What happens when a city thrives for 2,500 years, makes its mark as a maritime power, and combines Roman, Gothic, Renaissance, Catalan, and modernist influences? The vibrant, dynamic Barcelona, with its Roman ruins, medieval cathedral, Gothic quarter, and unique Modernista architecture, is the fascinating result. 

Spain's second-biggest city is also the capital the partially autonomous region of Catalonia, home to 10 million Catalans. Catalans are proud of their distinct language and traditions, a pride borne out of periodic suppression from Spanish rulers that began when Catalonia lost the War of Spanish Succession in the 18th century. The economic boom of the Industrial Revolution gave rise to the Catalan Renaissance, the Renaixença, which in turn gave way to the Modernisme period and a love affair with the unique, Art Nouveau-inspired Modernista architectural style popularized by architects like Antoni Gaudí. 

My friend and designated travel buddy Marissa and I couldn't wait to explore it all. However, our flight landed at 1:30 in the morning following a 2-hour delay out of Croatia, so we headed straight to our hostel after our arrival. As I worked a little later into the night to back up some of my photos, a visibly inebriated hostel guest returned after a night out at some local bars and immediately lost his lunch, but at least he made it to the bathroom before doing so. It was hardly the most auspicious start to our stay, but things quickly turned around!

Barcelona is full of charming architecture 

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June 2015: my CBYX program year was on pause for two weeks, one of my best (American) friends had made the trek out to Europe to visit me, and all of Europe was our oyster - it was time for the trip of a lifetime!

First on our itinerary was Dubrovnik, Croatia, whose magnificent Old Town features a fairy-tale like cluster of cobbled back lanes and centuries-old houses, churches, and palaces, all surrounded by imposing, well-preserved medieval fortifications.

Centuries ago, Dubrovnik was a world capital of maritime trading that rivaled Venice in power and wealth. It was a fiercely independent republic that so revered the concept of libertas - liberty - that it was the first foreign state in 1776 to recognize a little new republic called the United States of America. 

Over the last 200 years, the city has become an extraordinarily popular travel destination, and it's not hard to understand why. Lord Byron was said to have labeled it "the Pearl of the Adriatic" after he visited. These days, two million people follow his footsteps every year by touring the charming Old Town, which was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979. I'm thinking that at least 1.75 million of those people are Game of Thrones fans vying to see the real-life filming locations for King's Landing, which are scattered throughout the city. 

As you'll see in the photos below, the city's walled medieval center has been remarkably well-preserved. That's in spite of a 1667 earthquake that destroyed a large portion of the city. Only a few palaces and the city's walls survived that disaster, and everything else had to be rebuilt. Thus while the city was most prosperous during medieval times, much of the architecture in the Old Town has a modest Baroque style.

A multi-million-dollar reconstruction effort also took place after two-thirds of the old city's buildings were damaged by artillery fire from the battles that accompanied Croatia's bid for independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. The rebuilding efforts were completed only with the use of original, historically accurate techniques and materials. 

It's time to see some pictures. After getting a look at the city's coastal charm and architectural wonders, you're going to want to visit. So start converting your dollars to kunas and take a look below at what awaits you!

A sneak peek of the Old Town

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I didn't meant to sound so ominous with that title, but my good friend Marissa's arrival in Europe in June 2015 truly did mean the final leg of my CBYX program year in Germany was about to come to an end. 

Just before her arrival, I had my last day of my internship at Kompaktmedien, so I whipped out my best German in my final goodbye email to the office. My coworkers responded and wished me well, and one of them said I was the first American they had met who could speak such good German! Now that's a compliment I'm sure to remember. 

After work, I rushed off to a subway station to greet Marissa. She had quite the journey behind her - she had flown from San Francisco to Salt Lake City, from Salt Lake City to Amsterdam, and from Amsterdam to Hamburg. Then she took a train into Berlin, and finally she had to ride one last subway train to Friedenau, my host family's neighborhood in Berlin. All in all, it was 28 hours of traveling. Thanks for going through all that, Marissa! It's almost like you're one of my very best friends or something.  

Marissa had endured the trek so we could take advantage of a 14-day break in my program schedule and travel together to a whole variety of new and exciting European destinations - but first, we had to cover Berlin. In a whirlwind 1.25-day blitz, I took her around the city and showed her all the highlights Berlin had to offer, giving her a crash course on German history in the process. I began by telling her that when you're touring Berlin, there's no better historical landmark with which to start than the Berlin Wall.

Posing at a segment of the Berlin Wall at the Berlin Wall Memorial. At this point, I've regurgitated pretty much every fact I've ever known about the wall and Berlin history on this blog, so I'll refer you to my older posts on the wall here and here if you're hungry for wall facts

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They say all good things must come to an end - and seeing as my year in Germany was a very good thing, it most definitely was coming to an end back in May and June 2015. At this point, my return from Europe may have been many months and a few vacations ago, but I am still determined to let one particular good thing NOT come to an end - this blog! 

After a trip to Krakow, Poland, I found my time in Berlin rapidly coming to a close. But that didn't keep me from heading out and making some more memories in my adopted city before having to bid it farewell. 

My first stop: Karneval der Kulturen (Carnival of Cultures) in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, an annual celebration of Berlin's cultural diversity. At no other place and no other time is the principle of "multikulti" - multiculturalism - better on display in Berlin. After browsing market stands that featured food and goods from every continent (and coincidentally running into my host sister), we joined 500,000 others and looked on as representatives from a wide range of nationalities put on an engaging parade that featured everything from the Brazilian samba to a Chinese lion dance.

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It was the month of April, and my travel buddies and I were ready to set out and absorb as much of Krakow, Poland as possible on the last day of our three-day stint (I talk about the city's history in my Day 1 and Day 2 posts). It's not a huge town, but it is jam-packed with attractions ranging from a charming Old Town to the subterranean site of a violent legend.

A beautiful day in Krakow!

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Warning! This post is pretty depressing! If you aren't in a mood to hear about the Auschwitz death camp, skip to the pretty pictures of Krakow at dusk at the end.

For everyone else, the second day of our trip to Poland in late April was dedicated to making the hour-and-a-half trip out of Krakow to Auschwitz. Visiting a death camp is, of course, anything but fun - however, seeing as we were living in Germany, where the memory and lessons of the Holocaust live on today, we knew it was a trip we had to make. 

Auschwitz took shape in 1940, although the mass killings of Jews didn't begin until the second, larger Auschwitz-Birkenau compound was completed nearby in 1942. By the time the two camps closed in 1945, they had claimed the lives of nearly 1.5 million victims. 

The crowd of tourists at the original, older Auschwitz camp was overwhelming, so we started our visit at the second camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Auschwitz-Birkenau had worse living conditions (think little water and plenty of rats) and was also the location of the gas chambers. The place is enormous - by the time we had completed our walking tour of the grounds, we had trekked about 7 miles over the course of 2 hours.

The infamous entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau, known as the Death Gate. Trains with windowless cattle cars crammed with prisoners passed through the gate and left carrying nothing except goods stolen from inmates. For some, the train ride lasted 7 or even 10 days. No food was provided, and many perished before even reaching Auschwitz

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Nearly exactly one month earlier, in March, I had already visited and thoroughly photographed both Warsaw and Poznan. But I wasn't quite ready to be done with Poland - the country's biggest tourism draw, the city of Krakow, was on my itinerary in late April. I had planned a visit with two American friends, and it would be my 2nd-to-last trip away from Germany before my program came to end with a huge two-week blitz through six European countries!

But back to Poland. I hopped on a bus in April and cruised from Berlin to the Polish city of Wrocław, where I spent a short couple of hours before continuing on to Krakow. Wrocław, Poland's fourth largest city, feels like more of a humble student town than anything, but it hosts one of Europe's biggest market squares, which is where I spent all of my time. The city belonged to the Kingdom of Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, the Austrian Empire, Prussia and Germany before finally becoming Polish in 1945. Its name is also incredibly difficult to pronounce - phonetically, it looks something like "VROH-ts-wahv." Good luck.

Wrocław has recovered well from World War II, as it was nearly 70% destroyed after the Germans unsuccessfully tried to fight off Soviet attacks for five months in 1945. Let's take a look at how pretty the city center looks these days.

The market square was first built up in 1241

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Berlin has a grungy side. Sure, the massive Unter den Linden and sky-high TV Tower and bustling Potsdamer Platz provide all the highlights of a gleaming metropolis one would expect, but should you get under the city's skin, you can find all kinds of unexpected sights. 

It's no surprise that a city as rapidly changing as Berlin has a fairly large number of abandoned structures. Industries evolve, businesses fail, and investors come and go... and along the way, buildings are forgotten and left to rot. This has happened enough times that there is an entire blog named Abandoned Berlin dedicated to the subject. Its author has dedicated himself to visiting and photographing any empty husks still standing in the city. After having seen the Brandenburg Gate one too many times, my friends and I decided that reading Abandoned Berlin wasn't enough, and we headed to a (safe, accessible) structure that he documented in one of his posts. Sarah and I had already visited an abandoned train station before, so we even had some relevant experience under our belts.

Our destination was an abandoned swimming pool complex that opened in 1985 and closed in 2005. Some day it will all be torn down and turned into fancy new apartments. But until then, Berlin's urban exploration enthusiasts are visiting it on the daily just to see, photograph, or graffiti the interior. The entire area was hardly even fenced off - anyone can walk right in, and lots of normal, curious people (even entire families) were doing just that when we arrived, which is why we stuck with our plan to check the place out.

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May 9th, 2015: My third and final day in Budapest, Hungary was upon me. I woke up bright and early, short on sleep but in high spirits. That didn't last long, as I made a beeline for a decidedly un-cheery museum: the House of Terror.

Although today it's an powerful, informational museum, the house at 60 Andrássy Boulevard once housed Hungary's version of the Gestapo during the Nazi occupation and thereafter communist Hungary's secret police. Hundreds of victims were imprisoned and executed in the building's basement, both Jews and suspected enemies of whichever government was in power. 

The overhang casts a shadow outline of the word "TERROR" on the ground

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The month was May, and I woke up in a tiny hostel in the Hungarian capital of Budapest. Day two of my trip began with free breakfast at the hostel (always a highlight) and then a visit to St. István’s Basilica, Budapest's largest church. In my previous post, I mentioned that St. István was Hungary's first Catholic king and harbored a penchant for gruesome violence wholly unbefitting of a saint. But hey, at least his church looks cool. 

Construction started in the mid-1800s but took five decades in all. The church is still tied with the Parliament for the title of tallest building in town

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It was early May, and I was ready to escape Berlin and take another ridiculously long and cheap bus ride in the dead of night (departure was 2 a.m.) to another new and exciting city... this time, my destination was Budapest, Hungary! I went not only since everyone who goes comes back with good reviews, but also because I was able to meet up with my USC friend Catherine, who was studying abroad there, each night to enjoy the nightlife. 

I had my trusty Rick Steves guidebook, of course. From Rick, I learned everything important there is to know about Hungary and its capital city on the Danube. This very unique nation is populated almost completely by Magyars, who came over from central Asia and settled down here over thousand years ago. Their golden age came in the late 1800s, when Hungary and Austria ruled together over the massive, powerful Austro-Hungarian empire. Then came a major defeat with World War I, and Hungary lost half of its population and two thirds of its territory. But, despite the destruction of WWII and the cruel reign of the Soviets that lasted until 1989, the capital city is still full of impressive and ornate buildings built during the late 19th century, when Hungary was at its zenith of power, size, and influence. The city is like a giant, grand exercise in nostalgia. 

The Magyars (Hungarians) are also unique because they speak one of the toughest languages out there. Its difficulty is compounded by the fact that it has no close linguistic relatives today! Needless to say, I did not pick up much Hungarian.

Anyway, enough of that. On to the photos!

I started out on the west side of the river, the Buda side. This photo was taken from the Pest side of the river looking towards the Royal Palace on the Buda side, where I planned to spend the afternoon. In case it's not immediately clear to you, Buda + Pest = Budapest

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With one day down, my Easter weekend trip to Amsterdam was already half over. No matter - an art museum, bike ride, and tour through the Red Light District was definitely doable in one day! I had done more in less time before, after all. 

First stop of the day - the Rijksmuseum, the largest museum in the Netherlands

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The Easter holiday in early April meant an extra long weekend away from work, so it was a chance not to be missed - my friend and fellow Berliner Amy and I knew we had to travel somewhere, and AMSTERDAM was our selected destination!

We stuck to my preferred cost-effective method of travel: overnight bus. The 9-hour ride there was a little less comfortable than usual, though, since the bus had no bathroom and I had to sit next to a stranger who wound up falling asleep on my shoulder. To top it off, we arrived early in Amsterdam... at 4:45 am, an hour before the first train into the city. This was going to be a long day. 

But after the trip's inauspicious start, things quickly got better as we headed into the city and joined a walking tour. We learned that Amsterdam started out as a humble fishing village in the 12th century before becoming a hugely important port city home to many wealthy merchants.  The famous canals were dug in the 17th century for water management and defense purposes. Although almost half of them have been filled in over the years, the city still boasts 65 miles of waterways, most of which are lined by expensive canal houses.

The Beurs van Berlage, built at the turn of the 20th century, was once the home of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, which is the oldest stock market in the world

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Unique, underground, alternative, exhilarating... even dangerous: all are words that pertain to the activity that is the subject of this post! How exciting! The activity in question? Urban exploring (urbex) - the exploration of man-made structures, particularly abandoned ones. Having seen urbex photography online for years and years, I finally got a chance to try my hand with it on one Saturday afternoon in late March, when my good friend Sarah led me to an abandoned S-Bahn (commuter train) station in Berlin called Siemensstadt. 

Siemensstadt is named for the behemoth of a company that is known as Siemens. Siemens was founded in Berlin during the city's industrial heyday in the 1800s (a while back I wrote here about how important industry used to be for the city). In 1897, the firm opened a big complex of worker housing, administrative offices, equipment plants, and factories in northwest Berlin, and the area came to be known as Siemensstadt (Siemens City). The commuter train line that we were visiting was built in 1927 to ferry Siemens workers who did not live in the area to the big Siemensstadt campus. The tracks largely survived WWII, but the Siemensstadt line met its end in 1980. At that point, an East German rail authority was still running all of Berlin's S-Bahn commuter trains, even the ones on the other side of the wall in West Berlin (such as the Siemensstadt line). West Berliners, not keen on financially supporting the oppressive East German government by purchasing train fares for the S-Bahn, boycotted the S-Bahn system. Between the boycott and a train worker strike, that was that - close to half of the S-Bahn lines in Berlin were shuttered, including the line that served Siemensstadt station. Today, both the S-Bahn trains and Siemens workers remain absent from Siemensstadt. It was the perfect spooky setting for us to do some exploring!

Our first look at the former station

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On that weekend in late March, I wasn't done with my trip through Poland after just Poznan - I had all of Sunday to see Warsaw. But first, I had to get there.

After spending Saturday in Poznan, I went to the very outskirts of town to catch a late-night bus from there to the Polish capital. But I found that the bus station was completely boarded up and closed, so I had to brave the below-freezing weather for an hour at 11 pm before the bus finally showed up and I folded myself into my tiny seat. Then we were off, and we arrived in Warsaw early... which, in this case, was not good news for me, since it meant we were there at 4:15 am and I had managed to get about 4.5 hours of sleep. Traveling by bus is certainly not glamorous! But for 7 euros, it did the job. I shook off my tiredness and set out into the city at about 7 am. 

Warsaw, population 1.7 million, has been the capital of Poland since 1596. During World War II, the entire city was nearly completely (over 85%) destroyed by the Nazis, particularly during a bout of retaliatory bombing after a major uprising in the city 1944. But Warsaw and its residents have risen from the ashes and rebuilt the metropolis on the banks of the Vistula River. 

Warsaw's most striking building is not its most beloved by a long shot. The Palace of Culture and Science was commissioned by Stalin as a gift from the Soviet people and was inspired by the Empire State Building. It was built in the early 1950s, and 16 Soviet workers died in the process. It is still the tallest building in all of Poland

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As promised, I'm picking the blog back up now that I'm safely back home in Lake Forest, California! I have a lot of traveling behind me - I finished my stay in Berlin and whizzed off to Croatia, Montenegro, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and then Germany one last time before crossing the Atlantic. I capped the entire year off with an exhilarating 10-day stay with my sister in New York City. It was a whirlwind, but I meticulously documented it all in thousands of photos. I also added all the cities I visited on my Travel Map. Eventually, way down the line, I will have at least one blog post for every point on that map... so keep stopping by!

But for now, it's back to playing catch-up. On one Thursday afternoon in late March, my supervisor at Kompakt Medien (where I was interning) suddenly gave me the next day off work. Determined to not let this 3-day weekend go to waste, I planned a last-minute trip in record time and left the very next day. My destination? Poland! The first of the two cities that I visited was Poznan.

Poznan was definitely one of the most humble places I visited this year. But Poland's 5th-largest city still had a charming historical center that kept me entertained for a day. Poznan is also one of the oldest cities in the country, as its development first began in the 10th century!

Retro neon signs from the 1960s still adorn some buildings, such as the Philharmonic

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Time is ticking - the end of my year in Germany has been rapidly approaching and is now only one week away. I look forward to going home and seeing friends and family, but I will always miss my second home (unless I manage to come back someday!). 

In another sign of how close the conclusion of it all is, all program participants just attended our end-of-year seminar here in Berlin. It was a fun, action-packed week filled with meeting the American ambassador to Germany, discussing our experiences with each other, and meeting many very important German politicians. Among them: a number of members of the Bundestag (the German parliament), President of the German Bundestag Norbert Lammert (his American equivalent would be John Boener), and... FRAU DOKTOR ANGELA MERKEL, Chancellor of Germany! That's right. She spoke to all 320 participants in the CBYX program and told us she was a fan of the work we were doing here in Germany. Seeing the most powerful woman in the world was an unforgettable moment!

Earlier that week, I joined up with two American and two German participants to give a presentation on a pilot project we had participated in that brings our exchange program's participants on both sides of the Atlantic together. Our group's topic was Civic Participation and Democracy, and after several months of discussions about our perceptions of the nature of political involvement in Germany and the U.S., we carried out a survey to see what Germans and Americans at large thought. I mapped out our results in an infographic here. Check it out, we had some really interesting results! And if you filled out the survey, thank you. It made for some great material for our presentation, which was done via videoconference with our counterparts in Washington, D.C. and attended by the CEO of my exchange program's parent organization, fellow program participants, and officials from the Bundestag, U.S. Congress, and the U.S. Embassy in Berlin. 

In two weeks I jet off with a friend from home for a two-week trip through Europe. We will be stopping in Croatia, Montenegro, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. After that, I spend over a week in New York City with my sister. Pictures from those destinations, as well as from my trips to Amsterdam, Poland, and Budapest, will all be uploaded... eventually. After this post, I am going to take a break from blogging for three weeks in order to plan and enjoy the very last bit of my time here in Europe. 

And so, I say Auf Wiedersehen for now. Check back in a month or so as I rapidly bring this blog up to date!

The U.S. Embassy's photo of us with Chancellor Merkel. I'm ten rows back, right of center

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Ah, it's good to live in the German capital. Fascinating sights, great events, plenty of parks, tons of nightlife, diverse neighborhoods, cheap prices, lots of interesting history... the list goes on and on. Not to mention that the country's best and most famous tourist attractions are all here. Among them: the German Reichstag, or Parliament building. And since it's just a subway ride away from me, I found myself there not once but twice within the space of a few days in late February. Two different American friends visiting me in Berlin meant two different trips for twice the amount of photos! 

The Reichstag is topped by this striking glass and steel dome

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With the internship phase of my program nearing its end, I've fully settled into the full-time working life here in Berlin and resigned myself to only the occasional trip outside the country. Unfortunately, that means I have "only" been to Poznan, Warsaw, Krakow, Amsterdam, Budapest, and Münster ever since I returned from Rome and started my internship in early March.

No matter, I've been keeping myself busy, in part by resuming my highly promising handball career! After my first handball course at my university was agonizingly cut short due to the closure of the university gym, I had to make do without the physical, funky basketball-soccer mashup of a sport in my life. Until recently, that is - in Germany, a new university semester began late last month, and so a new weekly handball course at a different gym started up along with it! I came back in style, scoring several goals my first night back out on the court. I can't wait to bring my talents up to the big leagues. 

And now, time to escape from the Alltag (daily routine) and time-travel back to late Febraury, when I was still in the land of my forefathers: Rome, Italy. My American friend Leah and I were wrapping up our brief blitz through Rome with a day at the Vatican, the world's smallest country, followed by a short trip to the Jewish district.

But first, some pictures I forgot to include in my post about our second day in Rome. This is another look at the Temple of Saturn, the oldest sacred place in rome (it was dedicated in 497 BC but later rebuilt)

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The month is February 2015, and today was the big day - I was going to see Coliseum! My friend Leah and I were in Rome for the second day of our three-day trip and we couldn't wait to see the famous ancient landmark. But first, why not stop at one of Rome's most impressive churches?

This is Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, first built in 432. Check out that gilded Renaissance ceiling

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