Europe 2010

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.