Snowboarding

I will skip a little forward to our time snowboarding. – Hintertux – Austria. The home of the glacial skiing that we were string to do (in summer-well not really summer, but it’s the equivalent of boarding in march in Australia! So we arrive around 6-7.00 and a nice meal at the local hotel (Calzone!) and then went to bed – with the alps in the window of our hostel room. Breakfast was at 7.30 in the morning, which was good, because we had to be made to get up. Meat and cheese rolls with copious amounts of coffee followed. Eagerly we drove the 6 minutes up the road to the base of the slopes to get our board and boots fitted, buy our lift tickets (2 days hire, 2 days lift tickets cost us 42 and 67 respectively – considering that in Australia a ticket costs you $95 for 1 day!!!  Up the mountain we went – I made a huge error in the clothes that I wore, Heacy jacket, vest, thermal and t-shirt – all under my rain coat… Makes for not very comfortable boarding when the temp is 8 degrees. We tried to find funky a lesson – but alas, they were not running lessons over summer. So we had to try and teach him, which was difficult – it is very taxing on your legs trying to teach someone for a long period of time, plus that we didn’t have waterproof clothing didn’t help when we tried to rest in the snow. But watching him try and start (Oh I forgot – he can’t board) made you realise how far that me and mark have come since we started. Some hilarious crashes, not in any part help by the part of the mountain that was open was the really steep parts. Lol, so learning on a extremely steep slope is not a good idea. But by the end of the 2 days he could get down the mountain at least. I forgot just how sore I could get from snowboarding, the day after our first day – the 3 flights of stairs to our room were just torture.  After the second day my old knee was giving way, and my inside leg was ‘done’. We left tired and sore, but the snow at times was awesome (at others it was icy and very dangerous) and we had heaps of fun.

While snowboarding we got to look at these mountains

We took off the next morning to see the Disney castle (called Neuschwanstein) or something like that. It took us 3 hours to drive there, and what a disappointment it was. The castle was not that cool, the place was overrun by tourist busses and obviously tourists. We didn’t want to pay the grumpy car attendant his 8 euro, and we certainly didn’t want to pay the 12 euro to get into the castle. We did get a few pictures, but I think that this castle is more famous because Disney adopted it as it’s logo, not because it is a cool castle. The castle between hamburg and berlin was much better.

We left quite quickly and headed off to Munich, we were staying at camp weisen. Basically a camp purely set up for people going to Oktoberfest. It was a tent city, with a massive line of portable toilets and showers that were  horribly dirty. (if you have plans to go – don’t stay in a tent city) even if you hire a caravan – you had to pay 100 euro to use your own toilet!!!!!  That night we went to a famous beer hall, basically a huge hall set up with tables like a restaurant. (which is what the tents at octoberfest are setup like also) Food was so so, and we went to bed early – still sore from the snow. What we were not ready for that night was the temperature!! It was cold – really cold, we hadn’t been camping for a while, and wow…. The last night we stayed there,  I was wearing 2 jumpers, a vest, a thermal and my sleeping bag and blanket – still cold. We met some really cool people in munich – some girls from Bulgaria, some students from Switzerland, some doctors from Austria on a 1 week holiday, a rich drunk western german idiot from Singapore, and many other people that were really friendly. We also went to the Munich duesches museum(which is a science and technology museum) (under recommendation from cuthy) which was thoroughly enjoyed by me ( I think tarks liked it – Andrew didn’t go) and we learned about nano technology, other new crazy ideas, there is a company in germany that is solely based on research, they have over 4000 scientists, and invest billions of dollars  a year on researching things.

The museum also had huge exhibits on planes, rockets, space, geology, computers and miniature technology, food and other things.  The newer sections of the museum are clearly better than the older sections. It is due to be finished being upgraded in 2012.

Glossglockner

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We got up early (2 days in a row!) and headed off to the Glossglockner road (a road that goes over the mountains in Austria - built just after the war to try and create jobs and raise revenue for a country that was hit hard by the economic downturn. Anyway - it took us about 1.5 hours to get to the base of the road - at which point we had another snow fight, and then paid the 29 euro (yes - expensive) to get through the gate. We were slowly greeted with amazing views, I will put a few pictures up - the long steep road, with tight corners, with 30something turns over the whole road. We stopped at the top - in the snow mind you, to a panoramic 360 degree view that was amazing. We stopped there for a fair while, had some food and drinks, and then headed off to the glacier itself (the height of these mountains we were on was about 2200 to 2800m) We went to the glazier - very touristy, but it was very nice view. We kinda walked down towards it, but decided against it. We left to go home, as we had organised to do a bike ride with Stefanie and Benno at 5.00. So we had to go back. Although this post was short - it was an amazing road, with crazy good views. We arrived back pretty tired - so andrew didn't come on the bike ride. Benno and stefanie had multiple bikes (like 8) in the their basement so we used theirs. Much better when the bikes are good - we could go much faster. It was about 10kms to the lake - we did it easy, through the forest, across farm land - was a good nice ride. We met benno down at the lake, had dinner and then rode back. That night we found out we couldn't stay to watch the footy, so I spent the night trying to find a place to watch it. 

Benno Stefanie mark and I

Bam.. Take that Andrew!

Hallstat, Lake Konigssee and Mauthausen-Gusen (more pictures tonight)

We cooked tuna casserole!

I have added many photos today. Tried to format them the best I can.

View from the cable railway (hallstat)

Lake behind lake koeingsee

Linz

 We arrived in the town of strohiem, approximately 30 minutes north west of Linz.  – apologies if I spelt that wrong. We met our host – Joseph, who immediately cooked us up a nice meal of cold meat, tomatoes, pickles and cheese. A drink later and he took us off down to the street of linz to meet some of his friends at a nice establishment in the city center. We talked about various things – mostly global issues such as climate change, how to solve the worlds energy problems – all the important things. It made me look up solar energy on the net. They are planning to build a huge solar plant in Africa, as well as a big one in NSW. The one in Mildura is big – but not huge.

Anyway – there is no solar paint out yet, there is only thin panels that are flexible L

The worlds deserts receive enough energy in 6 days, to meet the worlds energy needs for 1 year!

Now… why are we spending trillions of dollars on defending ourselves from ourselves? At the same time as finding faith in human kindness through couchsurfing and traveling, I am losing it by learning about the stupidity of the human race also (see later when I talk about a work camp).

We moved on to another place, danced for a while with the locals.. and then went home. The next day was friday – my sore throat from the day before had flared up again (but this time only for 2 days!) so I went down to the supermarket armed with my newly learned german. Of course reading the back of medicine/pharmaceuticals isn’t my forte when reading English, so I had little chance in German. So I took a random guess, anyway – at the checkout to my surprise the man was about 80 years old and scanning groceries. He was sitting down, looked very content, scanning each item with care and concentration. I managed to get through the transaction with either him knowing I wasn’t Austrian and therefore not speaking much, or he wasn’t the talkative type; But I nailed the goodbye and hello and do you want a bag. J

Anyway – back up to watch the hawks win against Sydney – have managed to watch most games this year – even though being away from home, I think I have watched more games this year than last year. Joseph then helped us get 4 new tyres for our car (well 2^nd hand tyres) which we desperately needed, especially if we are going to be driving in the mountains. We had a problem with these later – but that is another story.

We then went to an abandoned castle which gave us great views of the surrounding hills, and the green lush fields of eastern Austria. We also trekked through a goat field with deer and geese – but that’s another story. We then went to the football (soccer) to see a Linz Vs Linz game (lask Vs somebody else)

It was very strange to see that people took it so seriously! The crowd was CRAZY.. people complain about the crowd behaviour at the AFL – well this was a totally different atmosphere. Mind you before I describe this – it was a 2^ND division game!!  We arrived to people drinking beer on the street which is not so strange now after being in Berlin. Then we were subjected to a thorough pat down, then walking through the masses of people – mostly drunk to find our seats, we were stopped by a fight – well more like a brawl. 8-9 people just going at it, a quickly glance around to see the security guards not really concerned about it.
Welcome to Austrian 2^nd division! So we walked past the fight once it petered out, and found our seats next to the opposition – who were just as crazy, except that they were fenced off by a huge net, and fences so you could not get in/out. Add to that about 50 fully armed police standing at the top where the fence was at it’s weakest. Cage the animals… it will be fine. During the game itself – various flares were let off, and a player was hit by flying things. The game itself – crap, poor quality, not worth going, but nice to see what crazy football fans are like.

We went home – sleep.

The next day was after a late start the day we were going to the Arts electronica museum. This is not a museum! It is a place with lots of current information about various technologies that are relevant to life now – eg: Bionic eyes, ears, hearts, as well as exhibits on brain function and other things. Interesting, I put the brain hat on and got my brain waves monitored in order to write words on the computer. It works! I was impressed.  We left there -–had some good kababs and then hooked back to see Jospeh’s house which he was renovating. We met his friends there – which were very nice, funny and good to talk to, and went back to his house for dinner with his friends. We were then treated with goulash and another nice meal! A very nice evening spent – comparing photos of countries that we had been to. Joseph was somebody that I liked very much, always good for a joke, and helped us out very much.

I forgot to mention – one of the nights (the first night) I was inundated with mosquitoes. I think everyone has heard the high pitched wining of the mosquito near their ear. Well I woke up with 2 bites, and big ones at that. So it was on, light was on and hunting them down. 2 were killed immediately, and thinking job done, went back to sleep. Well… I was wrong. Another bigger one lurked, which I saw later – it took me about 30 minutes to get him. I even googled about how to catch mosquitos in the night. I have a theory that seems to work  for me, hear it – light on, then wait 2 minutes, then light off, wait about 4 minutes then light on, and they will be moving in for the killer bite (in some countries anyway) But I nailed him – at 6am!!! I didn’t get much sleep – but the nights were easier after that.

Will continue another day.

Linz

We got out of the car park ok, and then headed back to see our host at the farm. We got home rather late - and some exercise in his exercise room (well just some roller situps) and we to a local downtown pub for dinner. The strange thing about this pub was it was all cold food. So we had an array of cold meat, bread, grated horseradish, and a salad roll. We had some weird apple drink with it too - like mineral water - just apple.

We then tasted some wine from his winery which was very nice - (they only make 500 bottles a year!) so they spared a taste for us which was nice of him. We then went to bed - day of Vienna. The next morning was leave morning, but firstly we had breakfast and while doing that we were speaking to Herman's mother (the one with no English at all). We spent maybe 3 hours trying to talk to her - with the aid of a dictionary, my computer with some helpful lonely planet guide language, and lots of actions. It was a really good experience, she was nice, helpful and we asked and talked about things such as speeding fines, food, coffee, if we have kids, family, etc etc. We learned alot cause we couldn't just skip to english to explain ourselves. We left her - saying our best goodbyes in german, and headed off to our next destination - linz - where we are currently. The countryside of austria in the east is quite flat and open - very similar to the countryside in eastern germany - surprise surprise.

I will update this again later - but for now, in Linz - Austria!

Leipzig, Saxson Swiss, Prague and Veinna

 The day after we went to the concentration camp, we took a day of watching the football finals – hawthorn Vs Geelong – which turned out to be not that cool cause hawthorn got smashed. The boys were getting sick at this point with colds and coughs, which was annoying for everyone, I guess it is my fault cause I got sick first lol. In the afternoon me and mark had organised to go canoeing along one of the canels in Leipzig. I forget the company name now, but it was easy to find on the internet if you are in the area. (cost us about 5 euro an hour). We paddled for about 3 hours – carried the boat up a few small waterfalls, up a few loch’s and through a stretch of very nice scenery – felt like we were in a forest, except that we were in the middle of a city with 500,000 people (ish). We first realised that we were not in good shape for canoeing for tow reasons. We could paddle for any longer then 2-3 minutes without getting tired, and that our canoe was twice as big as other people that were paddling “professional” boats – they were wooping us. But it was fun and nice to get out. We arrived back a little bit late - but it was no problem.

My phone ended up on the ground when we left, (realised this when we arrived at the house) and went back to check out the car park – which luckily it was still there on the ground (by the way it wasn’t me who left it there!)  We then went looking for dinner – ate some food, - got lost cause the GPS couldn’t find it’s way around a stupid roadbloack! So about an hour was used trying to get home/find dinner. We got back and went straight to bed. The next day we were heading to Dresden.

View of Saxson Switzerland national park - the river Elbe

We got up lateish – tried to wrk out where we were going to go bike riding – frustrating trying to organise things! Grrr.. But we left Andre’s house – haven’t had a good time all up, pity that we could speak to his parents (lack of german). We arrived in dresden, had a look through the city – which was really nice. Well set up, nice buildings, and overlooking the Danube river, with paddle steamers tooting on the river. There was a market where we had some dinner there, and attempted to order food – my goodness we were bad. I ended up getting a huge plate of curryworst, with potatoes in a bowl and some other vegies… I then got a pancake with just sugar!! Wow… The girl had no idea what I wanted – amusing. We went back – had an early night staying at a hostel.

The next morning we watched the next final of footy – a little too much footy I think, but oh well, the rugby was on too. We then took off towards the Saxon Switzerland national park. Not bad not bad. It is basically a park next to a river, with a few castles overlooking the river – one called bastei and the called – I forget now, but it is a castle. We had ice cream there, had a look at the castle market, and then headed off to prague. The park was worth more than how I described it – but the views should speak for itself. I should mention the massive walk that we did up the stairs – due the the ‘she’ll be right’ mentality…..

We arrived in prague – via the ch’ republic and found out that we didn’t have the maps for eastern Europe for our GPS – but n problem I had already preloaded the maps for the gps, and I had a decent amount of the city center mapped. But alas… the difficulty was that all the roads are one-way… making it really hard to look ahead and to find our hostel.. it took us over an hour from entering the city limits, to finding and parking at our hostel.. woah – oh and a pullover by the police, who asked for a fine ‘indonesian’ style – to which we couldn’t pay because we didn’t have any kroner with us – so they “let us off” stupid corrupt police in developing countries.

Prague - the cathedral

The next day we took the free tour around prague – very nice city, lots of old buildings, and the tour guide was very informative. We then went to the communism museum. Very interesting – we didn’t know much about communism at all – apart from a few discussions that we had with andre about living in eastern Germany. What might be some interesting information is that the Russians invaded prague and basically occupied the country for a long long time (some 20 years) as well as a bunch of other countries. (might be common knowledge for other people – but I had no idea). They had pictures of the riots as well as a video of the riots where thousands of students got beaten by the police, and how the propaganda from the political ‘parties’ influenced everyone from speaking out against the government or any mistreatment that might have occurred. This is very similar to what is going on in china currently.

The next day we left prague to go to Vienna, and stay at a farm out of town (about 30 minutes dirve) a very lovely area where they were farming potatoes, wine, sugarbeet, wheat, and other crops that I can’t remember. Our drive wasn’t such a good one, but we got there pretty tired. After a short chat to Herman – our couchsurfing host, he went back out to work on the farm, and we went to bed, sleeping for about 10 hours.

Our host near Vienna was Herman – a nice guy that was living on a farm with his family and 2 sisters that had been to (funnily enough) Australia as well – working on farms in Australia. His parents did not speak a word of English – well almost (maybe hello…), so it was amusing talking to them – our germna has improved a little from being with 3 german hosts so far, but that night it didn’t help at all.

The next morning was Vienna morning, Herman woke us up early (good on him!) gave us a very nice Austrian breakfast of – yes you guessed it meat and bread and cheese – with some really tastey homemade jam and grape juice. He had also organised for one of his friends (Stefanie)to show us around the city – one of the decisions that would prove to make the day very enjoyable.

Picture of ..ahh the meal

Into the city – we did the park and ride thing – park at a train station and take the train into the city. We met Stefanie outside stephan’s dom cathedral at 10.30 which we went inside – and wow it was busy – and not that impressive, but only 10 minutes inside there was enough time. We then met a very enthusiastic Stefanie which was cool to have – an Austrian (born in Australia) showing us around the places that we went. – The university, parliament, hitler’s speech place, and others… Vienna is full of art, but unfortunately we didn’t go into see any of the paintings – not that I really wanted to see them, but I guess if I was with some people that were into art – I would have gone and enjoyed myself. We went to the famous palace, and then went back to Stefanie’s place and cooked a traditional Austrian dish for lunch.

500grams of flour, 4 eggs, Milk – beat with beater until mixed, then push through a grater into a bowl – then boil for a few minutes – then add in fried bacon and onion and add to the mixture that is on the stove. Leave for a bit longer, mix in some cheese and then it is done...- see picture for finished product! It tasted a little bit like pasta. We stayed and chatted for a while, then left and went to the main shopping strip for some shopping, and on the way we stopped at the post office for Andrew to buy some stamps. Funny story – I try and learn as much as I can remember with languages from the country that I can (dutch I was lazy – but I still learnt more then other boys) but Andrew buying stamps was very funny – bordering on rude I guess – from our point of view. Anyway – what happened was ( I will translate what she said)

Girl In german “ Hello – how can I help you”
Andrew” Can I have some stamps”
Girl rolls eyes – “ya” *goes to get stamps
Andrew “can I have 5 stamps of these” *points to the package of stamps that hold 4 individual stamps.
Girl “ no”
Andrew – leaves the store

Now – I explained that maybe she thought that he meant can I take 1 of the stamps off another book – leaving him with 5 indivual stamps. (he wanted 5 books of 5) but just amusing that he didn’t even try 0- and was annoyed at her that she didn’t understand him!   Keliling dunia mengalamani kebudayaan! Ya very funny. 
In saying that – we did have a fair bit of hostility towards us from some Austrian salespeople that didn’t want to deal with our poor german.  But we were at least having a crack.

Anyway – we left via the metro past the symphony that was playing/busking in the street – also the major cultural attraction in the city – which we didn’t go to as well. But we arrived back to our carpark which turned out not being a car park! Well… it was a impound lot!! It looked like a carpark to us when we started there! So we had to manufacture a way out by driving over a gutter and a garden bed to get out of the “Car Park” amusing – but we were lucky that it wasn’t surrounded by a big fence..

Leipzig

We headed south east towards the town of Leipzig - well more correctly the town of Markranstadt to meet our new host - his name was Andre. Really cool guy - had lived in Australia for 2 years, and had been to NZ and Indonesia and a bunch of other countries. Was really interesting talking to him about his travels throughout Australia.
We arrived mid-late afternoon to meet Andre and his parents (who really didn't speak English) my German learning has been all but a failure as I can't even order food yet. The combination of words has got me stuffed. But I'm giving it a crack. We had some dinner there - nicely cooked kababs and some capsicum, some weird raw mince again, tomatoes and some bread. We then went to watch Poland play against Germany is a sportsbar down in the city of Leipzig. Germany almost lost - a late goal helped them salvage a draw, much to the relief of the 5 person strong crowd. We then went to another place - annoying that the no smoking law isn't introduced here - came home reeking of smoke, very unpleasant. It was a really good night though - talking to someone that has been to Australia makes it a lot easier to communicate. - plus the added bonus of not having to listen to a broad Australian accent. The next day we got up reasonably late (mark starting to get sick) and he took us around the city of Leipzig. All in all it was a good day - we saw a bunch of stuff - up the tower there, saw a few nice churches, saw a old historic train, walked around the old town (there you go dad!) and all via Andre's nice touring. A bbq dinner - a nice chat in Andre's shed with his girlfriend, and we went to bed earlier.

Read for itself.

The next day we went to the concentration camp "Buchenwald" well... we have been to memorials all over Europe - and we finally got to see first hand what the fighting was for.. The camp was - it had an eerie feel to it - now buchenwald was not the biggest camp, or the one that had the most people killed - it wasn't a death camp, it was a labor camp (that was a death camp) so we got a large amount of information about the conditions that the people endured while inside. It was pretty crazy - they loaded massive numbers into barracks - gave them little to no water or food, and worked them into the ground - if you resistsed or fell over unable to work - you were shot. This was in the early days as well. Buchenwald was a camp that the prisons were taken to when the war was turning - the picture that I will post up shows what happened.

The most telling thing was the 'medical' room, they had a surgical table with a drain built into it.... now... why do you need that... Also was the picture in the room showing a pile of bodies outside the house we were in. It was just creepy.

Another really interesting thing was that the Soviets had a camp after the camp was broken up, they held nazi's or "nazi supporters" in the camp - and they were subjected to the same conditions that the inmates were. Some of those were held without trial amongst other things. My initial feeling was 'So what?' The amount of people that were killed al over was a grain of sand in the bigger sandy desert! so what is a few people who were responsible suffered a little" But you have to take stock and understand a few things. 1) The people that were against hitler and his ways could not have objected without being killed or shipped off to a camp themselves, nobody should have to endure such torture - we are the only species on the earth that has systematically tortured and killed itself - or it's fellow species.


We left - grabbed a quick bite to eat (my first real vegi pizza - cauliflower, pumpkin, broccoli, carrot and some other stuff. It was good enough :)

We got home to have a competition with Andre and his girlfriend about german words and questions about Australia.

I am going to sleep now - will update later.

 

 

Berlin - will add pictures later

Berlin:

I don’t if I spoke enough about the castle that we saw – but it was very nice stop off. See picture of castle.

Speaks for itself yes....

A Fair moat - click the picture to get an enlarged view

We met tarks near the Teirgaten train station – quite good timing I might say. We repacked our things so tarks could get his stuff in, then had a drink at a café nearby until it was 7pm and Lars our new couch surfing host could take us in.

Berlin’s main streets was the first thing that I noticed that were majorly different, especially compared with other cities that we have been too, the footpaths are wide, room for bikes in a different colour (how far behind we are in Melbourne) We could walk easily 3 abreast and there was enough room for other pedestrians and of course the bikes had their own little lane. Then came the road for the cars. We were staying near Teirgaten (or tear garden) which was a really nice park (huge) in the west of berlin (about 10 mins by train to the center). Lars was much taller than I thought he would be (6.6 and about 110 Kgs) Was a big unit. He took us out to his local pub for dinner – where I ordered two meals – and we chatted. Now there is a problem that I have noticed about couch surfing,  especially when surfing at someone’s house – you need to be able to adapt to the other person’s interests, and these people let you into their house (you have to keep them entertained to a certain degree (I believe anyway – it’s just like hitchhiking – if you get boring, then you are out) I am now doubting about how much Andrew can actually do that – sure he is not the most willing to communicate,  but you can make an effort.  Anyway.. it came out a lot from my person view this week.

So the day finished with lars taking us into the main part of his district – with me suffering quite badly at the hands of my cold that I hadn’t been able to shake (from Middelfart Denmark, to Hamburg to Berlin – the 26^th of august to  the 6^th of September!) The huge thing that we noticed was that drinking was allowed on the train – beer that was, in the street, in the train everywhere! Crazy – and the drunk people on the train surprisingly weren’t causing that much trouble…. Interesting.,.. I would be sure that Australia would be different if that law was passed.

So we slept – the next morning Lars woke us up (it was a Saturday) and cooked/prepared us a delicious breakfast! So cool! 13 different types of meat, cheese, fresh rolls, and some weird German meat paste (which wasn’t too bad!).

We took the train – metro system is wonderful in berlin (why use a car when it is that good – trains every minute (almost), and you can’t walk more than 10 minutes without hitting a train station) We walked along teargarden to the Victory Column, a statue that Hitler moved for some reason, stupid man, and inside they had miniature(again I know) monuments from around Europe. The view from the top was excellent. We walked up to the Brandenburg Gate (a gate that represents peace) which was well… a let down (supposed to be really famous)

 I thought it would be more architecturally impressive, we then saw the parliament building (we didn’t go in) and then went to see the Berlin wall, and the Jewish memorial.

Jewish Memorial: Excellent exhibit – I took pictures of all the slides if maybe someone wanted them at school, but it was a powerful exhibit. It contained personal stories from the Jewish people, letters home, Hidden journals from the inmates at the concentration camps. Some of the stories were so sad  - This is a quote from the photo that I took of a letter written

“ Dear Father! I am saying goodbye before I die. We would so love to live, but they won’t let us and we will die. I am so scared of this death, because the small children are thrown alive into the pit. Goodbye forever . I kiss you tenderly.”

There was many many more, when leaving couldn’t help but try and analyse the way I was feeling when leaving. There is obviously nothing that can be done, but reading about monstrosities is always different when you read personal stories. So it was maybe a mixture of anger and deep sadness. Those poor people.

The berlin wall was a more comprehensive display of information containing information about the wall, and the lead up to it. It contained news articles, various ad’s, propaganda from that period, as well as how the wall went about existing. We were then getting tired of reading – considering that we had read over 3 hours that day. We then went to meet Lars at a park.

This is an abandoned airport - gotta love the bbq

Another cool things about Berlin is that they have an old airport where people go to play/bbq/ skate etc. It is huge, and it’s all now “park” land. There is no trees there yet, but it is open to the public to use in opening hours. We met Lars there after a short 3 jump metro train trip (Andrew went home feeling sick – must have got my cold) and found them (and some other Couch Surfing friends) playing Lars’s Finish game of wooden ten pin bowling. So a bbq and drinks were had, talking to a range of people – including a tarot card reading American, a really loud and quick spoken Englishman, a drunk Turkish girl and some others. It was a fun afternoon. We packed up – a few trick to entertain some people on the station platform were happening J and we then went home – helping Lars with his bike.

The next day after that we to the topography of terror – which basically outlines everything about the Holocaust. Reading for 2-3 hours again – but it was what I wanted to see – and the plethora of war museums that we have been – the millions of soldiers that have died have done because of this very reason, would seem weird not to know as much as you can about it. A very sad but clever thing done by the Nazi party was to make a law preventing people from creating another party… I hope that this has been fixed by governments around the world. The ‘terror’ started when they took over the police, and then started publically humiliating people for talking negatively about the government.. like a communist regime – except that they dealt harshly with the communists too!

Bah…

So many people watching people sing bad songs - but fun!

We left then and went to go to a Karoke pit at a flea market.. – ok, not the best mix, but highly recommended by Lars. So glad we went, we didn’t sing but it was truly truly entertaining – there was people everywhere, crowd was full watching – clapping, and enjoying people having a go. (better yet for me anyway – 95% of it was in English) We didn’t have a go – you needed to be there hours in advance to book a slot! We stayed watching from 4-7, and then after a quick bite to eat, we went back to Lars’s apartment – Lars was out on a date, so they played a little playstation. I was getting sicker at this point, and was miserable trying to think of how I could fix myself so I didn’t play. So my cold had progressed to some sort of tongue ulcer thing. Not as bad as a few years ago, but still annoying. Using what I could – I ditched the aspirin – which might have contributed to my mouth I don’t know, and switched to salt water. The next day was pretty bad.

Waking up, my mouth was worse, talking was hurting so I stopped for most of the day. It was a day in – we stayed inside all day – resting, eating good, and trying to get well. It was good, but still very very frustrating being sick on holidays – although it doesn’t seem like holidays now – just seems like living traveling kinda.  So – notch that down to a wasted (but needed) day. That night Lars cooked us some pasta (good, but it took me 4 times as long as the guys to eat it) and we ate in silence… weird.

The boys went out drinking that night – got home at 7.30am today. Lars was worried when he got up to go to work and they were not back yet. Annoying – cause I had to be the person to deal with it.

That morning I woke up feeling much better anyway, a glance out the window showed blue skies – so to hell with it I went out running. A good 50 mins running through the park, around past small lakes and paths that nobody else was on – in the middle of berlin! I ran a little far, so I found a station and come back (after a little bit of wondering where I was).

The boys got up – we cleaned his apartment, and then set off to get dinner at (hey cuth – alexandraplatz) which – is a big square… with well, not a lot there that is different. So we left and headed towards our next destination – Leipzig – or 20kms out of town.

My final impressions of Berlin are that it was a nice city, nice buildings, nice enough culture, public transport is excellent, big enough to have lots of parks to do things in, and not crazy traffic like Paris. I would go to berlin before Paris I think.

  

Hamburg - Part 2

We woke up earlish to go and see the miniature museum in Hamburg, which was by all means – excellent. It is a miniature train museum, but by no means is it miniature! There was models of different countries or regions (eg: Scandinavia, Hamburg, Austria – which stretched over 3 floors vertically) there was a concert mockup and much more. The detail was also excellent, it told stories in miniaturist terms – there was a swat team that was having a gun fight with a team of robbers, all the while the trains from different countries are rolling through the 17kms of track (I can’t remember, but I read it somewhere at the museum). The only thing that degraded the experience was the amount of people that were there, lots of kids, lots of people. It made it hard to fully see the detail in the exhibits. We arrived at about 10am on a Thursday morning (outside of school holiday time, so I shudder to think what it would be like in school holiday time). We booked online to get in without queuing which I would HIGHLY recommend that you do – and also it is suggested that you go later at night – like 8pm or 9pm to avoid the heavy crowds.

We had something to eat and drink there, and Wilton met us to show us around the harbour area of Hamburg. This was another highlight of the day, and are so thankful of the chance to be able to have someone to show us around. Wilton has lived in Germany since 79’ so he was very knowledgeable and knew a lot about the area. We walked through the new to old areas of Hamburg, saw the new ‘opera’ house being built which was cool. We then got taken to a nice Portuguese shop where we had some really fresh fish – not filleted, just cooked and served – very good it was. A strange thing at the restaurant was that you could eat as many potato chips (kinda – almost wedges)as you wanted – as long as you ordered a main meal. You also get a plate of salad for free as a starter! Thankyou Germany! Again, another benefit of being able to walk around with a local. It was so nice to talk to Wilton, I thought we got along very well, he is going to Australia next year with Claudia (his wife) and we were trying to convince him to come down to Victoria! (well if you are reading this Wilton come to Victoria! – or at least research it first! Then tell me that you don’t want to come.  We then went to the underground tunnel that crosses the river – but an interesting point is that there is not a ramp down, they transport the cars down on a lift and the road is very narrow – maybe 10-20cms tops between the curb and the wheel, not for people who can’t drive really.  That was interesting, we then went on a ferry ride (travel tip – use the public transport along the river), seeing the fish market(open on sat-sun in the morning), the cargo ships, and other things along the river. We then stopped for a drink alongside the river with wilton and then we headed off to the cathedral for view over hamburg. We took the stairs – conveniently directed Andrew away from the lift, and climbed some 300 stairs to the top.. When a button flies off your shorts, you know that you should take the stairs!! But fitness can wait until October. The views from the top of St  michaelis was good, although the 4euro was a bit steep for a view alone. We then hi tailed it back to wilton and claudia’s. They cooked us dinner german style which was nice, talked a bit more, and then set off to start our television career.(poorly might I add). They wanted to make a video for Claudia’s children who are doing a topic on Australia. So they got the kids to ask questions about Australia. You can view this video on my youtube account if you have 4 minutes to waste.  It was fun I thought – but you can check out andrew’s face – of how much he liked it hahah.

It was getting late, so we went to bed – sleeping like a rock nowadays – sending myself to sleep a little earlier, getting over my cold I think (well feels like it today).

The next morningI got up early to talk to wilton again, (very interesting) had some German rolls which he kindly went out and Bought for us, and then we headed off after a few hours and coffee’s to Schloss Schwerin – a fairy-tale castle in between Hamburg and Berlin.  

More coming later.