Yep, food poisoning.

That awful, horrible experience where your body just cannot handle whatever food you put in it and it revolts in the worst possible way.

This is exactly what happened to me on my first trip ever to Europe and my first trip to Germany in June of 2014 (aka the trip that started my travel addiction).

Even though it was pretty gross and terrible getting food poisoning at the time, it’s a stupid hilarious story to talk about today. And it really made my trip memorable.

So, during the summer of 2014, a group of about 16 students from good ole’ Minnesota boarded a (very large) plane, hopped across the big pond called the Atlantic Ocean and landed in Frankfurt, Germany.

My first trip out of the United States (other than Canada, which, my hometown is like 2.5 hours away from; so not exciting).

Anyways, it was about halfway through the trip and we had been there for about 5 days.

We had visited the picturesque village of Rothenburg, the exciting Marienplatz of Munich, the somber concentration camp Dachau, and my favorite city of Salzburg.

The next day was going to be a long drive from Salzburg, Austria to Neuschwanstein Castle and Lucerne, Switzerland; about a 5 hour ride.

The evening before we were to leave, we all had dinner at the same restaurant in some small town outside of Salzburg. Usually when a group of students are on the same tour, we all eat the same dinner because it’s usually a planned meal that’s already included in the tour price.

You can maybe guess where this is going. 

I can distinctly remember exactly what we ate that night: very, very, watery mashed potatoes, nasty sauerkraut (no apologies to the people who like this shit), and a piece of turkey.

The next day, we all were instructed to wake up early, get our stuff packed up in the coach bus, and get comfortable for the long ride to Neuschwanstein Castle.

About 1 hour or so into the drive, it started to hit people. The food poisoning, that is.

The first to suffer was a friend of mine. She started to feel not so great and went up to the front of the bus where Frau, my german teacher, was sitting. This is how the conversation went:

Friend: Frau, I really need to go to the bathroom, is there any way we could stop soon?

Frau: *Looks expectantly at the bus driver who is eavesdropping*

Bus driver: We aren’t stopping for another hour or so.

Friend: *staring intensely at the bus driver* Um, no, we need to stop… NOW. 

The bus driver then proceeded to pull into the nearest gas station so she could get off and go to the bathroom.

That’s when it hit me. I immediately needed to go to the bathroom or else I was literally going to shit my pants. No joke.

I pretty much sprinted off the bus into the gas station where my friend was just coming out of the one person bathroom and after one look at each other, we both knew exactly what was happening.

After relieving myself of the awful feeling that I was going to defecate in front of the entire world, I came out of the bathroom to find the line outside getting longer.

And everyone that was in line was from the bus.

So clearly something was not right.

Once everyone in line was done going to the bathroom, we all got back on the bus and resumed our ride to Neuschwanstein.

It was only about another half hour into the ride that more people started getting sick.

Needless to say, something we all ate wasn’t sitting right.

Literally everyone on the bus had food poisoning except for the one vegetarian and the girl that didn’t feel good at dinner so she didn’t eat.

After making some calls and doing some investigating, Frau uncovered the culprit of our food poisoning: the turkey we all ate was under-cooked.

Bullshit.

The ride that was supposed to be around 5 hours ended up being more like 7 hours because the bus had to make pitstops at restrooms so often.

It’s kinda hilarious. People who were waiting in line to go to the bathroom would have their chance in the restroom, do their business, and then just get right back in line to go again.

AND, to top it all off, when we arrived at Neuschwanstein, we had to walk about 30-40 minutes up a steep fucking hill to get to the entrance of the castle.

Not fun when you might shit your pants at any moment.

But, all of us pushed through our food poisoning afflictions and had a pretty good time at the castle.

All in all, even though it really really sucked at the time, it’s now a hilarious story to tell.

And since we all pretty much had raging diarrhea together, we all became really close and comfortable with one another!

So, moral of the story – make sure the meat you’re eating is fully cooked and even when you think you might shit your pants, have a great time 🙂

Hope you enjoyed reading about my unfortunate event in Germany!

Tell me, have you ever had an unfortunate, but hilarious experience like this? Let me know in the comments!

Sophie xx

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