In December 2018, I was crumbling. Nothing in my life felt like it was going right, I despised my job, and my anxiety was at an all time high. I had just declined an offer to work in Sydney, Australia with my company at the time for [a minimum of] 2 years; an offer that I originally couldn’t have been more excited for. When I got the official offer NOTHING about it was appealing. It was so bad that even one of the firm partners who was originally encouraging me to go said, “Why would anyone accept an offer like that?”

I was beyond depressed about it. I had been really looking forward to an opportunity like that and in a matter of minutes my dreams were crushed. I moped around for a few days at home and started to get over it, but deep down I was still annoyed with the entire situation. At this point, I was suppose to be off for Christmas break, but there I was working at 11PM for a company who just screwed me over when I was willing to move across the globe for them. There was only one way I knew how to make myself feel better in that moment: book a trip.

One of my coworkers was constantly telling me I needed to go on a Contiki tour, so I gave it a quick Google and immediately decided this is what I would be doing. Through my research, Contiki seemed perfect for me. Since I would be traveling to Europe solo, it would be comforting to be a part of a larger group while still having my own freedom to do what I wanted in the free time and such. Having the tour also added stops and sights I normally wouldn’t have seen, so this enticed me even more. Finally, it was a tour for 18-35 year olds, so I would be traveling with my peers and we would all be relatively at the same pace throughout the trip.

Click here to read my blog post 11 Unexpected Aspects About Contiki to better understand Contiki!

I searched through the trips they had to offer and decided on the Eastern Trail (the name has changed since I went!). This tour started in Vienna, Austria and took you throughout Central/Eastern Europe ending in Rome, Italy. Perfect, sign me up! I was already starting to feel better about myself.

I booked it without hesitation. Then it was time for the difficult part: breaking the news to my parents that I just booked a 2-week [kind of] solo vacation to Europe. Spoiler Alert: they were not as excited as I was. My dad even complained to our dental hygienist about it!!! They did know I really needed this trip though, so they got over their initial shock and were eventually excited and happy for me. Aaaaand they were also pretty happy it was 2 weeks in Europe rather than 2 years in Australia.

As my excitement grew, I tried convincing my brother to come on the trip with me. I kept talking about it in front of him and [our mutual friend but really] my brother’s best friend, Doug. Eventually, Doug asked if I cared if he booked it and came along. Of course not! The more the merrier. My brother pretended like he might be interested for a little while and then gave us a hard no as it got closer. At first I was nervous what people would think that my brother’s best friend and me were going on vacation together. I decided to ignore everyone’s comments and not let it bother me and happily continued my trip planning. Honestly, I’m happy I ignored everyone’s comments because we had the BEST time together and it wasn’t weird at all.

My anxiety being a big factor, I wanted to be in Europe a few days before the tour even started. In my head, the closer I was to Vienna, the lesser of a chance I’d miss or be late to the tour start and meet up. I decided on Paris, France and Doug liked the idea, so we booked our flights to Paris and then got flights to Austria the day the Contiki tour actually started.

You can read all about our Paris adventure here! For this post, I’ll focus just on the actual Contiki portion of our trip. I’ll also save you all the pages of reading in one sitting and split the post up into a little series, so sit back and enjoy!

Disclaimer: all the bar and restaurant names are based off of my shit memory and lots of Google map searching if I didn’t write it down. I didn’t write a name in any of my blog posts unless I was at least 95% confident that it was correct to try and avoid steering anyone in the wrong direction.

Day 1: Vienna, Austria

A few days before our tour was scheduled to start, we had gotten an email from our tour manager, Rob, giving us all of the details, and we we’re so excited. Doug and I checked out of our Parisian hotel and hopped on the train to get to Charles de Gaulle Airport. We made a rooky, tourist mistake and didn’t read the signs properly about which type of ticket we needed, so obviously we bought the wrong one. The attendants came around to check tickets and they scolded us for not having the correct tickets and rather than give us the option to just purchase the correct ones we were hit with a 50 euro fine EACH. Oh and cash only, so Doug had to pick up this one because I barely ever travel with cash on me, which by the way is really dumb and I recommend you have cash on your at all times for situations like this one!

After our train debacle, we got to the airport and boarded our flight to Vienna. It was a relatively short flight and honestly, I was so exhausted, I barely remember it. Pretty sure I ate a sandwich on the flight, which was cool because flights in the US give you like one cookie or a half filled mini bag of pretzels.

We landed in Vienna and caught a train to get to the part of the city we needed to meet up with the Contiki tour. We were there a few hours earlier than we had to be to meet the group, so after we checked in and found our rooms, we walked around a bit and checked out some of the shops near by. I forgot to bring a bath towel for the hostels, so I had to go buy one before I was in a jam without a towel.

After we walked around Vienna and I purchased my towel, we head back to our rooms to meet our roomies for the night. I had three girls from New Jersey (New York’s neighboring state). What are the chances! We got acquainted, picked our beds and head downstairs to have our on-boarding session with the tour manager. We were told that we were joining a previous Contiki group in the middle of their tour, so there were people leaving and we were replacing them. Then we were told that some of us would also be leaving before the full tour was over; Doug and me included. If we knew that we were joining mid trip, we probably would have just booked the entire tour, but too late now.

We finished the session and head to our included dinner down the street to get acquainted with the rest of the tour group. Everyone basically had their friend groups figured out from the first portion of the trip, so it ended up being almost all of the new group of people at one table. This didn’t really bother me too much being we didn’t know anyone anyway, so we all got to chat and get to know each other better. The tables filled up pretty quickly being there were 50 people, and there was one table left that was for two people. Doug got seated there, so he had a nice one on one with another member of the group LOL. I felt sort of guilty abandoning him to the small table, but I wanted to meet new people, so I took a selfish. We were served a traditional schnitzel dinner at Restaurant Kaiser’s, and it was fantastic. Off to a wonderful start!

After dinner, we were all excited to keep talking and mingling so everyone went back to the hostel lobby & bar. The service there was atrocious. The bartender was ignoring groups of people and just really rude. A bunch of us decided we could just go get our own alcohol down the street and come back, so that’s exactly what we did. We bought a few bottles and went back to the hostel to keep mingling. This is where I got acquainted with an Aussie named Stew. We still chat regularly, so shout out to Stew! Thanks for being one of my first Australian mates! (That’s me trying to be cool and use Australian lingo). At this point, my jet lag started kicking in after a little bit, and I knew it was time to go back to the room and get some sleep. We had an early start the next day, and I didn’t want to be exhausted and cranky.

Vienna, Austria notes:

– Where we stayed: A&O Vienna Hauptbahnhof
– Where we ate: Restaurant Kaiser’s

Day 2: Czech Republic, Auschwitz, and Krakow, Poland

We left the hostel and loaded onto the tour bus before 8AM to begin our journey to Krakow, Poland, but we were making two stops before arriving in Krakow. The first stop was in the Czech Republic and then we would be making a stop at Auschwitz for a tour. The drive was about 5 hours, so we had plenty of time to catch up sleep and relax on the bus. For anyone who doesn’t know (and I really hope that’s no one reading this), Auschwitz is one of the most infamous concentration camps that was utilized by Nazi Germany during World War II.

Everyone was half asleep (or fully asleep) on the bus for the first leg of the trip, so it was a pretty quiet ride. This is where we were introduced to the wakeup song. For anyone who hasn’t taken a tour with Contiki before there are two songs that will stick with you for the rest of your life: (1) the wake up song, which will make you cringe forever going forward and (2) the day song, which will make you get emotional and maybe shed a tear when it comes on. The group that had started the tour already knew what the songs were, but for us newbies, it would be a rude awakening…literally. Our wakeup song was “Circle of Life” from Disney’s The Lion King. Beautiful song from an amazing movie BUT did you ever wake up to “NAAAAAANTS IGONYAMA BAGITHI BABAAA” on full volume? Doubt it. It was soul shocking, but it worked and woke everyone right up! Rob, the tour manager, would play that song anytime we had a few hours on the bus and people fell asleep. On a less intense note, our day song was “Wake Me Up” by Avicii. Anytime that song comes on now, I can’t help but smile and miss my Contiki friends around the world.

After we were all woken up by the sounds of The Lion King, we were told we arrived in the Czech Republic and had a bit of time to shop, get some food, snacks, and exchange our money. We went to a mall/shopping center type place. A few of us ran to the grocery store that was inside and loaded up on snacks for the next few days. Everything was pretty inexpensive there from what I remember, so we got a decent amount. We wandered around the shopping area for a bit longer, exchanged our currency to get some Polish zloty to spend in Krakow.

It was time to get back to the bus and start the second leg of the bus ride for the day. Off to Poland!

*In order to give Auschwitz the time and respect it deserves, I will continue Day 2 in the following blog post.

---

Continue reading my journey throughout my entire Contiki series! (I know, who do I think I am, Alexandre Dumas or something?)

Contiki Series
Part I: Why Contiki? Day 1 & 2: Vienna, Austria
Part II: Day 2: Auschwitz, Poland
Part III: Day 2 & 3: Krakow, Poland
Part IV: Day 4: Banska Bystrica, Slovakia and Budapest, Hungary
Part V: Day 6: Lake Bled & Ljubljana, Slovenia
Part VI: Day 7: Venice, Italy
Part VII: Day 8 & 9: Rome, Italy