Hello friends! I finally have the stable internet, empty time, and energy to write up this post.

I know it’s not Sunday, but it’s probably better that I wrote this after visiting Prague rather than in the middle of it 🙂 Anyways, here’s what I’ve been up to!

---

🇫🇷 France (Paris)

As cliché as it is, I loved Paris!!! I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of things I want to do here, and I will absolutely come back to visit in the future.

Highlights

Walking

I loved how Paris is laid out into different “arrondissements” aka districts, each with its own character. And despite the super convenient metro system, the primary way to get around is walking. I could pretty much go anywhere I wanted by walking from the city center. And even if the train was slightly faster, it was often more pleasant (and free!) to just walk to my destinations instead.

Food culture

The French have it figured out when it comes to food. My favorite parts of French food culture:

• Eating a pastry and drinking an espresso for breakfast every morning

• Not feeling rushed to wrap up my meal and open up the table for someone else

• Delicious, multi-course lunches at bargain prices

• Bread… bread… more bread…

Language

Even though I didn’t learn much French before coming here, it was relatively easy to pick up some French along the way.

1. English and French are similar, so you can kind of guess what things mean based on their latin roots / sounds

2. English borrows a lot of French words, so you recognize a lot of them already

3. People in Paris will actually speak to you in French, so you can practice as long as you don’t immediately nope out and switch to English

Other culture notes

• People are veryyy open with PDA

• French people are the ultimate chainsmokers 🚬 I read that 25% of people in France smoke (and it feels like more 💀)

• Parisians aren’t rude at all from my experience, everyone was quite nice

• People walk FAST; sidewalks be like the highway out there

• Croissants are freshly baked in the morning at opening time and in the afternoon around 4PM. Get them while they’re warm!

• Bread is incredibly well-priced. Croissants and baguettes are always around 1.50-2 Euros, regardless of how many accolades the place has won.

---

🇳🇱 Netherlands (Amsterdam, Utrecht, Gouda, Zaanse Schans)

Amsterdam has been on my bucket list for a while. It’s also a pretty small city, so it was the first time I went on a few day trips outside of the city I was staying in. I took the train out to Utrecht and Gouda (like the cheese), where I learned Gouda is pronounced more like How-Da with a guttural HHH sound. I also biked 20 km each way from Amsterdam to Zaanse Schans, which is famous for having a pretty row of traditional Dutch windmills.

Highlights

Canals

I thought that canals were just an Amsterdam thing, but it turns out canals are in every city in the Netherlands near water. I also saw more houseboats than I can count. How are there so many houseboats?? I guess they’re a good way to insure against rising sea levels in case the Netherlands goes underwater someday.

Biking

Years ago I binged videos from Not Just Bikes on the next-level cycling infrastructure in the country. It lived up to the hype. When I first arrived in Amsterdam, I didn’t expect to immediately confront 20,000 bikes whirring past me. I’m pretty sure bikers have right of way in almost all situations, because they were definitely not stopping for me while I nervously looked side to side before crossing the street.

I hopped on a bike myself for the first time in Utrecht, where I was able to get comfortable on a city bike while cruising along the Vecht river to the Castle De Haar, which is the biggest castle in the country. The following day, I spent all day biking from Amsterdam to Zaanse Schans, marveling at how smooth and well-paved all the bike paths were even in the middle of nowhere.

Cow

Other culture notes

• Dutch people have a reputation for being blunt / straightforward, but I don’t know if I really noticed it. Maybe it’s more of a work culture thing.

• There was zero language barrier. Dutch people speak four languages by default!!! English, German, French, and Dutch (obviously). And then they learn another language as an elective.

• Dutch food is on the plain side. Which isn’t a bad thing… for three days at least. It’s either fried, or it’s some combination of bread + simple topping (cheese, ham, sausage). There’s the stroopwafel, but I don’t think the average person eats that every day. There’s soup and raw herring too, but I didn’t get to try that.

• Amsterdam is also a very international city, and there was plenty of international cuisine, including Indonesian and Surinamese (former Dutch colonies). I ate at Indonesian places twice, and they were both quite good + a nice way to add some variety to the flavor situation.

---

🚃 Bonus: Sleeper train from Amsterdam to Prague

When I learned there was a cheap sleeper train going directly from Amsterdam to Prague, I thought it would be a convenient way to save money on accommodation and wake up in a new city. I write this now filled with regret. I was squeezed into a six-person cabin where three of us faced each other on each side. There was no room to stretch out our legs, leading a couple of my fellow passengers to pull their legs up to their chest, huddled over like a ball. I also had the (mis)fortune of being in the middle seat, meaning I had nothing to lean my head on.

Needless to say, I did not sleep well on that train.

---

🇨🇿 Czech Republic (Prague)

Twelve and a half excruciating hours later, I arrived in Prague. I grabbed a quick lunch, checked into my hostel, and promptly crashed for a couple of hours. After waking up, a couple of my roommates walked in. I struck up a conversation with them, learning they were Swedes visiting for a quick weekend trip. Apparently it only takes one hour to fly from Copenhagen (their closest airport) to Prague. We were joined shortly by a fellow American, and we all went out for dinner. I hung out with people from my hostel room in various combinations over the next few days, and it marked the most social I’d been up to this point on my trip.

Highlights

History

Prague is truly a city that was in the middle of it all. It changed hands so many times, from Bohemia, to the Holy Roman Empire, to the Austro-Hungarian empire, to Czechoslovakia, to the Nazi occupation, back to Czechoslovakia, and finally splitting into the separate nations of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Through it all, the architecture was remarkably well-preserved, and you can see all the different architectures styles reflected through hundreds of years of history.

Hearty food + Beer

I’ll be honest—I didn’t have high expectations for central European food. I assumed it would be a lot of meat and potatoes (correct), and that it would be bland (incorrect). The meat and potato dishes were quite good and much more flavorful than I expected.

Also, I have never seen more people drinking beer at lunch in my life. The Czech Republic is famous for its Pilsner beer, which you’ll see people drinking at all times of day in these huge 500ml glasses, each costing the equivalent of $3 or less. Luckily, my new American friend worked at a brewery, and I got an immersive crash course in beer over the next 2 days.

BEER FACTS 🍺 ✨ 

• There’s 4 basic steps to making beer: mixing the malt (aka any mixture of grains, including wheat, hops, barley, etc.), boiling it with water, filtering out the solids, and fermenting the liquid (so that microbes can convert the sugars to alcohol)

• The difference in light beer and dark beer comes down to the malt being roasted (similar to how hojicha is roasted green tea)

• Beer can be measured in something called “degrees plato” (like 17°, which I initially mistook for the temperature of the beer). This represents how much sugar and alcohol is in the beer.

Other culture notes

• I was initially a bit intimidated by Prague because it was my first central/eastern European country. I wasn’t sure what the people would be like and how the language situation would work out. In general, I found people to be friendly, and everyone I met could speak English. It did help warm people up when I made attempts to say Hello (Dobrý den) and Thank you (Děkuji) in Czech.

• The pub culture is real—on multiple occasions we went to pubs where people were playing live music AND guests were singing along!! It made for a very lively atmosphere. The first pub (U Fleků) I went to turned out to be the oldest brewery in Prague, founded in 1499 🤯 

• The Czech Republic uses its own currency still—the Czech Koruna. I think because of the government deficit, they weren’t able to join the Eurozone immediately upon joining the EU in 2004. But now that the Czech government is more prosperous and well-positioned to adopt the Euro, people don’t really want to. Luckily, I got away with using my credit card for everything, and didn’t have to do any currency conversions or ATM withdrawals just to get some Korunas.

---

General observations and reflections

• 👶 Average hostel age. Other travelers I run into in hostels are usually around their early-mid 20’s. A lot of people are younger than me, to my surprise. How are they funding these trips??

• 💰️ Financials. On that note, hearing about the financial situations of fellow travelers, many of whom are students or retail workers with minimal or negative savings, has made me extremely grateful for the financial security of working at my big tech job with a US salary. It really is a privilege to be able to sit in front of a computer, work 9-5 most days, and have the means to travel the world while still saving for retirement.

• ⛱️ PTO. On the other hand, Europeans have so much vacation. It seems like 25 days is the minimum, and some people have 60. I’m amazed by how well-traveled everyone is. It seems like after every person I talk to, I have to add another four places to my list of places to go. I can’t wait to go to the south of France, Spain, and Portugal. I swear I’m going to walk the El Camino one day!!!

• 🔋 Energy management. Now that I have wayyy more time in my day-to-day, I’ve realized how important it is to manage not just my time, but my energy. If I’m pooped from walking for seven hours the first half of the day, it’s totally fine to chill in the hostel for 2-3 hours even though it’s only 5 pm. I don’t have to maximize every minute, and it makes my next day significantly better if I’m able to rest up well the night before.

• ❤️ Learning about what I enjoy vs don’t enjoy as much. I really like trying new foods, walking through cities, and learning about culture / history. I don’t care as much for art museums, drinking, and partying. But hey, everything blends together so I’m not writing anything off.

---

Alright, that was a monster of a newsletter to write up. There’s just too much to condense into one post, but at least I tried!

See you next week 👋 

Tim

---