A post two years too late...

Digging around my computer, the following is what I meant to publish in Aug 2008, as the conclusion to my 3 month long internship at Karlsruhe, Germany:

Where in the world was I?

I know it's absurd to blog about blogging, but here's my rant: as an inherently lazy person I really cannot keep up a blog, especially when I unintentionally became a professional travel information researcher this summer, thus spending most of my internet time on sites like wikitravel.org - so here is the excuse for the absence of blogs...

Anyway, as I'm writing this in the Karlsruhe Hbf waiting for my train to Frankfurt airport, my summer extravaganza in Europe is drawing to an end, and as of my last check in Google Earth, I had traveled, point to point between cities, about 1/4 of the Earth's circumference on the train. Where was I?

• 1^st weekend: went nowhere. I did walk around the city of Karlsruhe a little bit, but my first weekend is nevertheless unique, as it's the only weekend which I did not go traveling. ;)


• 2^nd weekend: Strasbourg - close enough to Karlsruhe, thus only a Saturday day trip.


• 3^rd weekend: Köln (or... Cologne).


• 4^th weekend: Had a quick look at Ulm, then spent a night in Lindau am Bodensee, the little island where one can see the Swiss Alps across the lake on a no so cloudy day, and then Neuschwanstein.


• 5^th weekend: Intended to go to München, but miscalculated the time, and ended up spending too much time on the way to München (in Würzburg and Rothenburg ob der Tauber) and had only less than a day in München...


• 6^th weekend: Berlin for a 3-day trip, but still far from long enough...


• 7^th weekend: The weekend for the Heidelberg meeting arranged by DAAD, but I went first to Giessen to visit a physics lab, another program arranged by DAAD. Then on Sunday, took a day trip in Hamburg.


• 8^th weekend: Vienna, but also stopped by about 3 hours in Salzburg on my way there.


• 9^th weekend: A long "weekend" in Italy. Actually stopped by a day in München first (to make up for my short visit the first time), then went to Venice, Florence, and finally Rome.
  
• 10^th weekend: Recuperating from my trip in Italy, so only took a short day trip south: checked out the so-called highest waterfall in Germany in Triberg, then chilled out in the Bodensee again, but this time in the west side, in Konstanz (Lindau was on the very east). And from Konstanz I took a short trip to Insel Mainau, the Swedish flower island.
  
• 11^th weekend: Paris. Yet another 3-days-but-far-far-from-enough-weekend-trip.
  
• 12^th weekend: Day trip to Dresden on Saturday with a short excursion to Leipzig (for Bach, of course), then attended the Volodos concert (Scriabin, Schumann and Liszt) in the Salzburg Festival (in Salzburg, of course!), then went to a nearby lake, Königssee.
  
• 13^th weekend: Last weekend... went to Salzburg on Friday night yet again for a lieder concert (Brahms Op.32 and Op.33) with Thomas Quastoff and András Schiff, then on Saturday, two quick trips in Aachen (where I brought a prodigious amount of chocolate) and Baden-Baden. On Sunday, walked in Koblenz a little bit, then took a cruise down the Rhine. Then, of course, spent a sleepless night (because of my 7am flight) in the Frankfurt airport.
  

So, that's as much ground as I could cover in 13 weekends (plus a few weekdays), as much Europe as I could absorb in 3 months, as much money as I could afford in traveling, and certainly as much energy as I could spend before I need a long, restful break of doing nothing to recover from the constant on-the-road-ness. I'm falling in love with Europe, but...

I'm glad to be home again.