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..