Trip Segments:

• Flight to Vienna via Amsterdam on KLM
• A marathon day in Vienna
• Budapest: Places I’ve Been Before and Some New
• Prague: Making Amends when you didn’t plan far enough ahead
• Agglomeration of Central European Food
• Nuremberg: But we were all actually just exhausted at this point
• Christmas Markets in general and between cities
• Bus to Munich, Lufthansa lounge Munich, Munich to Frankfurt, Frankfurt lounge
• United 777-300ER Polaris Seats in Business Class, Frankfurt to San Francisco

Welcome to my trip report of the first vacation I took after starting work: a group trip to the central European cities of Vienna, Budapest, Prague, and Nuremberg. This trip was planned in a rather interesting way, since we purchased our flights before really deciding on anything else. I’ll describe why we booked our flights first and how, and follow that up with how we planned the rest of our trip between the cities.

The story starts on Friday before Labor Day in 2017, the hottest day of the decade. Temperatures had skyrocketed to 104F in downtown San Francisco and had stayed there until about 5 p.m., when I left my office to meet a friend for an early dinner. I checked updates to a couple of travel blogs, and one of the posts absolutely shocked me. United Airlines had filed a business class fare from Munich to San Francisco (SFO) priced at just $900 roundtrip! This was the first time I’d seen anything like this deal, and I scrambled to find the first two reasonable dates that would come to me. First, I remembered that Christmas Markets were a big deal in Europe in December, but I didn’t want to go too late in the month that I’d miss various Christmas festivities with my friends and family at home. So I picked a Sunday, December 10th for my flight from Munich to San Francisco. I also made sure to book my connection through Frankfurt, so that I could fly on one of United’s 777-300ER aircraft that had their new business class seats. I booked my return as a redeye departing the evening of Friday February 16th, the Saturday before the long President’s Day weekend that year. I still had to get a flight from SFO to Europe, but I left that for later as I joined my friend for ramen (which, you can imagine, was a horrible idea on such a hot day!)

I started researching different cities and their Christmas markets, trying to build a 1-week itinerary that would end in Munich. Less than a week after booking my business class ticket, I was doing some planning over at my friends’ place and three of them mentioned that they had a couple friends studying abroad in Germany that semester, and might be interested in joining me. We started brainstorming together the cities we wanted to go through, probably three or four. In the end we chose four cities, skipping Munich entirely becasue two of my three friends had already been there, in adddition to the study abroad students. First was Vienna, which was the former seat of the Austro-Hungarian empire and a prominent classical music hub. Second was Budapest, which I pushed because I had studied abroad there and could infuse the visit with local touches, but still had things there I’d never seen. Third was Prague, which we’d heard was an overall gorgeous city. Lastly was Nuremberg, because it was a short hop from the students in Berlin, and reportedly hosted Europe’s oldest and largest Christmas market. It was also the most convenient spot for the study abroad students, since they just had to take a quick bus or train in instead of having to fly.

Early the morning of our departure, we would take a bus from Nuremberg straight to Munich airport, and fly out from there. So the task for our flights was to find one where the return leg would depart from Munich airport around 10 a.m., when my flight was also due to depart. Fortunately this was easy, since Delta had a multi-city economy fare for $550 from SFO to Vienna via Amsterdam on Friday December 1st, then from Munich to SFO via Atlanta on Sunday December 10th. The flight from Munich to Atlanta departed at 9:55 a.m., which lined up perfectly with my 10 a.m. departure. I followed up by booking my own ticket with KLM, which put me on the same flights from SFO to Vienna via Amsterdam on December 1st, but took me back from Munich on February 20th instead, so that I could get home after flying back to Munich on the return flight of my business class ticket. This was fantastic, since I’d be flying to Europe with my three friends, and we wouldn’t have to part ways until flying home out of the Munich airport. From there, we met a couple more times to book AirBnBs and plan itineraries for the cities we’d be visiting. My musically-inclined friend had ambitious plans for Vienna, and I took the planning for Budapest and Nuremberg while my two other friends came up with something for Prague. By the time the trip rolled around, we were all really excited to travel, and my friends were thrilled about seeing their friends on study abroad as well!