Hi! I'm Andrea Ahlers. I'm from Salina, Kansas, and in May I graduated from Kansas State in elementary education. In August I started my very first year teaching second grade (twenty-two seven-year-olds, one class hamster, zero sleep). But before all that, my roommate of three years, Meredith Miranda, and I did the thing we had been talking about since freshman year: we strapped on backpacks and spent three weeks in Europe on Eurail passes.

Meredith is from Wichita. She graduated the same weekend in accounting, which is why she was in charge of the money and I was in charge of getting us lost. She started at a firm in Kansas City in August, so we're both Real Grown-Ups now, supposedly. This page is so we remember it, and so our friends who are going next summer can learn from our mistakes. There are a lot of mistakes.

We each shot about five rolls of film. The pictures here are the ones I scanned at school. Click a little one to see it bigger.

THE ROUTE

Our passes were the 21-day Eurail Youthpass (you have to be under 26, and it's second class, which is totally fine). You get them stamped at the station the first time you use them, so we did it in Amsterdam on June 3 and they ran out on June 23. After that you just hop on most trains and show the pass when the conductor comes by. Night trains and fast trains cost extra for the seat or bunk.

CITY BY CITY

AMSTERDAM
We landed jet-lagged and stupid and almost got run over by bicycles about nine times in the first hour. The bikes have their own lanes and they DO NOT STOP. Canals everywhere, tall skinny houses leaning on each other, flowers in every window. We stood in line an hour for the Anne Frank House and it was worth every minute. Neither of us said anything for a long time after. The Rijksmuseum the next day: the big Rembrandt, The Night Watch, is a lot bigger than you'd think.

BRUSSELS
One night, basically just to eat. The Grand-Place at night is the prettiest square I've ever seen, with gold on all the old buildings. Waffles from a stand, hot. Fries in a paper cone WITH MAYONNAISE, which sounds gross and is not. We went to see the famous little statue of the boy and he is about two feet tall. That's it. That's the statue.

PARIS

Three days and we could have stayed a month. The Louvre (we got lost, of course, and found the Mona Lisa by following everybody), Notre-Dame, and the steps up to Sacré-Coeur, where you can see the whole city. On Monday night we bought a baguette and a hunk of cheese and sat on the grass of the Champ de Mars, the long lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower, and waited for it to get dark, which in June in Paris is about ten o'clock. When the lights came on everybody on the lawn clapped. A nice man from Denmark took our picture. Meredith's nose is not that red. Mine is.

INTERLAKEN & THE LAUTERBRUNNEN VALLEY

The best place on the whole trip, and we're both from Kansas, so mountains are a big deal to us. On Thursday we took the little train up the Lauterbrunnen valley, which is flat and green on the bottom with gray cliffs going straight up on both sides, like somebody cut it with a knife. A waterfall called Staubbach Falls comes off the top of the cliff and falls almost a thousand feet, and it's so thin that it turns into mist before it hits the bottom. We walked around under it in the spray. Cows with bells. Window boxes full of red geraniums on every single chalet. I am not exaggerating. Switzerland was also the most expensive place we went, so we lived on bread, cheese and chocolate from the grocery store, which honestly was not a sacrifice.

VENICE

No cars. None. The streets are canals and the buses are boats. We were way too poor for a gondola ride (look up the price and then sit down), so we stood on the little bridges and watched other people ride. This is my favorite picture from the whole trip: laundry hanging over the canal and a gondolier in his striped shirt. Saint Mark's Square has more pigeons than people, and there are a LOT of people. We got lost every time we left the hostel. Everybody does. You just keep walking until you hit water.

FLORENCE

We climbed all 463 steps to the top of the Duomo (the big red dome) and I thought I was going to die about halfway, and then you come out on top and all of Florence is red roofs. Michelangelo's David is in a museum with a long line, and he is HUGE and his hands are too big on purpose. The Ponte Vecchio is a bridge with little jewelry shops built right on it. Then there is our hostel room. Eight beds, eight backpacks, and by the second morning it looked like the backpacks had exploded. Meredith strung a clothesline between the bunks for our socks. That green shutter opened right onto the rooftops.

ROME
Hot. So hot. We drank from the little fountains on the street corners, which everybody does, and the water is cold and fine. The Colosseum, the Forum, the Vatican (dress code: shoulders and knees covered, so bring a long skirt), the Sistine Chapel ceiling, which made my neck hurt and was worth it. We threw coins in the Trevi Fountain over our shoulders, which means we'll come back. And gelato twice a day, minimum. Meredith's favorite was lemon. Mine was everything.

THE NIGHT TRAIN

We said we would never speak of it. We lied.

Saturday night, June 19, Rome to Munich. We had reserved couchettes, which are little compartments with six fold-down bunks, three on each side. Ours turned out to have four other people in it already, plus all their stuff, plus a man who had brought what smelled like an entire salami for dinner. The bunks are folded up as seats until everybody agrees to go to bed, and nobody would agree. So we sat. The window was stuck halfway open. The man with the salami snored like a lawn mower from about eleven o'clock on. At one stop a woman got on with a cat in a basket. Meredith, who can sleep anywhere, fell asleep sitting up with her fleece wadded under her neck before we even got out of Rome, and slept like that all the way into the mountains. I took this picture at about 2 a.m. out of pure jealousy. Then I did not sleep at all. When the sun came up we were going through the Alps and it was so beautiful I almost forgave everybody.

MUNICH
Clean, green and orderly, and after Italy that felt like a vacation from our vacation. We watched the little figures dance in the clock tower at the Marienplatz, sat at a long table in a beer garden under chestnut trees where they serve beer in glasses as big as your head (we split one, okay, two), and walked through the English Garden, which is a giant park with a river running through it. Then a whole day on the train back to Amsterdam, along the Rhine with castles up on the hills, which I watched the entire time with my face on the window.

WHAT WE SPENT

This is what each of us spent on beds, food, museums and little stuff, not counting the plane tickets (graduation presents, thank you Moms and Dads) or the Eurail pass. Meredith kept track of every single coin in a notebook, because she is an accountant and she can't help it. The dollars are about what we got at the exchange window in June.

Plus one night on the train and one on the plane, which makes 21. Yes, half a million lire. You get used to it. A thousand lire was about 54 cents, so a 3,000-lire gelato was about a buck and a half. About the euro: it's real, but only on paper so far. Shops show prices in euros next to the francs or lire or marks, and you pay in the old money. The coins and bills won't come for a couple more years, and Switzerland isn't in it at all.

WHAT WE PACKED (AND WHAT WE MAILED HOME)

HOSTEL MANNERS

1. Pack your bag the night before if you're leaving early. Nobody wants to hear your plastic bags rustling at 5 a.m.
2. No overhead light after lights-out. Bring a little flashlight.
3. Your stuff stays on your bed or in your locker, not spread across four beds. (We failed this one in Florence. See picture.)
4. Talk to people! We met girls from Australia, Japan, Canada and Ohio, and got the best tips from them.
5. Wear flip-flops in the showers.
6. Check the curfew. Some hostels lock the door at midnight and they mean it.