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Tomorrow I'm headed out on my first big trip since Iceland. Ten solid days of romping around Eastern Europe. The plan includes Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. My limited French won't be much use this time around, but I'm working on getting as much of the grade school German back as possible. Luckily Monica will be my travelling companion the whole time, which means she'll be able to navigate Poland with her native linguistic abilities. She also made this neat little map of our impending journey, to give you an idea of where we'll be:

Eastern Europe Map

As you can see, there are some rather large legs. During a couple of those I'll get to experience a sleeper train for the first time. And you can also probably guess that due to its proximity Vienna was on the initial version of this plan. It was scrapped because of time constraints, to allow us more time in the other cities. It's a trip that's already quite travel heavy within the time we're there, so while I'm sad to be missing it I do think it's the right decision.

The first stop is Berlin, where I'll be landing mid-day local time this Thursday. I'm really excited to experience the city a second time, since it was one of my favorites for everything: food, drink, history, and culture. And this time I'll have a point of comparison, so I'll be able to tell if anything has changed within the past four years.

So here's to another trip beginning! I'll be updating here when I can, but in the meantime, prost!