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Published: August 17th 2008
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Hi, since our last posting we have continued our travels through eastern and central Europe, in particular taking in Vienna in Austria, Krakow in Poland, Prague in the Czech Republic, finally finishing up in Berlin.
Vienna had on display all the monumental buildings from the Hapsburg's dynasty's time in power in Europe. We wandered around the Hoffberg palace complex and unfortunately learnt that the Spanish Riding School as well as all the opera singers were on holiday for the following three weeks :-( We did however delve into the Empress 'Sissi' museum as well as spending some time checking out the massive Schloss Schönbrunn summer palace, and finally seeing the over decorated coffins kept on public display in the family crypt.
One of the cuisine highlights of Vienna was the Wurst Stand which would sell you a 15 inch long spicy sausage with a half litre of beer and give you a small ledge to lean against while you scoffed the lot.
Suitably refuelled by sausages and beer we headed on to the old medieval city of Krakow in southern Poland. We did the usual round of royal palaces, castles, galleries and churches while here. Of all the
sights the royal palace in the castle was the most interesting stop. These rooms gave an idea of the tortured history of the Polish royals - including a 150 year long period when the country officially ceased to exist.
One of our more unique stops in Poland was the Wieliczka Salt Mines - which had a rather expensive entrance ticket but did give you a guided tour around the subterranean levels of the 700 year old mines down to 130 metres or so. Over hundreds of years the complex has been excavated to fuel a trade in rock salt, with the miners adding decorative touches all over the place in the form of carved rock salt sculptures.
On our way out of Poland we drove to the site of Auschwitz concentration camp. This was a very solemn place with all the barrack rooms, electrified barbed wire fences, gas chamber and crematorium in place. The information and exhibits displayed brought home the reality of what the Jews, Gypsies, Polish nationals and other undesirables suffered.
A fair amount of driving further west found us in the river side city of Prague. Here we again continued to sample the delights
of beer and sausages which powered our trips through the castle, including St Nicholas cathedral and to the great hall of the palace. There were massive crowds of people in Prague with the summer holidays, which shows in our pictures of the Charles Bridge and central square.
We also sampled the local restaurant offerings which specialised in dumplings of all shapes and description. More good quality Czech beer was needed to wash down potato dumplings, potato pancakes, bacon dumplings, herb dumplings and sausage :-)
After Prague we had a day driving to Berlin, where it took us a while to find a camp ground - due to the lack of signs on the city roads until you are pretty much turning in the driveway.
We only had one day in Berlin, as really not that much to see, and the city is huge and pretty modern. We went and saw bits of the wall which are still standing, and the Checkpoint Charlie museum, which was pretty cool and set out a whole lot of successful and unsuccessful attempts to cross from East to West Berlin.
We also checked out briefly most of the other major sights,
including the Brandenburger gate, the Reichstag Parliament buildings, and the Tiergarten (photos attached).
Some of the road rules in Germany seem pretty crazy to us - you seem to have to stop and give way at lots of random places. We have had a few angry looks and people waving at us when we were meant to give way and didn't look like we were going to. This was only a problem in slow town areas where there weren't many signs, so in these areas we often resorted to just stopping and waiting to see what other people were going to do - usually they stopped and look at us like we were crazy (obviously we were meant to be going!!).......
Another new and interesting experience we had in Germany was 'Bert' being pulled over by the cops within about an hour of driving into the country for making a 'forbidden' turn at a set of traffic lights at Dresden. There were two lanes, one with a sign going left and no sign in the other, so we assumed we could go straight ahead, especially as both other directions seemed to be stopped at the time, so off
we went. Apparently although there were no signs it was forbidden to go straight ahead and we were actually in a bus lane (we still can't work out how you are meant to know this). Unfortunetly our naughty turn was undertaken right in front of a police car, as they pulled us over about 200 m down the road.... they did however let us off the 10 Euro fine so no bad effects.
We did have a good laugh though as we have made a lot more dodgy turns or U-turns in other countries (along with all the locals), but get in trouble for something which seemed fine the instant we get into Germany.
We are scooting though the industrialised north of Europe now, with the final stop in our continental European tour, Amsterdam now being in sight.
S&S
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