Hey everyone, happy new year 2016! Can’t believe time is flying so fast and it’s already mid January of 2016 now. So how did everyone celebrate your new year? I hope this new year will be one filled with love, joy and peace everyday!

So this is my first post in the new year and I would like to share with you all the experience of celebrating new year in Europe! I’ve achieved so many of my bucket lists and get alot of new experience from my trip. There’s so many first time experience and I’m really grateful that I’m able to achieve all this. First time sleeping in the airport overnight, first time travelling in Europe, first time staying in youth hostels, first time seeing the SNOW, first time counting down for new year in another country, first time watching an opera in a theater, first time drinking beer in the beer hall, first time eating dinner with strangers from different countries and so much more first time! Words just couldn’t fully express how excited I am experiencing all kinds of things during the trip.

First thing, guess where I went? Answer is……. Germany, Austria and Slovakia! After planning for 2 months, me and another girl friend started our trip for 13 days in 3 countries and 10 cities, with a tight budget of 500 pounds (and proud to say that we really sticked to our  budget while eating good food, staying at nice hostels and hotels and even bought souvenirs! :P). So basically I will divide my post into 3 parts according to the countries and tell you all more about our journey in each country.

So, the first country we landed on is Germany! 🙂 From day 1 to day 5 of our trip, we covered Frankfurt, Rothenburg Ob der Tauber, Fussen and Munich. Most of the people actually skipped Frankfurt or just do a layover at Frankfurt thinking that it is just a normal big city, but we actually stopped there for 1.5 days just to explore the city, and turns out Frankfurt is one of my favourite city in the trip! The night skyline view of Frankfurt is just so beautiful and the people there are really one of the friendliest people on earth! We joined one of the free walking tour and our tour guide was really nice! He showed us so much on Frankfurt, not only on the tourist side but also an alternative side of Frankfurt and we really learnt alot during the tour. Next, we moved on to Rothenburg, which is a beautiful midieval old town and we joined the famous Watchman Night tour there and learned alot on the history of the town. Then we continued our journey to Fussen where the fairy tale Neuschwanstein Castle was located. Apparently this is one of the castle that inspired Disney’s castle (how amazing is that)! The castle was really beautiful and how I wish I could live in there for only a day! 😛 Then we proceed to Munich! We celebrated New Year’s eve and New Year’s day there and it was the first time I had dinner with strangers (now friends :P), a cute couple of newly wed from Portugal and a German uncle! Oh and I tried the famous German sausages and pork knuckle here and it was really delicious! 😛 However, all shops were closed on New Year’s day and we were kind of sad. Malaysia is still the best when it comes to shopping! How I miss walking around One Utama till 10pm and my mamak outings till midnight! All shops here close really early, and even early on Sundays! 🙁 Nontheless I still love Germany alot and there’s so much more nice place to visit. I’ll definitely be back again one day Germany!

Next, we continue our trip to Austria. Austria is a really beautiful country. We started with Innsbruck. Innsbruck is a beautiful city near the Alps and the scenery was amazing! It wasnt snowing by the time we were there but you can see the mountains covered with snow and it was really beautiful! After that, we moved on to Salzburg, home of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and also where the filming of The Sound of Music took place! It was snowing when we arrived there and I was really really excited as it was my first time seeing snow in my entire life! We visited Mozart’s birthplace, took pictures infront of the Horse statue in Mirabell gardens which appeared in the Sound of Music movie and even took a furnicular and went up to the Untersberg Mountain which is part of the Berchtesgaden Alps! We also watched the Sound of Music movie again in the hostel lounge together with other travellers and this really reminded me on childhood memories. Do re mi fa so la ti do! 😛 Then, we continued our trip to the most beautiful lake town in Austria- Hallstatt! It was a long journey as we need to take a bus, then a train, then a ferry to reach the place. But once we arrived at the place, our jaws dropped immediately amazed by the beautiful views of the town! The whole town is so picturesque like a postcard! We continued our trip and stayed a night at Graz, the second largest city in Austria after Vienna! Graz was also a beautiful city which is also part of the UNESCO World Heritage but it was so foggy and raining when we arrived 🙁 And our last stop in Austria is Vienna, the city of music! Everywhere and everything in Vienna is filled with art and music and it is a really beautiful city. We even manage to watched an opera in the world famous State Opera house for only 3 euro! The opera was really good, especially the orchestra! In fact, Vienna is my favourite city for the whole trip as I really love the vibe of the place and I will definitely come back for a visit again!

The last stop of the trip was Bratislava, Slovakia. This wasnt part of our trip initially as we planned to fly back to London from Vienna. However, we found out that flying back from Bratislava is much more cheaper and the difference in the air fares could enable us to afford another night in Bratislava which means we get to visit one more city! And we really glad we did that as Bratislava was a really beautiful old town with alot of history. 🙂

So this marks the end of my Europe trip. Although it’s already a long long post, but its just a summary or a fraction of my trip as there is really too much to share for the trip. Travelling Europe really open my eyes to how beautiful God’s creation is and I really do learn and experience alot of new things. I’m looking forward to travel to more places soon and share my experience with all of you! 🙂

In the mean time, FINAL EXAMS is just a week away and its time to camp in the library again and do my revisions (suddenly feeling grateful that Surrey has a big library that operates 24hours a day! :P) So see you all soon after my finals!

Love,

Adeline

p/s: if you want to know more on my trip or have further inquiries do feel free to follow me on my instagram @ad3line_koo or drop me a message!