A Winter Wonderland!

Salzburg = winter wonderland. The best way I can describe it.  Coming into Austria on the train the scenery was beautiful, and Salzburg was just as beautiful.  We weren’t staying in the prettiest area of Salzburg, but the next morning when we woke up and it was snowing, everything looked amazing.  

Sound of Music tour was awesome, but not so much because we were seeing places from a movie, more because we were seeing some beautiful spots, had a hilarious tour guide and listened to a soundtrack that reminded us of childhood on the way.  We also met a lovely Canadian girl called Sophie.  We saw the lake and the gates at the back of Schloss Leopoldskron where Maria and the children capsized the boat in front of the Captain and Baroness first.  That was cool, the edges of the lake were all sluggish and starting to freeze, and three ducks swam past with little drifts of snow on their backs.  Then we went to Hellbrunn Palace where we saw the gazebo from ‘Sixteen Going On Seventeen’.  It was originally at the place on the lake, but so many tourists were jumping the fence day and night to see it/dance around it that they wanted to get rid of it, so it was moved.  Now its also locked, cos apparently a couple of years ago an old lady hurt herself dancing around in it.  Anyway, then we went to Mondsee, which was a gorgeous little town and home to the church where they shot the wedding scenes.  The church was beautiful, though not half as big as it looked in the shots in the movie!  We also had lunch in a little restaurant there - Grace and I tried some Austrian goulash, which like the Czech version was pretty delicious, and Jo and Sophie had Käsespätzle.  We all had tap water too, on the recommendation of the tour guide, and he was right that its definitely delicious water!  Though we were all a bit shocked when they charged us each 50c for a glass of tap water?!  We also drove past the house they used for the von Trapp house in the movie, with the avenue of trees that the children were hanging out of leading up to it.  We weren’t able to get very close to that though, as the road in front is restricted to residents and guests.  And on the way home we watched a video about Salzburg and the Sound of Music, narrated/hosted by a somewhat older Liesl.  Altogether very enjoyable :) Here's a few pics - you can see all the rest on Facebook of course!

In the afternoon we just wandered the streets of Salzburg - had to go and buy a big backpack for me, as unfortunately my suitcase wheel stopped turning in the UK, and as I still had to use it the wheel had worn almost completely down on one side just from dragging it around by the time we got to Salzburg.  So I am now the proud owner of a hiking backpack, which I managed to get on sale.  But its not quite as big as my massive suitcase so I have also had to send a whole bunch of stuff back to Australia - definitely not a cheap exercise! :( Ah well, the joys of travelling I guess!  We also had to stop many times to take lots of snow pictures - it was just so beautiful and I was trying as hard as I could to catch it on camera! Made a wee snowman, checked out the gardens where some of the do-re-mi scenes were filmed... But the other main touristy thing we did in the afternoon was have a piece of the famous Original Sachertorte from the Sacher Hotel, which was very fancy and very delicious.  Sachertorte is basically just a chocolate cake with apricot marmalade and covered in chocolate.  Although the hot chocolate tasted more like warm milk, which was weird but in the end good with the richness of the Sachertorte.  

Anyway after our relatively lazy afternoon we went to the Augustiner Bräu, which is a huge brewery that can seat around 5000 people according to our tour guide.  He also gleefully pointed out that it is both attached to a church and next to a hospital.  It was pretty cool - kinda like a big indoor picnic area as there are just big halls filled with tables, and you go and get your stein of beer served from big kegs and then either bring your own food, or go choose from the wide variety of foods available at the little stall-like shops in one of the area between halls.  Apparently they have really nice big areas outside too when its summer.  We met our new friend Sophie there, and also 4 other Australians that she had met on the salt mine tour she did in the afternoon.  (Note: according to them, if you’re in Salzburg then DON’T do the salt mine tour!).  It was nice to have some company other than each other for a night - you can kinda run out of things to talk about when you hang out with the same people all day every day for a few weeks...  But aside from that, everyone was really cool and we had a really good night.  Had a beer and some dinner at Augustiner, then went to search out the oldest restaurant in Europe.  Turned out they didn’t just serve drinks, and was a very intimidating and fancy fine dining restaurant, so we searched out another bar in the Old Town.  It was quite interesting - it was a little underground and appeared to just be a hole hacked out of rock.  It was also empty except for one guy, and blaring really loud music.  But we all sat down and got a drink, and eventually a massive group of about 40 guys came in.  We stayed for a bit, debating what would cause such a large group of just guys to go out together (buck’s night, sports team...), and after Jo and I chatted with one guy and found out why they were there (not a football team, but a group of football team FANS out for a belated Christmas do?!) we headed to a rooftop bar across the river.  Then after that we headed home.  

We were going to try and do something like the Red Bull hangar the next morning, but then left the hotel and had so much stuff with us that we decided to just head straight to Budapest.  Little did we know... But I will elaborate more on that in my next post, which should be soon as we're on a train all night tomorrow night! :P

Prague!

On the very long train from Prague to Salzburg, which leaves plenty of time for a more in detail recount of Prague.  Hence after not having posted at all for a long time I have now done two within a day of each other!  Unfortunately Hogmanay and Berlin etc didn’t get the same in depth descriptions, but oh well.  I definitely plan on going back to those places at some point.  Prague I could go back to, but I would definitely want to learn at least a few phrases/useful words in Czech first.  I’d forgotten how hard it is to be in a country where you don’t speak the language at all - my only other experience of this was in France on two separate days.  Though to be fair I at least know a handful of words in French, whereas I have not the first clue when it comes to Czech.  

But yeah, regardless of the language barrier, I did quite enjoy Prague.  It’s a beautiful city, probably the second prettiest I’ve been to yet, coming in second to Edinburgh and with Strasbourg in third (note city, because the little villages we saw in Elsass and some I saw on the train through Germany were gorgeous!).  It is remarkably well preserved considering it went through WWII and the following years of Soviet communism.  Did a free walking tour in the morning, from which I learnt the following facts.  There is a concert hall in Prague that is the last remaining building in Europe that Mozart played in live.  They also have a huge astronomical clock that is either 600 or 800 years old (my memory gets a  little fuzzy when it gets down to specifics!) and the largest medieval castle I think in Eastern Europe.... But anyway, there’s a lot of beautiful old buildings all throughout Prague, many of which are a bit run down now but still beautiful.  

The walking tour was really interesting, went through the Old Town and a bit of the New Town with a Czech guy who studied drama therapy at university, so was very enthusiastic and dramatic!  We also saw the Jewish Quarter with lots of synagogues, one of which was a museum that apparently Hitler established and stored items taken by the SS etc to create a museum of an extinct race.  Also saw an old church which has two “creepy and spooky” legends/stories with it.  First is that there was an old rich guy who went to sleep in his study and slept for several days, and so his servants thought he was dead and had him buried in the family crypt.  He then woke up and managed to push the top off his coffin, but couldn’t get the door to the crypt open.  People heard yelling and loud noises from inside and assumed his spirit couldn’t rest, and so the priest took holy water and blessed the door of the crypt, and after a few days the noises stopped.  But not long after another member of the family died, and when they opened the door to the crypt and found the guy sitting leaning on the coffin, with a grimace on his face because he’d died in such distress.  The other story is about a statue of Mary inside the church, which apparently has a beautiful necklace on it.  A thief saw it and decided he’d like to steal it, so he got himself locked inside the church one night.  But when he reached up to take it, the statue grabbed his hand.  So he was stuck standing there with his arm above his head.  He tried bargaining with Mary, but remained stuck there.  When the priest found him the next day, he looked at it and said “We’ll just have to chop the hand off”.  The thief was relieved, until he realised the priest meant his hand.  So now there is a mummified black hand still hanging there - didn’t get to see it properly cos the church wasn’t open, but we peered through the window and could sort of make out a bit of it.  

I also got the impression from the tour guide that the Czech people are very proud of their democracy and their tradition of tendency towards democracy and democratic values even when they were held back from it.  Many stories included past kings who were very liberal about religion and supported science and the arts.  We also heard stories about the Prague Spring when Dubcek introduced “communism with a human face” and also about the students who set themselves on fire in protest when the liberties introduced during the Prague Spring were taken away again by the Soviets.  We also saw the site where there used to stand a huge statue of Stalin with a group of workers behind him.  Unsurprisingly it was blown up around the Velvet Revolution when the Czechs separated from the USSR.  It was actually amazing to remember how new the democracy of the Czech Republic is.  Our guide was saying they have presidential elections in a few days which will be the first (or one of the first?) since they became the Czech Republic.  And he was also saying that one of the potential candidates is a Czech of Germany heritage whose family was made leave all their possessions behind and leave Czechoslovakia back when the Nazis were threatening to invade.  This property included a big palace up on the hill with all the castle buildings.  But he forgave and forgot, and came back to Czechoslovakia to make a career as a politician.

Lots of very interesting stuff, which certainly delighted my inner history/politics nerd.  And we had still more of it in the afternoon, as we decided to go with the same guide on his castle tour that started just after the morning walking tour.  That was pretty cool too, there was a lot to see up there as well, the highlights of which were probably the first courtyard, the big cathedral and Golden Lane.  The courtyard wasn’t particularly finely adorned - the guide described the design as minimalist before minimalism became popular - but it had this awesome little spot which I have put a picture of below:

 

Doesn’t look particularly special, but if you stand in the middle of the circle (where Jo is standing) with your chin up and facing back towards the steps, when you speak it is amplified so that it sounds like you have two speakers on either side of your head.  Though it only sounds like that to you, not to anyone else.  It was pretty amazing, though something that you really have to experience cos you can’t really imagine it.  The cathedral took I think around 100 years to finish buildings, as it was a slow process interrupted by wars and other things.  It was an amazing big structure of Gothic architecture, that strongly reminded me of the Scott Monument in Edinburgh and probably also other churches around Edinburgh too.  This is it below:

It also had lots of big stained glass windows, with the exception of one which was handpainted in art nouveau style.  It is also the place where they store the royal jewels in a  casket which has seven locks and seven different people hold the keys, including the president.  The place where they store it is also along an outer wall, behind a huge mosaic which is made up of more than 1 million little pieces. Tried to get a picture of that too, although it was a little big.  Very impressive though!

Then Golden Lane, which I liked simply because it was so cute.  It used to be servants quarters, and is lots of little houses built into the bottom of what was a very thick wall.  Jo and Grace made me pose next to one of the doors because I was actually slightly too tall for it.  The famous writer Kafka also lived in one of the little houses at one point.  Above the houses you could walk inside the wall, where they displayed suits of armour, and also at one end medieval weapons of torture.  They also had a little gift shop, in which above the door they had a chastity belt! (Though it wasn’t an Everlast :P ).  Had a laugh about that, and of course had to get a picture.

 

We met a nice Canadian guy on the afternoon tour who was doing his masters in Edinburgh, and who strongly reminded me of my Canadian friend Karl from Freiburg!  Also met a couple from Wollongong, who were hilarious.  It was also strange, because the guy reminded Grace and I a lot of our cousin Tim, and we also found out he used to live in the same suburb our cousin currently lives in too!  We had a good laugh with them about the Brazilian guy in the group who would step directly in front of the tablet screen when the guide was showing us pictures, blocking the view of everyone standing behind him.  We also ran into them again not long after the tour which was lucky cos they were able to guide us back to where we needed to go.

Had some Czech food that night, namely goulash served in bread.  It was pretty delicious.  The previous night (just after we’d arrived) we had gone out in search of a place recommended to us by the hostel receptionist, but somehow managed to find ourselves in an Azerbaijani restaurant so ended up sampling some traditional Azerbaijani food.  Easy to do when everything is in Czech!  The Azerbaijani place also didn’t have English menus, but luckily someone there spoke English so he came over and translated the menu for us and gave us recommendations.  

But we’re now in Austria, which I am liking already.  Aside from the fact that its nice being able to read the signs and mostly understand people again, the views from the train were beautiful.  Lots of snow-dusted little villages and a very alpine-y landscape.  Looking forward to exploring Salzburg tomorrow, and Vienna next week.  Will hopefully do a Sound of Music tour tomorrow too! :)

Farewell Scotland, hello continental Europe!

Have gotten a bit slack over Christmas in the blog department, but realistically this is a trend that will probably continue for the rest of my travels.  Who knew simply writing down past events in a not so creative way could be such an effort?!

So anyway, brief run-down of Christmas and Hogmanay....  I think last I wrote was just before I met Grace in Germany.  We were in Germany for 4 days, and we spent pretty much the entire time at Christmas markets - went to the ones in Mainz (which was literally right down the street from the apartment we stayed in), Frankfurt and Wiesbaden.  They were all amazing!  And the last one we went to in Wiesbaden was the best, despite the icy rain for most of it, because I got to catch up with Jasmina! That was lovely, just wish we'd been in Germany a bit longer so we could hang out some more.  But yeah, so far still love Germany - am yet to have a bad experience :)

Had a lovely Christmas at Jo's place.  Got to meet some of her friends, experience a carvery meal, see a wee bit of London (which was dominated by shopping lol), attend our first Christingle service and eat a delicious Christmas dinner.  Then on Boxing Day we headed to Dub and Dee's (again for me, first time for Grace).  It was great to see them again, went for a walk around Elsenham and saw some thatched cottages, went to Anglesey Abbey and had a conservation tour of the house, and spent a few hours in Cambridge.  Both Grace and I have put pictures up on Facebook.

After that we headed back into London and got a bit more stuck into the touristy stuff - went and saw Buckingham Palace, took a walk along the Diana Memorial Walk, went to the Churchill War Room and then headed over to the Tower of London. Unfortunately we wasted so much time trying to find our way around the interrupted tube services in the morning when we got there that by the time we made it to the Tower it was too late to be worth going in.  But we had a look around the outside and took a few pictures.  Just another thing on my list of things to do next time I'm there.  A list that just keeps getting longer the more places I go!  Anyway after that we went and met Jo at Victoria Station and headed to Manchester.

Manchester wasn't very successful in terms of sightseeing, was more of a rest and recuperation stop on the way to Hogmanay.  Quite liked what I saw of it though.  Had one full day there, then headed on to Edinburgh for Hogmanay!  That was great, I remembered how much I love Scotland when I got back there.  Did a few more touristy things like Edinburgh Castle and a tour of some of Edinburgh's underground vaults where the homeless and criminals used to hide out back when being homeless was illegal in Edinburgh. There was also a Wiccan temple (not sure about both spelling and terminology there, but anyway it was a vault that modern day witches now use as their meeting place).  Also got to meet up with Hannah again, which was awesome! And just to top that off managed to beat all odds and find Jenna and a whole bunch of other Dundee people at the crowded street party! Unfortunately didn't manage to catch up with Meredith, Beth, Maria and Calum.  But all  in all Hogmanay was pretty good fun.  Fireworks over the castle looked pretty amazing.

After Edinburgh we ducked up to Inverness for our last two days in Scotland, which was lovely. Just wish we could have had a little more time! Stayed at a lovely little B&B that my parents and also cousins had previously stayed at and highly recommended.  It was also very conveniently located right across the river from the town centre. Inverness itself was lovely. Got some nice pictures of the buildings along the riverside. We did an afternoon tour which included a short cruise across Loch Ness to the ruins of Urquhart Castle. Then had a delicious Scottish dinner at the Hootananny - a pub known for its Scottish music. But I have decided to make a seperate blog (probably on Tumblr this time) where I will now note and describe in more detail all the amazing food I come across :) So I'll try and avoid repeating that now.

Anyway, after bidding a fond farewell to Scotland and the UK, we headed over to Berlin to begin our continental adventures. Spent about 4 full days in Berlin, which was awesome. After my second experience of Germany, albeit a lot shorter one this time, I'm still loving Germany. Public transport is amazing, lots of interesting history, and delicious food. We were a bit laid back, which meant that we didn't fit in as much as we probably could have, but we saw some of the main touristy sights in Berlin, the highlights of which were probably Hohenschoenhausen Prison, the Berlin Cathedral and the dome at the top of the German Reichstag.  Everything we saw was pretty awesome, but those are probably what stood out the most.  The second two in particular offered great views over Berlin, and the prison was fascinating but terrible - atrocities that continued to go on after WWII, just no longer carried out by Nazis.  It was also amazing getting to see bits of the wall and seeing it marked where it used to stand around the city.  The Brandenburger Tor was also pretty cool, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was also really interesting.  Incredibly depressing/saddening information centre underneath it as well.  We also went to see Pitch Perfect at the cinema in Potsdamer Platz, which is where they have the film premieres in Berlin.

Now in Prague, which I will talk about in the next post as I really should be sleeping... But for mum and dad (/any other interested parties) we're headed to Salzburg tomorrow and then Budapest after that :) So that's me done for now - will try not to leave quite as long til my next post this time!