Blogs from Germany, Europe - page 674

Mat: Dave my little brother (well no so little, medium maybe, and quite hairy) was travelling to Germany at the start of June to play music at a festival in Braunschweig. Braunschweig is about two hours west of Berlin, so Trace and I organised to meet him in Berlin, and then go for a wander through Poland, Austria, Slovenia, and Hungary. Good times. For today's instalment however, it is all about Berlin. Berlin is cool. We arrived to a sun-drenched city that was topping 30 degrees. Considering we had been excited by a 20 degree day in Scotland before we left, this did our heads in a little. It was pretty much like this for most of our three week trip, and even hit 33 degrees in Slovenia. Suncream, swimming, sunglasses, singlets, shorts, jandals, sweat, cool ... read more

Stuggled a bit getting up and so missed getting on the earliest cruise on the Rhine. I was planning on getting the earliest one, getting off at St Goar to check out the Rheinfels castle, then getting on a later one to continue onto Koblenz. So I jumped on a train to St Goar, which luckily for me was also packed with bloody Year 2 or 3 schoolkids. Grrrrr. Off at St Goar, no lockers at the station but the nice ladies at the tourist info will let you stash your stuff there. Walked around the little town a bit then headed up the hill to the ruins on the Burg Rhienfels, back in its day the best castle on the Rhine and the one only one on the French side of the Rhine to hold ... read more

Back on the party bus and we head north from Switzerland to the Wine Valley of St Goar in Germany. 21/5/08 - Lauterbrunnen to St Goar Today was a big day on the coach. I had a 6am wake up for my last morning of cookies/dishies, and it was an 8am departure from the picturesque Lauterbrunnen back into Deutschland. We had a 3hr drive to an Autogrill, back into Germany where the Burger King burgers are the size of an average football field. We hit the road for another 2 hours and arrived at a pleasant little German town called Heidelberg. Heidelberg is known as the German University Town and 1 in 5 residents are students. The town was really quiet and it's alleyways full of cafes, souvenir shops and markets of all sorts. In the ... read more

Day 2 in Berlin. Tody we had our first breakfast at our European hotel. It consisted of bread, meats, cheeses, and even soft boiled eggs. a few of them learned how to crack the top off the soft boiled egg and scoop it out. After breakfast we headed off for our sightseeing tour. Our local guide was a guy called Kevin Kennedy and some of the kids found him a bit boreing, but he was very informative and I did not find him so bad. Our tour was mostly driving around in the bus seeing all of the major sights. We stopped at a few places such as the big concert hall, but it was mostly just going buy places and pointing out interesting events or things that have happened at certain places. From the obvious ... read more

Train to Frankfurt required several changes but I finally got there. Handy that the ticket terminals at the station let you print out the train timetable. Found my hostel was in the middle of the red light district, got hassled by spruikers at 3pm lol. But there was two reasons I stopped at Frankfurt. One was to catch the boat the next morning foir a cruise up the Rhine to Koblenz, but the main one was to go and try one of those famous, oversized schnitzels and oversized beers at Waldgeist restaurant, at Hofheim on the outskirts of Frankfurt. Took the train out there and then walked, was a bit further than I thought, about 5kms. Sat outside in the beer garden where they had a big TV set up for the soccer like everywhere does ... read more