Strasbourg

During our trip we have visited some well preserved old towns. Brugges, Cesky Krumlov and Strasbourg. They all have an element of the theme park about them. The old town is restored and maintained in a particular way, and it is surrounded by the "real" modern-day town.
That said, all are fabuous glimpses of what most European towns would have looked like hundreds of years ago. They are all excellent travel destinations.

The superlatives are getting a bit over-used. Apologies.
The trouble is that they are all deserved - this whole holiday has been . . . (fill in your own) .

Strasbourg is magnifique.

As we walked to the hotel, we noticed that there was a really nice vibe in the town. There were plenty of tourists, but not too many. The buildings were enough to make us stop and say "Look at that!" on several occasions. People were smiling.

We dumped that bags and went just around the corner to the cathedral. A magnificent piece of architecture, both inside and out.

The facade of the cathedral is covered in a lacework of stone. The spire consists entirely of stone lacework. It looks very delicate, complex and graceful.

The tourist information centre gave us a town map which had a list of the top 10 sights. Something of which I would normally be rather wary - lots of people all going around to take the same picture of the same place.

On Monday morning we thought "Let's be a little bit silly, and do them in numerical order" - so we did that until siesta time, around mid-afternoon.

Later we went out and had dinner at one of the nicest squares I have ever visited. Good food, great location, excellent company.

I was going to put in a photo here, but the connection is so slow and I don't have a photo editor to resize my photos before loading them. I tried using the GIF format to see if it would be faster. It took about 20mins -and then it didn't show - all I got was a blank box with an X in the corner. I just can not do it again. 

On Tuesday we were going to travel to Paris mid-morning, but when we went to make the reservation (which is compulsory for the TGV) the person behind the counter said that there were a limited number of seats allocated for Eurail passengers and that there were no seats available from Strasbourg to Paris. At all. All day.

They did suggest travelling to Nancy on an inter-city train and getting the TGV from there - which we could do if we left at 3:30pm. OK. So we had a very relaxing day checking out the last few of the Top 10. The last one was completely obscured by scaffold.

The train to Nancy left late and so we missed the connection and had to wait two hours in Nancy for the next TGV.

It was brilliant! The sun was low in the sky and the countryside looked absolutely beautiful. Villages were bathed in evening light. The sun / shadows on the crops was an impressionists dream.

When we arrived in Paris at 10:15, it was just getting dark. I was totally disoriented when we came out of the metro and we found the hotel more by good luck than good management.

Munich

Munich is a really good city if you like walking - fairly compact and very interesting.

As usual, we got hold of a city map and decided which of the tourist office's highlights we wanted to see. The thing that really impressed us was just the quality of the buildings. At street (shop) level things look pretty ordinary, but when you look up you see all sorts of wonderful decoration on so many buildings that you have to wonder when and why we stopped making our buildings decorative and went down the road of the 'functional'.

I spotted this little boat on the roof of a building in the main shopping street.

One really unique attraction that we found was in the "English Gardens" - surfers. No, really.

The river here is confined to a narrow channel. There are some block on the bottom that create this permanent 'standing wave'. The surfers are all very well-mannered and take turns - one from each bank of the river - then they only stay on a few minutes before handing over to the next person.

One of the best things we came across was the beer garden in the Victual markt. It was a really friendly, happy place full of people full of beer and food. There are real people wearing the traditional Bavarian costume - not for the tourists, just for themselves.

I picked up some sort of bug / allergy which I still have not shaken, and actually had a day off from touristing. Mostly.

The next day we spent the majority of at the two main art galleries. It reminds me that there have been men and women of genius all through the ages.

This self portrait was done in the year 1500.

Representing yourself in this "Christ-like" manner may show either extreme arrogance or an acknowledgement that his talent comes from God.  
I don't know. Do you?

Cesky Krumlov

Off to Cesky Krumlov - henceforth CK

We got to the bus station at 9:50am for a 10:00am departure.

We could see the bright yellow, modern "Student Agency" bus down at the far end of the bus parking area, and as ten o'clock approached, I wondered if we were supposed to go down to it. I went and asked.

The woman I spoke to said that they did not leave until 11. I got out myticket to check and showed it to her - it was all in Czech so I may have got it wrong. "You are going with a different company." She said. "This is not your bus. . . that is your bus." and she actually laughed.

It seemed to be on the verge of breaking down. The driver had poor personal hygiene. The seat numbers were scrawled on the wall in a wobbly hand with a felt pen.
But he was a good driver and we arrived on time without any trouble.

The hotel was easy to find, although I had the impression that the receptionist thought of us as an inconvenience - they were apparently very busy in the restaurant.

We dumped the bags and went walking, stopping at the Tourist infocentrum to book the bus to Munich. It seems Wikitravel does not have it right. There are no buses from CK to Munich. We went to Linz and got the train from there.

The town is dominated by the castle on one side of the river, and the church on the other.

Apart from those two "sights" there is not much to do. It is a very small town, but like Prague just about every where you look would make a fine photograph.

The weather was highly variable, but the overall tone was cold and damp. It was just right for the scenery -although it did rather diminish the charm of the castle gardens when it became rain.

We just walked and walked. There are lots of souvenier shops, even more restaurants and many hotels, but it is still lovely.

Prague

We realised fairly early that the nice lady who had made the reservation for the train had nodded and said reservation for Wednesday, and happily booked us for the train on Tuesday.
Rather than try to explain what had happened, and also that we had not simply missed the train on Tuesday, I just coughed up another 11 Euros for new reservations. It was a lesson - that you need to really check things carefully.

There was another moment of concern when we got on the train and found a person already in one of the seats we had reserved. We smiled and told him that he was in our seat, and he smiled and said "No, I have seat 34 reserved". There seemed to be plenty of seats, but that can change very quickly, so I rummaged around in my bag and pulled out the reservation card. He did the same.
High five. He did have seat 34 reserved - in the next carriage.

The trip was uneventful except for the appearance of an American family. The bloke did not stop talking - loudly. I had my MP3 player going and could still hear him. After about two hours, the ticket collector came along and sent them off to 2nd class, for which they had tickets. Peace. . .

We arrived in Prague and were immediately struck by the contrast to Berlin, where the main railway station built for the 2006 soccer world cup was huge, shiny and new. Praha-Holešovice on the other hand was simply dirty and run down.

We found the hotel very easily, and of course the first thing we asked was where we could find a laundry. Kristina, our hostess, dubbed "The whirlwind" by Fiona, for her enormous energy level, said that she was the laundry manager. "Just bring it downstairs when you are ready"/ Hallelujah! It's a miracle! 

We had a traditional Czech goulash for dinner at the restaurant / bar next door and then went for what we intended to be a wee walk down to the end of the street to look at the river. In the end, we walked up to the Charles Bridge and through the "old town" to the main square, and on to the Namesti Republici. It was party time in the main square as the Czechs had just defeated the Americans at the Ice Hockey World Championships. 4-0. Having walked for several kilometres, we were very happy to discover that there was a tram that stopped where we were that would drop us just around the corner from our hotel. As we were walking from the tram, we passed two homeless old men having an arguement. They stopped to ask me for money in French. When I said "No understand" he grumbled as we quickly walked away, then brought out what I assume to be the only English he could think of. He started shouting/singing 'Do ya do ya do ya do ya want to dance ? Do you want to dance?" repeatedly, in a rather aggressive tone. We hurried on and slammed the door behind us.
For the rest of the stay we were afraid of meeting Fred Astaire again.

Next day we did the same walk again. This time with cameras and daylight. Lovely.

Everywhere you look, there are vistas that would make good photos.

Next day we had planned to do some souvenier shopping in the morning and go up and have a look at the castle in the afternoon.

The old town is both engaging and chaotic. While we were shopping, we had seen an advertisment for "Sun Galleries" with some examples of extremely clever and funny work. Unfortunately, I can't find any on the net.  An example is Vincent van Gogh's self portrait with bandaged ear - with a sort-of Homer Simpson look-alike. We had a map, and tried very hard to find the gallery but eventually gave up.

We thought it would be interesting to walk up to the castle from the "lesser town' as the guidebooks call it.
It was interesting alright, but it was seriously hard work. As we need to proceeed slowly, we stopped and had a look in St Nicholas church. What an over-the-top experience.

We made it up to the castle just before they closed for the day.

The next day, we got the tram up the hill and had plenty of time. In the castle grounds is St.Vitus Cathedral. It is a wonderful old gothic thing, started in 1344 and finished in 1929, You do the sums. It's a long time.

The stained-glass windows are brilliant. Sadly, they do not photograph well at all.

P.S. We eventually found "Sun Gallery" with the aid of a better map, but you will have to wait until we get home to see Homer/Vincent as I don't have a scanner with me.

Cheers

P.P.S. The beer here is really good and really cheap - about $2.00 for a half litre. Cheers! 


.

Berlin II

The most noticable of the Berlin landmarks is the Berliner Fernsehturm - the television tower. (The page the link goes to is in German. Click on the little Union Jack on the left hand side to get the English version.)

The observation deck is just over 200m above ground level. Views are incredible.

These are huge apartment blocks built in the communist era. There is still stuff around to remind you of that time - including some great artwork.

All very uplifting.

After the "Ball on a stick' as we came to call the TV tower, we headed over to the other side of town to visit the Trodel Market - a flea market like no other I have seen. There were so many dogs there . . .

On Monday, we spent a couple of hours not getting the washing done. The only reason I mention this is that it llustrates how difficult ordinary things can become when you don't know your way around.
We had asked at the hotel about a laundry. He directed us down to a local shopping mall. The information desk sent us off to the lower level of the mall and the bloke there was very insistent that it was NOT a washeteria.

I went back up to the info desk to point out the error in her directory, and she found another local laundry on the Interweb - and gave me fairly easy to follow directions. It  was located in behind the low building on the left hand side of the top photo. Only about 15 mins walk. We got there and only one person spoke any English - and not very well. When she told me that they charged 7.50 Euro per kilo, I nearly fell over. We weighed the wash - 5kg. It would have cost us about $50 to was there. We resigned ourselves to wearing the same clothes for a bit longer.

We dumped the wash back at the hotel and went out for lunch - a local delicacy "Currywurst". Which is basically a bratwurst sausage with a tomato / curry sauce poured over the top. I can't see myself ordering another.

We went to see "The story of Berlin". It was very interesting and we spent hours there. The nuclear fall out shelter was strange. Really claustrophobic. But it struck me that in the cold-war days, probably the safest place you could be was Berlin. Because you could not bomb the other side without bombing your own.

On Tuesday we went to the Gemaldegalerie. I still like looking at old paintings. Again a bit of a roll-call of famous names. Rembrandt, Vermeer, Durer, Raphael . . . Canaletto. Amazing.

There is something about galleries and museums that gives me back trouble. Perhaps it is standing around for several hours just taking a few steps at a time.

We walked over to the Kurfurstendam - one of Berlin's great shopping streets. Not being a big one for shopping, I sat in a cafe while Fiona went off foraging.

We had dinner for the third time at  a restaurant near our hotel "Las Malvinas". Really good food, really cheap. The fresh asparagus soup (Spargelzuppe) is excellent.

One last photo from Berlin. They have a very moving Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

There are nearly 3,000 blocks.

They call to mind military uniformity, gavestones, the rows and rows of barracks in the concentration camps and there is a sense of being swallowed up as you walk into the memorial and the stones get taller.
The only hopeful thing is that no matter where you are, you can still see the sky.

Berlin

The first thing you notice about Berlin is the large scale of everything.

Especially after Amsterdam, where things are generally fairly intimate and a wee bit cramped.

Here it's all monumental.

I was wondering if it was the Nazis or the communists but then I realised that it goes a long way further back - and may be something related to German culture.

As you may have heard, after the wall came down there has been a lot of building going on. It is an incredible place. There are old buildings that have been incorporated into very modern complexes and plenty that just oozes 21st Century.

There are still some old East German apartment blocks that have not been 'fixed-up' - on of these areas is across the road from our hotel. But on the whole it is neat, clean and orderly.

The size of the roads and buildings means that even though there are a lot of trees, the place looks  a bit stark.

We did the hop-on, hop-off city tour yesterday to get a bit of an overview.

Today we are going to get a 3 day ticket and head out exploring some of the more interesting of the things we saw.

Photo of the day.

 The Grosse Stern . It is a very large column at the end of a very long avenue.

Brussels, Brugge, Aachen & Amsterdam

Oooh it has been a busy week.

We enjoyed the trip to Brussels on the Eurostar. Except for the pressure changes as it went through tunnels. Which it seemed to do very often. It does go very fast. London to Brussels in just under 2 hours.

We only stayed in Brussels one night, so we dumped our bags at the hotel as soon as we arrived and went out to see the sights. It is a much bigger city than I had imagined. We walked and walked. Some of the time in the rain - the first and only that we have seen. We went to the Musee Horta, which is devoted to the work of an art nouveau architect named Victor Horta. It was a real highlight. http://www.hortamuseum.be/

The next day we went on to Brugge. A wonderful old well-preserved town in the west of Belgium. We stayed at the Maison de la Rose. A bed and breakfast place. It was by far the nicest place we have stayed.

It was time for some rest. So we went on a canal cruise and just watched the town slide past.

On Sunday, we took the train to Aachen, just over the border in Germany. It was, in about 800AD, the capital of Charlemagne's empire.

Now it still has the magnificent church he built, but its glory days are well and truly over.

Still, I am glad we went.

Tuesday we came to Amsterdam. What a funny place.

One of the first things you pass as you come from the railway station into the city is the sex museum. There is the red light district. There are "coffee houses" where the smoking of marijuana is allowed.

Yet there is this elegant and stylish look to so much of the city and its people.

Again we did a canal tour. Again it was a wonderful way to pass the day.

One thing you can not help but notice here are the bicycles. Thousands of them. They have a multistory bicycle parking station at the railway station.

We paid a visit to the new Amsterdam library. It was a real treat. I was going to post some photos I took, but it seems that there is a video tour you can take. I haven't because the internet connection I am on is very slow and the video is stopped more than it is running.
http://www.oba.nl/index.cfm?vid=BC638BCA-3FFA-497D-9CA1C74A819C832A

It should be good.

Nice old town. But with a lot of building going on.

We are off to Berlin tomorrow, where I believe there will be even more of that.

All in all, we are having a wonderful time. Seeing all sorts of interesting things and generally eating way too much.

Bye for now.