As usual, a LOT has happened since I last had a chance to write anything! We finished up in Budapest and moved on to Croatia, setting up camp in Zagreb giving us easy access to Plitvice Lakes National Park. The park was an absolute dream come true. I've never seen any place on earth that quite matches the amazing splendor of those waterfalls and lakes. It's hard to describe, but you can literally see waterfalls in every direction, stacked up on top of each other emptying into emerald green lakes surrounded by mountain forests. It really is a little slice of heaven. One of the best moments of this trip, and probably one of the more special moments in my life happened here. We were walking around on this huge loop around some of the lakes and took a seemingly random turn onto this little footbridge over the lakes and suddenly noticed a big 70-100 foot waterfall splashing right around the corner, walk a little further and you can see an entire wall of waterfalls this height stretching for hundreds of meters. I was kind of crouched there taking a picture, and the sun came out and I just stopped and stared and listened to this surreal place. I don't know if one place has ever impacted me so much, but I hope some of my photos and videos can help share what I felt and saw. I hope everyone goes there someday!
After the Plitvice, we had a long day of train rides, crossing the borders of 3 different countries to make our way to Vienna. I definitely felt at home there, in just a matter of an hour I was already thinking "I could probably live here". Vienna is a city passionate about music, cinema and cars - it really doesn't take much more than that to get along with me :) I also got to see some of Mozart's old stomping grounds. I visited his grave (which was a huge pain to find!) and then later in the day saw a room in the Schonbrunn palace where he performed his first concert! Finally, later that night I heard some of his music performed live in a famous music hall where Brahms had some of his most important concerts. Great day! Oh, and beside Mozart playing there, the palace was AMAZING. After exploring the palace halls and grounds we went off to a modern art museum and saw some truly weird stuff. One of the highlights for me was a book called One Million Years which just had a bunch of years listed in numeric order and a pair of headphones attached to it. Curiously, I picked up the headphones to see what was going on, and there were two voices taking turns reading the years off the pages, they were somewhere around 500000 BC and just going on and on! I couldn't help but smile. There were other things worth noting, but I don't want to take up any more space here explaining them!
Prague has been mind blowing, but I'll save those stories for next time. Heading to Barcelona in the morning and then Saturday I'll be at the Camp Nou for FC Barcelona versus Levante - truly going to be another dream come true. I'll see everyone back home in less than two weeks!
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