Highlight of my 2 week trip:

TF Nation: Great convention with great people. What is that tag on tumblr for it though? I need to trace all the fun convention post.

• Flight from London to Thessaloniki: Delayed for two hours. My first time with cheap flight (Ryanair) didn’t start well.

When I arrived Thessaloniki, it was almost midnight. I hop on bus 78 and stared at the marquee sign intensely so that I won’t miss my stop… and I missed it. Granted, the sign is running so fast, the name of each stop only appeared for 1 second before they disappeared, it’s making me a bit dizzy… But I do remember how to say “(bus) stop” in greek after hearing it for dozens of times:
στάση! stasi!

When I realized the bus went from the middle of nowhere, to the city center, then to the middle of nowhere again, I asked the bus driver about my stop and know the terrifying truth.

I was lucky that the bus driver can speak english so he can explain things to me, and he was like “Oh no, you already missed it! But don’t worry, it will take 10 min for us to get to the terminal, then another 10 min to round back and reach your stop.”  He even filled water for me when we reach the bus terminal. We even chatted a bit on the way back toward the airport. He said he works the airport night route every summer. Thanks to him, I was less worried.

After parted with the bus driver, I finally met @missmonty in 1AM ;w;

We had such great time. I love
Thessaloniki. It has a very long and abundant history, and historical buildings are literally everywhere. We saw so many places. The port where the White Tower sited is beautiful and I really love how people all go out and chill along the port at night. The traditional market is great, I bought sponge, coffee, olive. @missmonty gave me candy and herbs. I had great fun and will post pictures later.

• The flight to Berlin (Ryanair) is mostly on time. It was a bit late taking off, but the pilot made it to the destination on time.

Short thought about Berlin people: they are friendly, but they are as bad in directions as I am. Two out of three times when I asked them directions, they all tried very hard to help, but they both pointed to the wrong direction.

Berlin zoo is great. And it’s fun to watch german (and european) people watching panda (it’s the only exhibition area equipped with guards) lol

I also went to
Brandenburg Gate, the East Gallery, the Museumsinsel (I visited three out of the five museums there… my legs were dying), and walked through the Tiergarten.

The Döner Kebab

shops are travelers’ savior. I lived by them during my stay and the chef of the döner kebab

shop in the U-bahn Adenauerplatz 

gave me an extra large portion the day before I left.

• The flight to Amsterdam (Easyjet) is fucking canceled.

It was a mess because we all passed the boarding pass check, and everyone had already waited for more than 1 hour before they announced the cancellation because of a braked system problem of the plane. Well, I guess it’s better than finding it out when we are landing.

Fortunately, the
Schönefeld

airport has real free wifi, so I managed to get on the Easyjet app to change my flight to the day after. Their app even assigned a hotel to me so I was relocated to the Hotel (a Holidayinn hotel near the airport) and got accommodation and food for free.

Do I need to worry about the fact that Easyjet has a SOP for this?

• The plane to Amsterdam next day was delayed almost a hour. Wtf Easyjet?

Short thought about Amsterdam people: they are so nice like wow how???

When I arrived Amsterdam, it was almost 10PM. To go from the airport to the city through train is easy enough, but it was a bit scary to wait in an empty bus station (another terminal stop in an open space) in 10PM. Fortunately, a lady came to wait for the same bus, and she was such a kind person. She told me where the ticket machine was, which was in a small hall 50m away, and she even walked me there and waited at the doorway because it’s late so she wanted to look after me.

The Amsterdam bus sigh was easy to read so I didn’t miss my stop this time.

In the next day, I have only half a day to visit the city. Originally, I planned to visit the Van Gogh Museum, but turned out you have to line up for at least 2.5hrs for the tickets first, then you might not be allowed in for that day because of crowd control.

I gave up visiting Van Gogh Museum, but where to go? When I sit near the museum and searched for alternatives (the Van Gogh Museum has free wifi, wow!), a guy came talking to me. At first I was very suspicious (a man? start chatting with a single female asain tourist??), but turned out he genuinely just wanted to showed me the city and nothing weird at all. So I had an unexpected but great city day tour before I had to head for the airport???

• And my plane was half hour late to Taipei, but ugh, still better than the previous delay/cancellation.
• This is my first experience with cheap flight. Not recommended at all.