposed to be. The town was overall charming, and we also bought a cute tiny kettle that is not useful.
One of the good things about going on a trip with a tour guide was trying many kinds of European cuisines. When we were in Germany, we had German sausage, while, in Czech, we got to try Bohemian-style roasted duck! The taste of both dishes was not the best, but at least we could say that we had tried them before. We went to downtown Prague for a bit as well. Charles bridge was where we spent most of the time because it was so pretty and we could see many important places from the bridge. I wish we could have more time to explore Prague, but we were quite in a rush to get to Cesky Krumlov in the afternoon.
We arrived at Cesky Krumlov in the afternoon as expected. The town’s signature was every house in the city has an orange roof which you could observe from the tower. The view was amazing, and the atmosphere was charming. We wander around for hours, going from shops to shops and buying many postcards, magnets, and other cute souvenirs.
Austria
The last country that we went to was Austria. We started from downtown Vienna, and I could tell right away that my mom was in love with the city. All the architecture and sculptures in Vienna were so perfect. We went to Hofburg Castle and enjoyed the history of this country (although we don’t remember any of them now). Several street performers acted like sculptures standing/sitting still along the street. We also got some ice cream while we were downtown. My mom’s motto was that when in Europe, get as much gelato as you want. We don’t care about calories intake while we travel!
Finally, we got to the place that we had longed to go, Hallstatt. The site had become popular through some TV shows, and, all of a sudden, tourists worldwide dream about going to this place. It was breathtaking but also quite touristy. I couldn’t imagine what the site would be like without all the tourists. Still, the beauty of the town was so unreal. We spotted lots of swans in the crystal clear lake: Hallstatt was such a dreamy place!
After we found out that there are some flights from Willard (a regional airport in Champaign) that are inexpensive, we started flying out from here instaead of Chicago. We got a really good price of plane tickets to Seattle, so we decided to go to more national parks! The two parks that we visited were Mount Rainier and Olympic National Parks. We thought about going to North Cascade as well, but the time was limited so we planned to visit there next time. Visiting these two popular national parks in the fall was such a good choice–less crowd, nice weather, and fall foliage!
Midwest surprisingly offers us many national parks to visit all year round. One of the national parks near Illinois is the Mammoth Cave National Park in Cave City, Kentucky. We rented a car from Champaign and drove around 5 hours, excluding small stops in Indiana. We had never been to Kentucky before, and we believe that not many international students had been there. Plus, this was the first time we visited a cave in the US, and we start with the world’s longest known cave system!
We’d been thinking of visiting South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore and Badlands national park for almost a year. Then an opportunity came when one of our friends gave us a buy-one-get-one-free coupon from Delta. We did not hestitate even a bit in buying two tickets for a round trip from Chicago to Rapid City, SD. Although it was an impulsive trip, we had a lot of fun observing the wildlife in the great plains of South Dakota and North Dakota.
Although Poy graduated from the Scripps-Oxford joint Ph.D. program in Biochemistry for half a year and already started working at UIUC as a post-doctoral researcher, his graduation ceremony was held way later in May 2024. His family also came from Thailand to attend his graduation ceremony in San Diego. We then spent over a week afterward traveling around the west coast, including California, Arizona, and Nevada. It was my first time (and his family’s first time) doing a road trip in the west coast. We enjoyed a huge variety of natural wonders that the west coast has to offer.