My travel companion had disembarked in Budapest and decided to let me sleep, therefor leaving the door unlocked. The conductor asked me to secure the latch, which I complied with drowsily. And in hindsight, I am grateful that he did ensure that I did.
This is not necessarily a family friendly restaurant. But the food made more than up for it.
And even though I did not speak Turkish and they did not speak German or English, we ended up having a full fledged conversation with a mixture of basic words and body language.
After Athens, I took a train to Thessaloniki (Greece) and from there a night train to Istanbul where I arrived on Sep 20th. And honestly, even though the weather was grey and gloomy, the city and its people were amazing.
Athens confronted me with a problem that I had anticipated earlier but had been spared: Language barriers
In December, my parents, my baby sister, my younger brother and his girlfriend decided to join us in New York for the holidays. It honestly meant a lot to have them in our new home town and have the people that mean so much to me get to spend time together.
We were lucky enough that by the end of the year I still had a good portion of vacation days left over. Paired with German national holidays and weekends, I was able to join him in New York for a little over 3 weeks throughout December which was a big luxury.
Our first Christmas together was a roller-coaster. We were living in Hamburg (Germany) at the time and had made plans to spend Christmas eve with my younger siblings and their significant others at our family home on the outskirts of Berlin.
I first encountered the legend of the German Christmas pickle as a German exchange student in Florida when I was 16.
Every family has different Christmas traditions. Here is a list of a couple that I personally like.
I'll admit it. I'm a sucker for doughnuts. It's a truly guilty pleasure of mine and please don't bring up the actually calorie count.
On the ferry, I encountered two other backpackers around my age, one from Sweden and one from Japan. We had interesting exchanges about our home countries and travel experiences over dinner on deck, sharing our travel provisions.
Wandering Explorer Travel 