Europe 2010

Al here and we’re over halfway home, and thankfully the longest flight is over.

Florence was a lot of fun, though we probably could have cut our stay a little shorter – we made up for this by doing a day trip out into Tuscany (yes it really is that nice), and another to Pisa (yes the tower really is leaning) Also managed to tuck into a really nice italian meal for my birthday 

Barcelona was pretty awesome too, after we had a lazy day the first day we got there on account of a 4:30am start (thankyou volcano for changing our flights) we had a lazy day either chillin in the hotel (Pixie) or on the beach (The rest of us) Went out for Tapas that night though, which was good, yet somehow different to what we expected. Did a bike tour of the city the next day then went to a bit of a cookery thing where we learnt how to make some tapas, paella and lots and lots of Sangria. The quantity of sangria and beers after meant Jen and I had another lazy day, while the boys hit the local football ground – to quote “it’s fecking huge”

Anyway, gotta go, internet time is running out!

Gratze Gratze Gratze!

This is an Epic post. Get a cuppa AND something to eat that is olive derived.

This is the almighty posse of Italian wine drinkers signing in. Fresh from our Vatican tour.

Since the last update we had a fun-tastic tour on bike around Munich. This consisted of us (plus Phil and Jill who we have assimilated in to the travelling pack) convincing the guide to give up on the full blown tour and to just get us as far as the Englischer Garten. Which happens to be the second biggest beer gardens in Munich with the first around the corner!

We drank a few quiet beverages before we jumped back on the bikes and headed over to the closest thing Germans have to a proper surf break… a white water wave on one of the redirected rivers that runs through the gardens. These guys just jumped in, surfed over and back and then dived over the white water and floated down river before getting out and going again. Full wetsuits, socks and even head gear was required especially given it was a balmy 7 degrees and raining on the day we were riding around.

We then took the short way back to drop off the bikes and wandered back to the Hoffbrauhaus for a feast of German pork knuckle and more… beers!

The next morning we hit the road and spent a day travelling through Austria down in to Italy. Stopping in at Innsbruck (which had a lovely chocolate fair that Jen enjoyed) and on to Venice.

Venice was slightly tainted as the camping grounds/cabins we were staying at were hopeless. Lost bookings, bad service and nothing was easy. We had a bunch of discount vouchers for cheap pizzas which they didn’t honour and it was just too far out of town that we had to cram in to extra packed public buses to get anywhere… especially when we got on the wrong bus and had to back track for 40 minutes.

Venice the city was stunning. When we did make it in to the city it was worth the hassle. The point of Venice is to get totally and utterly lost. Maps are useless and so are directions as the canals get in the way of things. We got lost. We did get majorly ripped off with breakfast… we paid just under 50 euro for three coffees, two hot chocolates, and two dinner plate pizzas between six. Not cool. We learned our lesson and made thrifty choices from that point on.

We negotiated a great deal on a Gondola ride and the six of us (remember to include Phil and Jill!) hit the canals for an hour with two bottles of wine to tide us over until lunch. The city is a totally different place from the water. No tourists, no rip off artists and no motor boats. We had a tour of some gorgeous palaces and learnt a bit about some classic movies like The Italian Job and Bond and a new one starring Angelina Jolie being filmed called the Tourist. (we didn’t see her!). The gondolier (our new made up word) dropped us off on the other side of the canal and we got really lost in Venice. Eventually we made it to San Magrerite Piazza and found a pizza shop Al discovered in Lonely planet. This place had the biggest pizzas ever. Without a doubt. They were around the 18 inches in diameter as one was a touch elipitical! So, we ordered three and devoured them with a bunch of canned beer that was cheap! That then followed around an hour of digestive bumming in a quiet place in the sunshine. We hit the lost technique and decided to create our own anitpasto dinner somewhere along the way and found all the makings at a local supermarket. After another tight bus we got home and boycotted everything at the hostel in aid of a DIY dinner. There were a bunch of contiki types doing a toga party… and a bunch of Czech motorbike riders. A good combo to sit back and watch with a bunch of wine!

Day two in Venice was another good lost day. We wandered out to the islands and visited the island Murano which is traditionally a glass makers island. They were outcast from Venice as the glass making smells too much. We watched a glass blowing demo and Jill and Jen spent a few hours dragging the boys (at painful lengths) through all of the shiney glass outlets buying stuff. We had a tasty Italian lunch and then proceeded to get utterly lost on the ferry system trying to get to the Venetian beach on the island of Lido.

We made it 3/4 of the way out before we called it quits and took an extra long ferry to get back. It was pretty funny but the views were great and it was a different take of Venice. More pizzas for dinner and we crashed out grumbling about how bad the hostel was and preparing for Rome.

A very, very long day of bus travel followed full of “Autogrills” which are highway food stops that consist of the exact same food and snacks and nothing is really that great. Hansen reckoned the coffee was good but you get sucked in to a whirlpool of rest stops that consist of trying to figure out how to spent 30 minutes of time… while the bus driver takes an EU mandatated break.

We rocked up to the Rome grounds ready to walk out but it has been excellent. Good food, well stocked supermarket and good transport connections we are back to happy campers.

Day one in Rome consisted of more getting lost techniques. This city has so much to offer that you feel like you’ve barely dipped a toe in to history! A sure thing return to city on the list for us all. We covered the Pantheon (really old temple), the Trevi fountain (really old fountain for good luck), the Spanish Stairs (really old stairs with a nice view), and the Colosseum (’nuff said!). The mixture of old versus ancient and the new is insane. There isn’t a space in town that hasn’t had some major historical figure take their share or make their marks.

We did a tour of the Colosseum and it was much smaller than Gladiator makes it out to be!! It’s around the size of kiddies cricket pitch in the middle. All you can see now is the dungeons and left overs of the real deal. One side has been refurbished by one of the Popes and the other side is original with minor structural repairs due to earthquakes. We wrapped up the tour with another tour of the Palatine hill. Lots of ancient stuff happened here! There is a palace that is now in ruins (which pleased Al no end) and we got taken through the palace and the gardens to see the view over the ancient Forums.

The Forums used to be a massive swamp, which got drained and built on to make a central meeting place in ancient Rome. Over time, the drains got blocked and it turned back in to a swamp during the Roman empires decline, and eventually pasture grounds after the Vatican had mined all the marble from the swamp! You really need a heavy duty imagination to make sense of it all but the history is epic. We filled the gaps between the burial mounds and the recent history we all know so well by being here.

Day two of Rome has entailed a trawl around the holy lands of the Vatican. The place is huge and full of ancient relics and mega artworks, not to mention the over the top opulance. Marble everywhere, rare and local. The Sistine Chapel was smaller in real life but just as impressive and there are stone sculptures everywhere. We had a great guide that made a lot of tacky jokes but it was funny (particularly the ones about the Ninja Turtles!). We did see the Popey Pope but we saw his balcony and the door to his private apartments. Just quietly, those Popes either stole or bought everything cool about Rome (just like the French and British museums!).

We’ve had our fill of Pasta, Pizza and olives. Well you can’t fill us, but it is good. As they say… “When in Rome…”

Tomorrow we make a move to Florence and escape the hostel trail. There should be substantial amounts of shopping, eating and drinking to take place and on that note we will catch up soon enough!

Ciao Ciao Ciao Ciao Ciao!

Jen signing in here.

So we recharged our batteries, restored our livers and generally chilled out in Grünau.

The place was amazing. There are lots of photos that will hopefully get loaded up next time we get to an internet cafe in Venice.

The boys did a huge hike up to 1600m in to the snow fields and mountains above the hostel. The five hour return trip included a little bit of excitment in the form of some random snow boarding/skatboarding over the ice. The view from the top was incredible and it has helped make Austria one of our favourite stops so far.

Jen spent her time chillaxin. Reading, sleeping and trying to shake the nasty cold she got in Vienna. Still not 100% but the nose has stopped running which is a good sign.

The host in Grünau also really made it special. Gerherd really took care of us. Home cooked meals (dinner and dessert!) plus some tasty lunches. The rooms were realy nice too. Gotta love a night wrapped up in a full feather doona with the windows open so you can hear the river outside. So nice.

We hit Munich the day before yesterday. Munich saw us coming! In our lets-get-in-on-a-random-public-holiday technique that has worked well so far, they have a huge Christian conference on in town and everything was shut yesterday! This made things very busy.

In a much more affronting adventure, we went out to the Dachau concentration camp yesterday. There really aren’t enough words to sum up the history that place has. Suffice to say that one of the memorials said ‘Never Again’ and we can’t agree more. I actually physically couldn’t listen in parts and they screened a movie within the museum with footage I have never seen (and hope never to see again). Such a waste for such horrible reasons. It was humbling and we all felt a bit more special that we haven’t had any of that happen on our doorstep. The Germans do such an amazing job of preserving the memories and sharing it with the world. Something to be greatful for I suppose.

So, in a required (or demanded?) need. We did a bit of a beer tour last night. It was supposed to be a Beer Challenge… but there were waaaaaay too many people out and about for us to visit all of the beer halls and to get around to the normal haunts. So we did a bit of a random selection of beer halls, lounges and restaurants that could fit our group of 35. It was really nice having a local guide to take us around and let us wander aimlessly after them. Plus, the full circle finished in a hostel down the road so the stumble to bed was easy. I can’t get over how many litre beers the wait staff carry. One guy had over 10! Super muscles I think.

Today has been a mixture of recovery and more sightseeing. Hansen wandered off to the BMW museum which was not exactly what he expected but worthwhile all the same. We are off this evening to do a bike tour around the city and get a bit more out of Munich. I’m sure it will involve a few more beers and hopefully if I get my plan in action, some Schwartzverldertorte (aka Black Forest Cake). The Germans do excellent munchable foods. A group favourite is Currywurst which is a pork sausage, sliced up and covered in a tasty tomato sauce with a generous tap of currypowder on top. Plus they know how to make propper hot chocolate and coffees – unlike the French, Danish and English!

We are off to Venice tomorrow so the day driving all over the place and we should end up at the hostel campsite we have booked which apparently has everything a good backpacker needs. Bar, pool and sundeck… sweet!!

Well!

The name of the game is to travel and with that comes unexpected turns!

We have decided to jump off the bus before Salzburg and we’re staying in an Austrian alpine hostel in Grünau im Almtal in Austria.

Nestled in the bottom of a valley, shallow fresh drinkable crystal clear river running next to us. Huge mountains covered in pine forest.

We’re the only ones here and it is going to be fantastic. Homecooked meals by our hosts.

No pit stop in Salzburg now but this place will make up for it. Pixie is planning a hike tomorrow and Jen is signing off now to go and read a book by the river… tough life while travelling!

Don’t expect another good update till Munich!

Ok, so it’s time for a bit of a longer update with Al – apologies for the last one and some screwups in the photos but we’re naturally a bit rushed for time and the German keyboard switches a bunch of letters around, which makes typing FUN!

We’ve made it from Berlin to Prague, which is the last travel we have to think about for ourselves for a while as we hop on the bus here tomorrow morning. I think we’re all looking forward to not worrying about travel so much and just looking out the window for a while.  Berlin was interesting – we’ve somehow managed to pick very interesting times to visit cities. Having experienced the start of the Queens birthday celebrations in Amsterdam we landed in Germany just in time for the 1st of May, International Workers Day, which also happens to be the day after the little guy with the funny mustache killed himself. Fun part about that is that the Neo-Nazi’s take it as their national day to march/protest and generally make a ruckas, so much so that shortly after we posted that last big post we saw the police riot squad, complete with a big tractor fitted with a human-snow-plow speeding past the window of the laundromat. Being there on the first of may did have it’s plus side though, they had a big rally/beer and food fest behind the Brandenburg gate when we got there, and us guys managed to score what might well be the biggest example of meat-on-a-stick ever. (See the photos for the happy grins)

We did another couple of walking tours around the joint, and saw how much had been damaged and all the rebuilding efforts still going on. Highlights were obviously the big monuments and the wall, though the most amusing was probably the site of Hitlers bunker, which is now a dirt carpark because the Germans didn’t know what else to do with the site. As we had a spare day in Berlin due to leaving Amsterdam early we also managed to do some touring around on our own – saw the East Side Gallery which is probably the most famous bit of the wall left, made a trip up the funky dome on the top of the German parliment, and even managed to cram in some more shopping. Pixie picked himself up a new little mp3 player as his had a bit of a failure (yet another bit of electronic equipment that has screwed up on us) but I think we were all a little let down when it came out of the box with English as the default language. We also managed to drop in to the VW showroom, and saw the Bugatti Veyron… I think Hansen is still cleaning the dribble marks off his clothes.

Had some more successful shopping on the day we left Berlin too… they treat their major rail stations much like we do our major airports by making them into big-ass shopping centers (makes sense really what with the captive audience and all) We just happened to stop outside a shoe store with an hour to kill so Jen went in for a look and came out 45 minutes later with another two pairs of shoes. For those keeping score at home, this makes 4 pairs of shoes in total, one pair of boots that have been shipped back to Australia and three pairs of heels that we’re carrying with us for the time being. Needless to say, we have a happy Jenny.

Prauge has been the most damp stopover that we’ve experienced thus far, but that hasn’t made it any less fun. Did the walking tour yesterday with a crazy half-czeck half-american girl, heard about a lot of defenestrations and passive resistance then did a bit of shopping before going on a pup crawl last night. I don’t know if it was the weather or just too high expectations but the pup crawl was a bit dissapointing. We started out at one place, drank a butload of beer then went from there straight to a fricking nightclub. We gave that away pretty quickly and found a nice bar (in an Australian pub of all places) to grab a couple more beers before making the trek home. Glad to say that the drunk-Hansen GPS is stil functioning, as we managed to make it home yet again without any issues.

This morning we’re feeling a little shady on it, doing some washing and going to head out on a tour of the castle here at 2… hopefully the weather will hold up for us and it’ll be another good day.