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Published: September 3rd 2009
Beijing ...March 2009....am making a concerted to get all the travelblog up to date...June 09...failing miserably but now that I have the 'tai tai' life let's see how we progress....ok now it's Aug..
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Dec 7…Off to Berlin…time for our early family catch up…which was what started all this tripping about Europe in the first place. Adam works for a German event/live marketing company that fly some of its employees to Germany for their work Christmas party and it was Adam’s turn this year so we knew he would be in Germany some time in Dec. Lani had an around the world ticket with a stop over in Berlin so we knew she would be there at some time so we decided to do the early family get together and meet in Berlin on Dec 7.
Lani and Adam had been staying with a good friend, Victor, who unfortunately having not been too long in his apartment wasn’t really equipped to cope with an influx of even more visitors so they decided they would come and share our hostel room. After a couple of days of wandering around Berlin we hired a car and with our trusty TOM headed
Dragonboats Berlin
we looked for them but coulnd't find anyoneout to parts unknown, those being Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Czech Republic. Actually we thought doing a tour of Eastern Europe would be cheaper than staying in Germany little did we know that even though they aren’t full members of the EU and they don’t use the euro they are acting as if they are and they do. Compound that with a lousy AUD and you start getting the picture…everything was expensive.
Anyway, we managed to find our way to Wroclaw where we visited the Christmas markets and then decided that since it was still early we should keep on driving …so off we set to Krakow.
While driving through Poland a dog ran out on the road and you guessed it...we hit it! Thiis was when we found the car wasn’t insured. In all the countries we have hired cars we have always taken full insurance specifically in case anything like this or worse happens…well I don’t know what happened… if there was miscommunication because of the language differences, Adam and I were both sure I asked for full insurance …the long and short of it…we weren’t insured now we have this bill to pay which has
put a dampener on the holiday…as if the plunging Aussie dollar wasn’t bad enough this topped it off! Maybe in retrospect we should have stayed the night in Wroclaw.
Picking our accommodation involved looking up the Lonely Planet and then going by foot to look at what was available. This is definitely not the best way to pick accommodation. Couple that with being in a strange place, it being dark and us being tired and hungry it wasn’t the most ideal of situations…but like the seasoned travellers we have become we coped! In fact most of the accommodation centred around the square which was a ‘no car’ area, which then presented us with another problem….where to park the car…managed to find parking about a kilometer away and just hoped that the car would be there the next morning.
Finally fed and watered we turned in for an earlyish night, supposedly to be up bright and early to be on the road. I don’t know what it is with the winters in Europe, what with sun rising late and setting early we found that every day we didn’t manage to get started til around 10, then come 430 it felt
like it was time to hunker down for the night. After our 10am start we thought we would do a little tour around the city (Wawel Castle, Jewish Quarter and the local shops) before heading out to Slovakia.
Dec 10..The road took us up across the mountains which were all covered in snow, Malcolm was in favour of stopping but I was worried that with us having no snow tyres or chains, there would be a a dump of snow overnight and we would be snow bound, so we kept on going. By this time it was dark and we still didn’t have any accommodation so we ended up stopping in a little town called Zvolen…no reason to stop here except for the fact that it was getting late. Found a typical Slovak restaurant to eat at but because it was so late most of the menu was unavailable. Apparently Zvolen is an historical town in the middle of Slovakia and I am sure there are plenty of things to see and do but we basically ate, slept and left.
Dec 11…Only a short drive today meant we were getting into Budapest around lunch time. The accommodation was
pre-booked so we knew where we were staying. Yippee!!! The idea was to get there around lunchtime and have the rest of the day to look around the city…both Buda and Pest plus half of the next day as well. Talk about the best laid plans of mice and men…between our trusty TOM and our intrepid navigator(s) whom shall remain nameless, we did have a look around and around the countryside while trying to find our accommodation. I think we ended up doing an hour and half detour before eventually finding our hostel. The Baroque hostel was a lovely place to stay, besides being brand new and wonderfully clean we basically had the whole place to ourselves. There was only one other Aussie couple there.
Dec 12 …the morning was spent looking around Pest and going to the House of Terror.
It contains exhibits related to the fascist and communist dictatorial regimes in 20th century Hungary and is also a memorial to the victims of these regimes, including those detained, interrogated, tortured or killed in the building.
After a quick lunch we were on the road again and heading to Prague. The road takes you back through Slovakia and as
luck would have it, come dinner time we were in Bratislava. Anyone would think our whole trip revolved around eating, while this is not 100% true it certainly is a pleasurable part of our trip and probably explains why Malcolm and I have stacked on the weight. Once again, there were the ubiquitous Christmas markets although these ones had the best Christmas trees we had seen. It was nice strolling amongst the crowds, listening to music and drinking gluwein. (mine was the non alcoholic variety). Since we were on a pretty tight schedule we had to keep going, our accommodation was booked in Praha…so on the road again.
As we have found, driving in foreign countries is not without its dramas. Eastern European countries being what they are, things are done differently. As we were leaving Bratislava Malcolm was pulled over by the police. Firstly they assumed we were German because we were driving a German registered car, but once they realized we didn't understand a thing they were saying…it was a case of 'we don’t speak English'. We worked out they wanted our paper work...passport, drivers licence, car registration. Malcolm felt that there wasn’t something not quite right, they
wanted Malcolm to step out of the car and go with them behind the car where we couldn’t see them ...all the time saying they wanted all the paperwork together. Malcolm said they could have one, then when they gave that back he would give them the next one etc They said that they would take him to the police station if he didn’t give them all the papers…Malcolm said ‘OK take me to the police station’. Eventually Adam got out of the car and walked with them to the police car and gave them all the papers. Next minute they tossed all the papers back at them, got in their car and drove off. Hard to know whether it was all legit or a shakedown.
It’s just as well we could all alternate with the driving. Next little incident happened when Lani was driving. We had just crossed the Czech border and had stopped at little service station. When we were leaving we were stopped by the police again. It appears that we should have had a transit permit affixed to our car. It was the first we had heard about it and no other country had needed
it, but stilll, with the police blocking the service station exit we weren't going anywhere without it, so another 10 euro later we found ourselves once again on the road.
….1030 pm found us finally getting to Praha (Prague). 2hours later we were ensconced in our little apartment, our car was parked which was no mean feat…there is just no parking around the city…we ended up parking in this apartment building where you just drive your car in, it rotates on a turntable and then goes off into the never, never and the privilege cost us 20 euro…almost the same price as we paid for our apartment.
Dec13 was the last day we were all together. Lani left to go back to Berlin as she was flying to Munich the following day. So after moving apartments we went walking…we walked and walked all over the city, had an early family Christmas lunch although not quite the usual Christmas fare that we are used to but it was great just being together. Found one of the places that Lani and I had found on a previous trip to Prague…the Ritchie’s Hotel and Hostel.
I guess this is
where I am suppose to mention that I got booked for driving down a ‘tram only’ road…to be honest I didn’t see any signs saying ‘No Entry’ but I remember remarking to everyone that the road seemed to be a bit empty but they all pointed out to me that there were cars parked on the side of the road pointing in the same direction as we were driving....50euro on the spot fine. At least he was friendly and chatty as he booked us, in fact he was probably one of the more pleasant people we met in all our travels of Eastern Europe. Saw Lani off at the train station in the afternoon, then Malcolm, Adam and I spent the rest of the afternoon/evening doing more sightseeing.
Dec 14 - Off to Frankfurt. Adam had a flight to Beijing the following day. Travelled via Regensburg where we stopped to visit Stefan whom we had met whilst camping at Byron Bay in 2003. Had a quick lunch and a visit to the Christmas markets then we were on our way again. We overnighted in Frankfurt at the Vok Dams apartment (Adam’s work apt). Next morning we dropped Adam at
the airport (have since found it was the wrong terminal) had a 5 hour drive to arrive in Munich around 4:30pm, met up with Lani then drove to Freiburg arriving there around 1030pm to meet Olaf who had been hanging around the railway station waiting to direct us to his apartment which is in a pedestrian only area. The drive was absolutely horrendous with road works a lot of the way, relentless oncoming headlights, barriers in the middle of the road and only one lane traffic in each direction…I was glad when we arrived! We spent a couple of days in Freiberg recovering from our long drive. Left Lani in Freiburg with Olaf, and we took off back to Munich
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