Our Europa: So ist das Leben Schön

We made it onto Avebury after some confusion. We thought we were heading for Amesbury, which is only about 5 minutes away from Stonehenge – turns out that Avebury is about 45 minutes away. The trip was something of an anti-climax because we had it in our heads that this was a town that was full of witches. Turns out there were no witches, but there was a stone circle and plenty of sheep.

Lots o’ sheep but no witches

Just outside of the town we came across a giant burial mound. They had a few of them right near Stonehedge but they looked tiny when compared with the one here. We read that they mound held around 50 people but I would have thought there would be plenty more in there.

The giant burial mound

The stone circle was fun to see because it was actually very large. If you could see it from the air I imagine it would be about the size of a cricket field, with large stones placed every 15 feet or so. The town had since been built in the middle of the circle, making it hard to correctly judge the size.

Katie feeling the vibes from the stones

I think Lyn and Erica may have been feeling the vibes of the stones too because they spent about 3 minutes mimicking the rather deep-voiced baa of one of the sheep. I have a video of the two of them but it’s too big to upload. You’ll just have to trust me when I say that they have no future as animal mimics.

Really happy with this photo

I like this one too...Happy clouds

On the way back to the motorway we managed to get in one more fun site. We drove by one of the famed white horses of Wiltshire. I think that there may be eight of them throughout the county so I’m not sure which is the most famous but the one we saw looked pretty cool and it had the added bonus of being right near a giant obelisk.

The Cherhill White Horse (dated 1780) and Lansdowne Monument

Posted by Troy Wass at 12:11 PM | Permalink

The first time I came to England, actually it was the second time as I came once as a youngling, I had a few things on my must-do list. One of those things was to see Stonehenge. I went out and about in Salisbury and saw quite a few of the sights surrounding the henge but never managed to make it the actual site. On this trip we were determined to make it and we did.

We made it!

The trip to Stonehenge was a little more complicated than we had hoped due to road closures. The main road between Bath and Bristol has been partially closed for awhile and it has led to some major delays. To avoid it we drove the long way round but still had to deal with the crazy traffic situation within Bath itself.

Lyn hates driving through Bath as it is essentially all one-way streets and the signage was pretty bad. We ended up taking a very circuitous route through the town. Even so, we enjoyed getting a little drive-through tour of this lovely city.

A nice shot of Bath, taken from the car

Eight years ago E and I spent a day in Bath and had a really nice time. We went on the Bizarre Bath walking tour and really enjoyed it. It was done by a really mad guy and we followed him around the city and he told us bits of history and interspersed it with some wacky gags. I’m pretty sure that the tour is still going so if you ever make it to Bath we highly recommend you looking it up.

Once we finally made it out of Bath it didn’t take all that long to make our way to Stonehenge. Even though you can no longer get really close to the stones (they keep you about 15 feet away) it is still a very interesting site to see. It makes the mind boggle when one thinks about just how the stones were placed originally, given the weight of the stones and the way that they were arranged to sit on top of each other.

Lyn and Katie enjoying the sunshine. It was Katie's first visit too.

You can see how the top stones were held in place

One of the more interesting things about the free audio tour was the fact that they claim to still have no idea of who actually built Stonehenge. Common lore tells us that the druids built the site but science has shown that although the druids undoubtedly used the site there is nothing to suggest that they actually built it.

E, looking for Merlin

Katie and Erica seemed to prefer the folkloric anecdote that Merlin used magic to transport the stones from Ireland while Lyn favored the story of the devil dropping the stones as he was flying over the plain. Not sure which one I prefer although I would really love to know just how they managed to carry the stones for miles and then line them up with such precision.

How the stones looked before they were shaped

Once we had toured the site we decided to head to Avebury to see some similar stones as well as a massive burial mound…

Posted by Troy Wass at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We've organized the internal pages so that you can sort by countries we've visited if you want to read entries by nation.

Posted by ewass at 08:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We had a great day out yesterday as we visited the Cheddar caves and Gorge. It was quite pricey to get in (everything is quite pricey in the UK) but by the end of the day we considered it money well spent.

Katie and Erica ready for the Gorge

With our admission we got to look around a couple of different caves, take a long walk up a 300 odd stairs to see the view from the lookout and then take a bus through the gorge. The major cave was quite similar to the ones that we explored in Wales. I guess it makes sense that the rocks would be similar because the two caves were quite close to each other. The caves we’ve seen here have been less spectacular than others we’ve seen but they have been quite a bit bigger so that made them enjoyable.

The caves were nice and cool too

The second cave that we visited was rather strange. It appeared to be a rip-off of the Lord of the Rings story and although it was designed for kids it was quite scary. Even Katie got a bit of a fright from one of the extras – she thought he was a statue and jumped a bit when he moved.

Weird LOTR rip-off cave

Personally, I had a bugger of a day. When we stopped for lunch (mmmm chips with vinegar) I almost came a cropper when I tried to sit at the picnic bench. As I sat the whole thing started breaking under me. Luckily I only had one cheek on the bench and I could jump up and away before I broke the whole thing. If I had of plonked myself down like normal it could have been pretty embarrassing. As it was I only had to deal with everyone laughing at me for the next five minutes…Olivia decided to draw a picture of the bench this morning…Grand.

The bloody bench

The bus trip through the gorge was pretty fun. It was the last trip of the day and the guide was clearly ready to go home but the breeze was very nice (it was an open-top double decker) and the gorge itself was beautiful.
Oh, we also watched a guy make some peanut brittle and picked up some delicious cheeses (we were in Cheddar after all).

Wave, Lyn

When we got back home my wonderful day continued as I smashed my head on the wall in Lyn’s living room. If you look at the photo of Erica with the scones you can see in the background (on the left hand side) how the ceiling is lower on one side. Being the idiot that I am I was standing just through the walkway and when I turned to walk through I turned right into the wall. Thankfully I seem to have a pretty hard head – been hit twice playing cricket and was okay – and all I really had to deal with was the whole family laughing at me again…Olivia hasn’t drawn a picture of me smashing my head yet…maybe today.

Concentrate Katie

Olivia is hiding

Gotcha this time!

Posted by Troy Wass at 04:27 AM | Permalink

One of the best things about coming to England is that you get the chance to have a real afternoon tea with scones and clotted cream. I’m not sure exactly what it is that makes the cream clotted but I do know that it is thick, creamy and delicious…it is also really bad for you. But once in a while it doesn’t hurt, does it?

E, getting ready to enjoy the clotted cream - at least we had fresh fruit ;-)

Posted by Troy Wass at 05:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

One of the things we’ve learned since we arrived in Bristol is that it is quite possible to sit around and chat for an entire day. This has happened twice since we arrived. We intended to get out and about but just never got around to doing it. Still it’s all good – we only get to catch up with this part of the family every couple of years.

That being said we did manage to get out yesterday to visit the Bristol waterfront and visit a museum. The waterfront was a really nice surprise; it had certainly changed a great deal since I was last here. It is now filled with restaurants and bars and leads to a whole new area that features an indoor rainforest, an Imax and a Scienceworks type thing that would be popular with the kids.

The new Bristol waterfront

The museum, on the other hand, was pretty disappointing. It really felt like we were walking around the house of a really eccentric collector. In one room it was possible to find pianos, a gypsy wagon, stuffed otters, insects and rocks. They did have a stuffed Thylacine (Tassie Tiger) which was good to see and the rock and mineral area was quite good but that was about it.

The Bristol Cathedral

The green area near the cathedral

We got home and then chatted a bit more (we really do enjoy a good natter) and then we sat down and watched the Fellowship of the Ring. Even when it finished at 11.15pm Lyn was asking if we should watch the second movie right away. For the few of you who haven’t seen the Lord of the Rings films they average about 3 hours in length. I guess we would say then that Lyn enjoyed it. We’ll have to watch the remaining two films at some point during the week…can’t wait, especially as Lyn and Katie haven’t seen them.

Today sees Mark’s daughter, Olivia, come and stay with us for the weekend. On Sunday we’ll be off to visit somewhere nearby for the day so that’ll be fun. We’ll be sure to take loads of photos.

Posted by Troy Wass at 05:13 AM | Permalink

On Saturday Sarah and Andrew had invited MA (and us by proxy) to Sarah’s birthday party. It was unusual because we were going to go lawn bowling and then have fish and chips at their place. We were certainly game for that.

Neither Troy nor I had played lawn bowls (that what the Aussies call them.. I think MA called them Crown Bowls). It was fun. You throw out the little white ball (the jack) then you try to get your teams’ “balls” closest. The balls aren’t perfectly round, so you have to figure out where you’re going to throw and then line up the inverted side so that it’ll curve in the right direction. See the Aussie film Crackerjack for further explanation.

We played on separate teams and none of us were consistent but T and I and MA had a couple of good shots.
Troy didn'y take his camera (d'oh) but we'll post some pics when they are forwarded to us.

The fish and chips for dinner were tasty and we enjoyed meeting and chatting with their other friends who attended the party.

Somehow the days passed by and MA had to go back to work, so we were back on the bus to Bristol. Good thing Bristol’s been so much fun or we’d have been sad.

Posted by ewass at 11:41 AM | Permalink

On Monday morning we arose and left town to explore Southern Wales. We did a little hike and fed ducks at an old castle, then hiked to Southern Wales’ largest waterfall. It was a bit of a curtain trickle, the summer heat wave is even taking its toll on nature, but it was still lovely.

Feeding the ducks

Beautiful Wales

The said Waterfall

Afterwards we went to some caves and dinosaur park which was fun as well. We first had a picnic in the shade which was tasty and relaxing. There is nothing quite like sitting in the shade and munching on some fine Welsh cheddar. Refreshed, we then walked up the hill to the attractions.

Dinosaurs in Wales?

I haven’t seen any such dinosaur park in the U.S., but here they’re quite popular. They educate you about various dinosaurs and have life-size replicas dotted throughout the landscape. It was quite good. The caves were some of the longest we’ve been in and the second cave had a really high ceiling with waterfalls and classical music playing in the background.

Is that a hard hat or a beret?

MA hamming it up

We then decided to circle around back to Cardiff instead of going back the way we came so we could go through the lovely city of Brecon (cities are so designated if they have a cathedral… if we saw it we’d have called it a “cute little town”.) We went to the cathedral which was neat and had a cool wood ceiling on part of it. We had a traditional afternoon tea at the cathedral teahouse – scones with clotted cream (imagine heavy cream, then make it heavier) and strawberry jelly/jam and a nice cup of tea (although I had a coke because it was so bloody hot).

Brecon Cathedral

Wales, photographed by me from the car

We then returned home (me for a nap) before our exciting evening activities.

Posted by ewass at 11:27 AM | Permalink

The next day we went to the food festival in Cardiff which was fun because we got to try a bunch of Welsh specialties – of course we ended up buying some. That’s the fun part about staying in one place a bit is that you can buy things which would go bad (like soft Welsh Blue Cheese) if you were always on the road.

E Enjoying a nice ice-cream – notice the Welsh Dragon on the cone

I had a hog sandwich which was interesting. It was shredded pork on a roll with stuffing and applesauce. Troy and MA had a venison sandwich.

Troy getting ready to eat Venison for the first time - he enjoyed it

We also tried some yummy liqueurs and ended up buying the Welsh Crème (which is sort of like Baileys but a bit smoother, I reckon.)
After the festival we met up with MA’s friends Sue and Andrew to go to the, get this, Doctor Who exhibit. We didn’t realize but Doctor Who is now a Cardiff endeavor, and heaps of scenes in the new series were filmed there. MA took us to various locations which appear in episodes which was fun and then we went to the exhibit where we could learn about the various Drs., and see the real props and costumes including – The TARDIS, the Daleks (Exterminate) and the brand new Cybermen.

E with the TARDIS

Enemies of the Doctor

We greatly enjoyed their gift shop and I even got Troy a new tie – complete with the TARDIS. Fun, Fun, Fun.
We then returned home just to hang out and share photos. MA’s a huge traveler and we enjoyed seeing her photos from the Philippines and Egypt and hearing of her various endeavors.

Posted by ewass at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We went with her and her friend Dave who was visiting to the beach at SouthernDown. It was LOVELY. There were tons of sheep around – they are pretty much allowed to run free. We first walked up a hill through a garden and an old ruin. Then we headed back downhill (minding the sheep poo) to the sand. It was low tide and the sand looked like it went forever…must have been at least 150 feet to the water.

The others were scaredy cats and didn’t want to swim in the chilly Atlantic, but I’m always game for a swim so off I went. It was chilly but warmed up (eventually). We then enjoyed some strawberries in the rock pools and went off to home for a dinner party.

That night we met with Dave and two other of MA’s friends (Jace and Anna) for a lovely dinner party in MA’s backyard. It was quite fun and we first noticed the ton of seagulls that love to hang out overhead. (Fortunately none of them sprinkled our meal).

Posted by ewass at 11:11 AM | Permalink

The trip on the bus to Cardiff, Wales was quite easy. It was an hour with nice views and then, before we knew it, we were passing a big castle in the center of a town and we realized we had arrived.

Before we got off the bus we spied Mary-Ann, smiling as usual.

As background, I met MA in 1996 when we were both traveling in Australia. We were on the same multiple-day tour in Kakadu National Park in the Top End and then, in a discussion, realized that we were on the same tour again when we headed south to the Red Centre. Over the course of the week we became friends and MA even stayed with me in Newcastle when I had to head back to class and she was making her way down the East Coast of Australia.

It was so much fun for me to have a visitor when I, myself, was a visitor in that country. We had a lovely time.

Eight years ago, when I was in Europe (just after Troy and I had met) we met with MA again and we stayed with her in the Wimbledon section of London. Then two years ago she came and visited us in New York.

This visit was like all the others in that we had lots of fun and exploration.

Posted by ewass at 11:07 AM | Permalink

As much as our quick jaunt to Prague was fun I have to admit that I was looking forward to getting back to Bristol to spend some time with our Aunt and cousins. The ability to sit down and just have a nice cup of tea and a long chat should not be underestimated.

We spent the first evening just catching up as it had been about 18 months since Lyn and Katie had been over to New York for a visit. They had just completed a 13 day trip to Spain (without once visiting a beach btw) and the stories they had of the trip turned out to be very entertaining. For our meal we even had Chinese fish and chips – the Chinese shop also made fish and chips and the fish and chip shop also sold Chinese food…bizarre.

The food was quite good, although the lady behind the counter clearly couldn’t understand my accent because she buggered-up all the orders. It was tasty however and there was enough left over that our other cousin, Mark, could have a nice feed when he got home from a long days work.

Friday, our second day, started with grand plans of visiting the new Bristol waterfront. We never quite made it that far. Katie decided to cook us all breakfast and it was spectacular. We had everything from eggs and baked beans to hash browns and fresh fruit. After the feast was over we set about making some changes to the family PC and once that was sorted it was almost 3pm and too late to head into town due to the abhorrent traffic conditions throughout Bristol. We spent the rest of the day chatting and drinking tea 

Saturday morning and we were off to Cardiff to visit with our friend Mary Ann. E had never been to Wales and I had only spent a morning there eight years ago so we were both looking forward to it…

Posted by Troy Wass at 10:58 AM | Permalink

It's hard when you're traveling around to find somewhere to sit and blog but there's usually plenty of time for it. When you're visiting family and friends, however, it's easy to find somewhere to do it, but it's hard to find the time. That's why we haven't blogged in a few days -- when you only get to see people once every couple of years it's hard to tear away from the chatting to write about what you just chatted about.

That being said, we're back in Bristol for a couple of weeks now and will be working on our blogs.

Posted by ewass at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So I’ve finally made it to Prague after all these years of waiting. When I first left Australia, Prague was one of the main places I wanted to see. After I met Erica things changed and I never made it this far east.

All that has now changed and I’m pleased to say that I enjoyed the city like I thought I would. We certainly got to see a good chunk of the city by foot as our train arrived at 5am and nothing opened until nine, leaving us with plenty of time to walk around.

The city is beautiful to say the least. Walking around at 5am gave us the added benefit of looking at much of the town before the millions of tourists crowded into the areas. Once the crowds did emerge then much of the charm seemed to be swept away in a tide of people hawking walking tours and other hawking their ancient car tours. When the streets are so small then these people tend to take up a good percentage of them.

We visited a couple of museums. The first one was an art exhibit dealing with the troubles in Northern Ireland – I know it’s a random thing to view in Prague but it looked interesting. They had works by different artists working with different media. We enjoyed most of it.

The second was an exhibit of photographs from the late 1800s and early 1900s that looked at Prague in the times before much of the city was torn down and rebuilt as they tried to keep up with cities like London and Paris. From the readings about the exhibit you could tell that many local historians are devastated by the rashness to tear down historic buildings. Considering how pretty the city still is I can only wonder how nice it would have been had they kept it.

The evening we actually spent in our hotel. We intended to head back into town but as we updated the blog and then had dinner it just got too late (and we’re getting old you know) to make it worthwhile.

Right now we are in the lobby of the hotel waiting for a taxi to take us to the airport. We wotif'd a hotel so that we could spend time taking care of things instead of setting up and taking down a tent in unknown weather. It's worked well as we got some much needed sleep, got to enjoy the city, and got caught up on work and blogging with the wifi access. Had a good meal too -- Prague beef goulash with dumplings. Yummy.

We’re flying to Bristol where we will be visiting my Aunt and cousins. It’ll be nice to be able to spend a few days relaxing and having a nice cup of tea in the morning.

Until next time…

Posted by Troy Wass at 07:15 AM | Permalink

I have to comment on the train. When we took the night train from Frankfurt to Vienna we traveled in what seemed to be a state of the art, German, train. There wasn’t all that much space but it was clean, air conditioned and quiet. The train we took from Vienna to Prague was the opposite.

There is no doubt that this train was left over from the Soviet era. All of the signs on the walls etc. were in Russian, German and Czech. Nothing was in English. The cabin actually had more space than the German one but there was no a/c whatsoever (and it was a stinking hot night) and the noise reduction was zero.

When we asked the conductor how to leave the window open he walked in and shoved the curtain into the tracking. It was crude but it worked for awhile. We had to close the window when we went to sleep though because Erica was sure that she would slide out of the window.

As annoying as it was at the time (sleeper cars are kind of expensive) it was still quite cool to ride in such an old carriage.

Posted by Troy Wass at 07:13 AM | Permalink

The bum-wetting table

Perhaps the trickiest of all tricks

E turns photographer

Love the unicorns

E can touch the top!

It was this big! No really it was. Look in the water.

Posted by Troy Wass at 04:27 PM | Permalink

A view of the old city as the sun sets

E enjoying the pool in Bergheim

Guess what they are?

The torrential downpour I talked about in Salzburg

The lovely fountain in the old city

The view from the top of the fortress

Another view from the top

Mozart played that

...and that

E waiting for the cruise – the Italian family we kept seeing is behind her.

Posted by Troy Wass at 04:14 PM | Permalink

I’ve already touched upon just how great Iris, Christian and their family have been to us. They have served not only as tour guides but also as culinary guides. I’m going to go on the record now and say that the food in Austria is as good as anywhere in the world.

You may recall the dinner party, with the Greek cuisine. That was just the start of our gastronomic delight. We also went to the Worther See (“see” is actually the word for lake) for a full, Austrian breakfast. To say it was delicious would be an understatement. We were served all kinds of fruits, cold meat, bread rolls, yogurts and cheeses. The only pity was that we could not get close to eating it all.

The full breakfast at the Worther See

E carrying Leah after the breakfast

The next day we went to a very traditional (no tourists) pub for goulash. The place was called Pumpe, it was classic. The goulash itself though was simply out of this world. Just thinking about it now makes me hungry.
We were also lucky because we were served the goulash with both bread and a knödel – even the regulars are given one or the other. The knödel was a different sort to the type E had and loved at the beer garden in Munich. (We’ve since learned there are different types based on the type of grain – wheat, semolina, etc. This one reminded us of the stuffing E’s grandma used to make for Thanksgiving. Needless to say she loved this knödel as well.

When this goulash is washed down with some of the fine Austrian beer it is truly a great feed.

Christian with one of the prized Pumpe glasses. Iris’ mother is in the background.

The Austrians also seem to know a thing or two about ice-cream. We’ve noticed that throughout the country people would be eating ice-cream at all times of the day. Klagenfurt is no different. What is different, however, is the fact that we finally got to try some. The Watermelon ice-cream is unbelievable…mmmm…I really want some goulash, beer and ice-cream right now.

Iris, Christian and Leah at the ice-cream parlor. Look closely and you see Erica hiding behind that belly.

Leah liked chocolate

Then to top all this lovely food off just as we were leaving Iris served us a traditional Austrian meal that was, again, delicious. This time (the name escapes me) it was a dumpling type thing, one made with ricotta and one with potato. Inside the dumpling was fruit, either apricot or plum. They were then boiled and served with a sweet topping made from breadcrumbs. As lovely as they were Iris insists that the fresh type – she intended to make them herself but we changed our train time and left 5 hours earlier than originally found – is better than the frozen ones we had. Next time…

The main clock tower in Klagenfurt

A castle we visited just outside of town

E and I at the castle. Thanks Christian

From high atop the castle

My favorite photo from that day

Posted by Troy Wass at 03:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After the excitement of the Kart Racing we headed to Iris’ parent’s house for a birthday party for her mother. The family has a special place in their collective heart for Greece so this meant that the evening had a Greek theme.

We started with an aperitif, Ouzo, and then drank and dined on the best of Greece. Everything from roasted peppers stuffed with Feta to Moussakka. To drink, we had not only a limitless supply of fine Austrian beer but also something neither Erica nor myself had ever had – Kourtaki retsina.

12 bottles later.....

Even after having it explained to me more than once I’m having a hard time explaining the drink. It looks like a white wine but it tastes much thicker than that -- with sap and barrels -- and had a very unique flavor. We were told that it is either something you love or hate so I guess we both loved it because we managed to get through quite a bit of it.

The party was great, and just like earlier, E and I were made to feel right at home. The guests made an extra effort to repeat much of the conversation in English which meant we were free to participate fully in a conversation on politics, or another subject, that was being conducted in German. We were also helped by having an ex-pat Aussie there, Carmen. She had left Australia about 25 years before and despite only returning three times she retained her Aussie accent when she spoke in English.

Eventually the party had to end and when we finally got back to Iris’ place we noticed that the time was now 3.30am. Wow. Time does fly when you’re having fun.

Posted by Troy Wass at 03:45 PM | Permalink

The city of Salzburg is a beautiful one, and there was much to see and do there but after camping with the moles we both felt like it was time to get back to civilization for awhile. To that end we were blessed as we had organized to visit with Erica’s friends in Klagenfurt, a stone’s throw from the borders of both Italy and Slovenia.

We stayed with Iris and Christian Kahle and they proved to be wonderful hosts. Erica and Iris knew each other from the time they spent studying together in Australia. E had visited with them right before she and I met all those years ago – they now also have a beautiful little daughter, Leah – so it was fun to get to meet Iris and Christian after all these years.

Our time there was brilliant, we were made to feel like old family friends (which I guess Erica was) right from the first moment there. Within ten minutes of arriving we were amidst the VIPs at a Kart race in the town of Villach. Christian’s business, Group 4 Security, had sponsored a car and as such he was one of the drivers. Even as he was getting ready to drive he made sure that we were issued our VIP bracelets so we could help ourselves to free food and beverages.

Joining us at the race was Iris’ sister Gerit and her boyfriend Reini( and they proved to be great fun too over the next couple of days as we visited the sights in and around Klagenfurt.

The race itself was quite a big deal, even being covered for television. The old part of the city of Villach was turned into a racetrack and something like 42 teams participated. One of the teams actually featured a former Formula 1 driver. No shock that that team won. I managed to capture some pretty good photos of Christian and the other drivers so I felt like I could give something back in return for the great hospitality.

Two racers going down the straightaway

Christian concentrates as he enters the corner

Gerit, Erica and Reini enjoying the racing

After the race we headed to Iris’ parent’s house for one wild dinner party…

Posted by Troy Wass at 03:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's been a crazy few days (with friends in Klagenfurt) and as such we've not been updating the blog much. We're now in Prague and we'll post a bunch of photos tonight at the hotel.

Posted by Troy Wass at 03:12 AM | Permalink

After the trip to Hellbrunn and the adjoining zoo we thought it might be time to check our email so we jumped on a bus to the central station...

As we got on the (almost empty) bus I noticed that the woman in front of us made a face. I was kind of annoyed because I thought she made the face simply because we sat behind her. I asked her if there was a problem and she said (in perfect English), “yes, you stink!” I have to admit that I was quite taken aback. To be honest I don’t know what a normal response to that statement would be. I just kind of sat back and thought, “Do I really stink?” I checked my armpits and they smelled fine.

After a few minutes the woman actually got up and moved seats. E and I simply thought that she was a whackjob. We made it to the train station and went directly to the Internet café to check email. While we were sitting there a guy near us said to his friend, “It smells like dog shit in here”. Even now we thought that it was simply people being a bit crazy.

We left the café and took the bus back to the old town where we had planned to dine that evening. On the bus I started to replay the events in my mind and began to wonder if we did stink. I double checked my pits and knew that it wasn’t me but still I was uncomfortable. As we neared our stop I asked E if we could get out early and walk across the bridge.

As we were walking along we talked about how funny it was that people thought we stunk and instinctively we checked the bottoms of our shoes. E showed me hers and they were clean as a whistle. When I lifted my shoe I was greeted to the site of a shoe that was covered in crap. Oh man. I did stink!

I guess the fact that we had just come from the zoo meant that our nasal passages were used to the smell – it’s the only explanation to be honest.

As soon as I tried to get the crap of my shoe we smelled the loveliness that everyone else had discovered over the past few hours. It was disgusting. I couldn’t believe I had been walking around with that smell in tow.

I spent the next ten minutes or so desperately trying to get the crap off with a combination of grass and a big puddle that had thankfully been left from the torrential downpour the night before. Once I felt like the job was done we headed over the bridge and into the old town. Our first stop was the supermarket which saw me buy the only deodorant available.

We stood on the main street and I proceeded to spray about half the bottle on myself and my shoes. At one point a guy started laughing and saying something in German. I’ve no idea of what he was actually saying but from his body language he was saying, “thank you, now the whole city smells good”. Even after all this deodorant I couldn’t get past the fact that I had stunk up the bus and the café. It still felt like people were staring at me and wondering what the smell was.

In the end my mind did me in and I decided that I couldn’t stay around all of these people and I wanted to head home. So we took the bus back to the campsite with the intention of showering and then returning for dinner. Another torrential downpour meant that we, in fact, spent the rest of the night in the tent. I’m still checking my shoes every morning.

Posted by Troy Wass at 03:07 AM | Permalink

One of the cooler things about Salzburg tourism is the fact that they offer a card that enables you to get into a lot of major attractions for nothing. We paid 23 EUR each for a 24 hour period and they were well worth it.

First thing we did was to make our way to the Fortress that sits ominously above the city. We could even take a cable car/train thing to the top (rather than make the steep climb) and because we had the card it was free. Not scary at all by the way.

Once we got to the top we looked down upon the beautiful city for awhile and then headed for an audio of the Fortress. The tour itself was pretty good but seemed awfully short – much like the tour of Neuschwanstein. We did get to go all the way to the top of the place so that was worthwhile. After that we looked around a bit more and then rushed back to the cable car so we could make our next site.

Mozart’s birthplace.

Right in the middle of the old city is the house that Mozart was born in and spent his childhood within. It’s one of the countless Mozart sites in Salzburg but we liked the idea of visiting this one because it featured two of the instruments that the master during his childhood.

Erica had been to the house during her last visit to Salzburg but she noticed that it had changed vastly. It now features installations by other artists, in many other media. It would have been nice to spend a little more time experiencing all of this but that it not what the super tourists could do on this day…we had a date with a river cruise.

Rushing from Mozart’s place we headed to the dock and made it to the ferry with perfect timing. We were first in line and there was an Italian family right behind us. I only mention this because we met crossed paths with them about three more times during the course of the day. It’s funny how those things happen – I wonder if we could manage that in NYC?

Schloss Hellbrunn

The cruise up the Salzach took us to the Palace Hellbrunn – a summer residence of a 17th century bishop. The palace itself is a wonderful, baroque building but the real reason for our visit was to see the Wasserspiele – the trick water fountains.

It is said that during the summer that the bishop would entertain guests in the gardens and torture (in a fun way) them by setting off his trick fountains that are placed throughout the area. The center piece would be a table that shoots water right out of the seat. If the shocked and wet guests tried to run then they would fall victim to the streams of water that would come up from the ground. The tour lasted about 30 minutes and by the end of it none of us had managed to avoid the traps.

Hellbrunn Zoo

There was also a zoo connected to the palace and because we had free entry we thought it would be remiss of us to not visit. After walking around the zoo for about five minutes both Erica and I decided that it was the weirdest zoo we had ever seen. We couldn’t really put our finger on a particular reason for it feeling this way but it did.

They did have some very interesting animals – an Argentinean hare that was particularly strange. It looked like a cross between a rabbit and a dog. The brown bears were particularly cool too – just look at the photos to get an idea.

Funnily they promoted the zoo as having an Australian section. After walking for what seemed like half an hour we stumbled upon the Australian fauna – it consisted of, I kid you not, two emus and about four wallabies. I guess it was still pretty cool, especially for Austrians, but I thought it was pretty disappointing. They must be just about the only zoo with either a koala or kangaroo.

Anyways, we did the zoo and then headed back to the palace so we could get back to our cruise down the Salzach and back into Salzburg proper. What followed turned out to be very embarrassing and still haunts me to some extent.

Posted by Troy Wass at 03:04 AM | Permalink

The morning after the mole incident we figured it might be time to visit the baths that had been promoted as being 10 minutes away from the campsite. We asked the girl at reception and she’d never heard of them…she also said that it was normal and okay to have moles under our tent so she wasn’t the brightest of people.

She asked the repairman/cook/gardener (this guy really did seem to be doing everything) if he knew where the swimming pool was and he said he didn’t understand. She took that as the final answer and said sorry. At this point Erica (the master linguist) asked him if he knew the “Scwimbad” – German for swimming pool – and he lit up in recognition. Turns out that there was a swimming pool nearby, ten minutes on the bus and another twenty walking, buy it was close enough for us. Why the girl didn’t ask him in German is beyond us.

Anyways, the pool was terrific. Not quite as good as the heated pools in Stuttgart but it had its own charms. Not the least of which were two waterslides. One was a straight slide with three humps and the other was a curvy one. Not sure which one I liked best as they were both incredible fun. Needless to say I was pissed when they
\stopped the water flow for the last 15 minutes of each hour.

After the refreshing swim we headed back into town to grab some food and take the sleeping bags to the laundry. I’m happy to report that the LUSH bar more or less washed out.

Exercising a little thriftiness we decided to make sandwiches for dinner. We also grabbed a couple of small bottles of sparkling white and some OJ – Mimosa time – because that would literally be cheaper than drinking coke. Crazy part of the world this is.

As we made our way to the river to dine we ran into a couple of Aussies that we had met way back in Trippstadt (Kaiserslautern). They had been driving around like us and had come to Salzburg for a couple of days. It was a totally random, but fun encounter. As we were chatting I noticed that the sky was getting VERY dark. Not wanting to get stuck in the rain E and I decided to head to the train station as we knew we’d have cover.

As we got there the skies exploded. I don’t think I’ve seen rain as heavy – it was the equivalent of the hail storm we encountered in Bavaria. We spent a couple of hours at an Internet café (the blogs you would have read a couple of days ago) and when the rain stopped a bit we made our way home.

Thankfully our little tent had withstood the downpour, and the inside was perfectly dry. We drifted off to sleep with the sound of the rain hitting the tent.

Posted by Troy Wass at 02:58 AM | Permalink

Just a quick not to say that we appreciate the comments that you kids post on the blog - or email us. We love to hear your thoughts and take your suggestions etc.
Time constraints and lack of email access means that we rarely have time to write to any of you individually, but your comments are read and appreciated.

Thanks,

Troy

Posted by Troy Wass at 03:00 PM | Permalink

Whoever came up with that pearl of wisdom had obviously never had a bloody mole burrowing under their tent at 4am – that’s exactly what we had last night.

The story begins with a LUSH bar. We knew that after the hike to the Ice cave we would be knackered so I prepared by taking out the massage bar from the “sundries” backpack, which we keep packed up, to the tent. We returned home, very tired, only to find that the intense heat of the day (exacerbated by the oven-like qualities of a tent) had turned our bar of peach goodness into liquid - liquid which had then drenched my sleeping bag.
We tried a quick mop-up operation but that wasn’t very successful.
We thought we’d wait until morning and put the bag back inside the tent, not knowing what treats awaited. At about 2.45am I awoke to find a bloody spider in my sleeping bag (AHHHHHH!!!!!)

After getting E to squash it we tried to go back to sleep. Wasn’t gonna happen…Instead we were greeted to the annoyance that is drunken Englishmen - are there any other kind once they are abroad in groups of more than two? We lay awake for awhile before we started to hear the rustling of the mole.

We knew it was a mole because the night before we had heard the rustling out near the tent stakes and noticed the tell-tale signs the next morning. Last night was different because the rustling was much closer to our heads. A few times I hit the ground near the top of the tent and the rustling would stop.

After we thought we were rid of the little bugger I lay down and started drifting off to sleep. Unfortunately that sleep did not come. What did come, right under my pillow, was the bloody mole! I sat up quickly and was quickly joined by Erica, and we sat and watched as my pillow was moving up and down as the bloody mole was sticking its head through the turf.

At this point I commenced a real-life version of whack-a-mole. I didn’t want to hurt the thing but I sure as hell wanted it to piss-off from our tent. Eventually it did.

I even managed to get back to sleep after the action. Poor Erica stayed awake until it was time to get up. As you might guess, we moved our tent this morning.

I’ll never be able to watch Caddyshack the same way again.

Posted by Troy Wass at 02:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Both E and I agree that the caves (also including the views on the hikes up) were the coolest thing we’ve seen so far on our trip - although I thought the hike to the bottom of Neuschwanstein’s waterfall to be physically harder, and Neuschwanstein itself to be awesome, this excursion combined the beauty of nature with a high degree of physicality and a new experience.

We enjoy caves and go to them whenever we see some. Even saying that -- we’d never seen ice caves before.
They say these are the largest ice caves in the world. It was great.

It’s hard to believe sometimes just how beautiful nature can be. The caves are made even more amazing by the fact that they change over the years, depending on the rainfall, melting snow etc. on the mountain.

The tour lasted about 90 minutes or so and consisted of 700 stairs ascending the cave, followed by 700 descending. Along the stairways was ice in various formations.

Perhaps, the very coolest part was walking through the ice itself on our way back down. They had cut away through a large chunk of ice and then created a tunnel pathway through it.

There were also a few very cool, large pieces they called “monuments”. One was called the Elephant and it was very neat but time had seen the ice shift and his trunk was no longer there. The other cool feature – pardon the pun – was something that Erica dubbed the polar bear because she thought it looked a bit like a polar bear. She’s a good one for names that girl.

A funny thing happened on the way back down the mountain. I really enjoyed the cable car ride. It was like being on a super rollercoaster, complete stomach churning free-fall drops. I’ve no real idea why I enjoyed it when the ride up was so horrific but I certainly did. Hooray for me.

So right now we’re sitting in a Laundromat, watching our clothes spin around in the dryer. It’s really nice to not have to hand-wash everything for once. A funny thing just happened. Some people came in and couldn’t work out the payment system (it’s by computer and is a little tricky). Anyways, a girl (French I think from the accent) was trying to help them but as I was waiting to put money in for the dryer I could tell she was misinforming them. She was trying to tell them to buy and put detergent in the machines even though if you picked automatic you used the detergent in the machines.

I guess because he second language was English she couldn’t understand the English instructions properly. I tried to help but she insisted that they needed extra detergent. Oh well. Our stuff is clean and that is all that matters.

Until next time…

Posted by Troy Wass at 02:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today E and I decided to take a trip to the ice caves. We thought about doing one of the tour buses that run from the center of town (or will even pick you up from your hotel/campsite etc.) but after reading the fine print we figured we’d be better off (financially) doing it ourselves. So we boarded the train and ended up in a beautiful town called Werfen.

From there we took a shuttle bus about a kilometer up a mountain. The bus ride was a little scary – a very curvy road that ascended the mountain. I really wanted to be driving the bus as I’m not much of a passenger on these tight roads.

Once we reached our destination we had to stop and marvel at the view. We were about ¼ of the way up the mountain and all around us were other mountains, many of them still touched by winter, with sheer edges on their tops.

I would love to say that we have photographs, but the website of the caves was very clear that no photos we allowed in the caves, so we checked the backpack in a locker at the station. My only regret was not taking the camera for the breathtaking views that we had on our way to the cave. Alas, my descriptions (and a link to the relevant websites) will have to suffice.

We then started hiking up the mountain. Our previous hikes had served us well as we made pretty good time – even with the 90 degree heat. Near the end E had to stop for a minute but that was it…five weeks ago neither of us would have made it past the first 100 yards.

As some of you may know I have a bit of thing when it comes to heights. I never know which things will annoy and on which things I’ll be fine. As we finished our climb and looked at the next leg of our adventure I knew I was in trouble.

Before us stood a sign saying that we had two choices. The first was a 90 minute hike that was for advanced hikers. Even with our improvement we knew that that was not an option. We were left with one, horrifying choice - a cable car ride that took us the same distance in less than three minutes. The ride went up almost vertically and the distance it covered in that short amount of time meant that it traveled very quickly.

The ride was everything I feared it would be. While the other passengers were marveling at the view I was sitting in the corner, just managing to grab a look out of the corner of my eye during the times I wasn’t looking at the floor.
After 3 minutes we had our feet back on terra firma. Ahead of us we now had another 20 minute hike to reach our final destination (to remind you -- the ice caves which was the section that we knew ahead of time actually required a hike).

After the cable car we were another 600 feet or so above sea-level and the views were even more inspiring. Being so close to the tops of mountains certainly gives one an appreciation for nature.

As soon as we got within about 50 feet of the opening of the cave we could start to feel the cool (actually cold) air surround us like a cold cloud. After all the hiking it was welcome. We had a few minutes to add a couple of layers of clothing and then the tour began...

Posted by Troy Wass at 02:08 PM | Permalink

We arrived in Salzburg via train from Vienna amidst the chaos of a large bicycle race. I’m showing my ignorance, but we have no idea of what race it was. I do know, however, that it caused no end of trouble for the public transport in the city.

We had visited the website of a campsite in the city that was accessible via public transport (a real luxury now that we’ve left the over-population in World Cup Germany). We tried to catch the Number 15 bus (which the website of our Salzburg campsite instructed us to do), but learned from a bus information guy that that bus no longer existed. D’oh

E asked one of the other drivers how to get to the campground and he gave us some pretty good directions to the new bus route (but didn’t give a number) and since the transfer point we were looking for was closed because of the big bike race. The only problem was that it was about 20 minutes walking and the combination of all our gear
and the mid 90s temperatures meant that we had to suffer a little.

Still, left under the bridge and a couple of blocks was ultimately very good directions. We wandered around a bit and then found a bus stop that looked right since it had our stop on it.
Gee that bus was hot. E says she doesn’t think she could be any sweatier. Anyway, it took us to the campsite and we were on our way.

The place is decent. The pitch is nice (although I felt something moving outside this morning but didn’t see anything. When we got out we saw mole tunnels leading right under our tent. We’ll assume they’ll continue burrowing until they reach the other side.)

The bus is only 15 minutes from the old city center, though we learned that in a roundabout way after getting off early and having a leisurely evening stroll to dinner.

E always says how nice Salzburg is – she was here just before we met. I think that the old part of town is simply stunning. As we crossed the fast-flowing Salzach River all of a sudden we could see the old city, along with its famed fortress, in the beautiful evening sunshine. Without a doubt it was one of the most striking images we’ve witnessed.

We walked along the water for awhile before entering the old city for a wonderful meal in another very old establishment with links to Mozart. I got a Goulash that ranks as my best meal of the trip – served with a knödel that was delicious and E went for a mixed grill (turkey, steak and pork) that she enjoyed too. Actually the only dodgy meal we’ve had all trip was gnocchi in a nice place. It was only dodgy because I had no idea what it was served with and I managed to convince myself it was escargot or something…I can be an idiot sometimes.

After dinner we had a bit of a fiasco finding the bus which goes in the other direction but all ended well. We got to sleep after hearing commotion outside regarding the Italy/Germany World Cup game. I didn’t know who won, but I knew that there were likely two goals in a short period of time and that it was probably Italy since we could hear cheers from random directions. I checked out the papers today – looks like I was right. I’m still steaming that Italy beat the Aussies – we could have been in the final. How often does that happen? Oh well, such is life.

Anyways, tomorrow we are heading to see the Ice Cave…it looks really cool and I’m hoping it lives up to the pictures on the website.

Posted by Troy Wass at 02:05 PM | Permalink

Sue sent us a funny, strange blog link the other day --http://www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com

If you have time to kill--

It's strange enough that it exists and that we look at it. It was even stranger that I was looking at it in Germany.

Regardless, now that we're in Austria Iit might be worthy of a random, free wifi posting.

Posted by Troy Wass at 03:59 PM | Permalink

I think we may need to have a change of plans...

Posted by Troy Wass at 03:44 PM | Permalink

We’ve spent more time in Vienna than we expected but that’s fine because it’s a really nice city. Full of cultural things like opera, music, art, and history.

Yesterday we awoke at a normal hour since the sun didn’t wake us up at dawn like it had in Germany. We went to the downtown area for breakfast and then took advantage of a really fun local iniative.

Visa and a few other companies sponsor bikes that you can pick up and ride for free for an hour. You can ride as often as you want for free as long as you don’t go over the hour. It’s just a 1 euro signup charge. So we got 2 bikes and rode up the river towards the Hundertwasser-improved district heating plant. It was fun but I got rather nervous around other bikes, cars, people, ants – you get the point. I’m not the best bike rider in the world.
It was fun though and we got the bikes dropped off at the 59th minute. Ahhhh

The Hundertwasser-improved heating plant

Troy and the free bike.

We were exhausted (well I was) from that and could have EASILY gone back to the tent for bed, but we decided to stay out and went to the zoo. Their primary attraction is the panda bear exhibit, but we also enjoyed the rhinos, Barbary apes and sheep, hippos and I liked the crazy giant anteater. It’s tongue –which sticks even further out than the snout if it wants to – is the longest, skinniest thing. It’s like a twizzler (that’s what troy says…I can’t think of what it’s like. A skewer, maybe?)

The giant anteater

Music for Rhinos! (Troy wrote that -- it's a Pearl Jam reference, apparently)

How cool are Hippos?

The zoo was interesting in a few ways.

First was the history -- some of the buildings were really old and in the hippo area we learned about how it started in the 1800s, how they built it up, how it got destroyed during the war and how it got rebuilt. Now it's pretty neat and has an indoor and outdoor component. I reckon the hippos were happy because as we were leaving one made the loudest, bass noise for a few second -- it sounded like Jabba the Hutt.

Second was the fact that it was built so that you could view the various animals from different angles. You could go up a hill and look at them below and then circle around at the bottom of the hill and look at them directly. It let us see the animals which are usually "hiding in the back". It was fun because those are usually the babies and moms, and we got to see them really closely. (Though the photos are a bit muffled by the fencing)

Third, they have a cafe to animal ratio of 1 to 1. Every ten steps there's a restaurant or a biergarten or a cafe or an ice cream stand. It was hilarious -- especially considering we didn't eat a thing while there.

After the zoo we went to update the blog at Starbucks – Troy will write about the international nuances of Starbucks and other drinks. In a post I promise he will write soon.

Today we wanted to go to Bratislava (a 1.5 hour ferry ride will take you to the Slovakian capital) but apparently it books really far in advance so we had another lovely day in Vienna. We rode the Prater ferris wheel – see Troy’s updated entry about scary tall things to see what he thought of it. I liked it.

We did a further independent walking tour.

And we visited a fun restaurant my 2nd cousin Chuck recommended which is like an autobahn rest stop.

Then we stumbled into a restaurant for dinner that we learned is the oldest café in Vienna and one in which both Mozart and Beethoven had played. It was really neat and the food was good too. I had a rump steak, Troy had a wiener schnitzel. We had sachertorte for dessert – it’s chocolate cake but doesn’t taste like chocolate really.

We’ll leave Vienna tomorrow for Salzburg for a few days and then to Klagenfurt to see Iris and Christian. So you’re prepared – after that we go to Prague for a day or so and fly to England for a week or so. Then we’ll go to Switzerland on the way back to Germany for the Conference.

Time’s flying.

HAPPY 4th of JULY!

Posted by ewass at 03:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Our time in Austria has been a lot different from that in Germany.

Germany was really fast paced and a bit chaotic since it was World Cup feverish and since we had the car and wanted to see all of the German Hundertwasser sites.

We were always on the move.

When we left, we re-packed and re-grouped a bit so this part could be a little less frenetic.

In addition to enough other items to fill two pretty big boxes (sorry Kate who's picking up our mail) we decided to send home the recording equipment.

As much as it pained (still does, actually) me, we realized that the weight was extra and the time to spend editing the audio was rare. Sure, I could have collected lots of audio and used it later, but the pack weight overruled that idea. Also we discovered we couldn’t use the equipment at the Conference in August since they have their own setup, etc. so we sent it home.

So, no podcasts.

Hopefully we’ll get to experiment with them once we get back to a normal life.

On that note, I must say that it’s really hard to blog efficiently and travel at the same time. We’re going to concentrate the rest of our trip not on blog diversity (with audio, video, stills, text, etc.) but making the text and photos really higher quality. (whahahah) Okay, I’m striving here, but so what?

We also decided that we wouldn’t strive to see all of the Hundertwasser sites in Austria and Switzerland as well. Seeing more than a dozen in Germany is an achievement in itself!

With no pre-determined professional prospects for the work it was, frankly, too much work for a vacation and would be too costly for a self-financed endeavor. On that note, feel free to click on the ads on the blog. We get some spare change from that.

We figure we’ll be back in Austria again to visit Iris and Christian and can visit pieces of the Hundertwasser puzzle then.

Posted by ewass at 03:18 PM | Permalink

We spent yesterday hanging out with a mad Englishman named Phil. He was on holiday from his job in China and was interested in seeing the Hundertwasser sites so he came along with us on our pilgrimage.

The first stop was the KunstHaus which a fantastic sight. It is a museum that Hundertwasser built and also is home to many of his paintings. From reading about Hundertwasser I was somewhat familiar with his paintings but had never been all that impressed by them. What a difference seeing them in person can make. They are fantastic!

It’s almost the exact opposite reaction to the one I had when we went to the Monet exhibit. I’d always enjoyed Monet in books but felt underwhelmed when we viewed them in person.

The KunstHaus also featured an exhibition of HR Giger’s work. He is without a doubt most famous for designing the Alien in the film of the same name. His work was very dark but very interesting…certainly a departure from Hundertwasser and his use of color.

After the KunstHaus we made a quick trip to the Hundertwasser Haus. This was an apartment complex that was pretty cool but seems to becoming a bit of a tourist trap.

By this time it was almost 4pm so we decided to find a pub to watch the England v Portugal game. Phil had a pretty good idea of where an Irish bar was as he had spent the previous afternoon there watching the football. After about half an hour (during which time Phil asked countless random Austrians about the place) I went into a hotel to ask. We got directions to the place but on the way we passed a bar with the tvs on and decided to watch it there.
Bar 1516 was the place. They make a homebrew there which we sampled - after about 8 pints we decided it was quite good.

The game itself was bloody annoying. England shot themselves in the foot as usual. It did seem like they were very unlucky to have a man sent off but once that happened it seemed like they were playing for a penalty shootout.

Anyone who has followed the English in big tournaments knows that penalty shootouts equal a horrible ending that the country takes two years to recover from. This one was no different, although at least it was the Portuguese keeper who was saving the kicks as opposed to an Englishman blasting them over the bar etc.

So now I've decided to support the Germans - can't believe I just wrote that. They were very friendly to the Aussies and it seemed like most Germans in the stands at our games were cheering on the Socceroos.

E, T and the titular mad Englishman, Phil

I wish I could say I was being artistic...actually it's the result of too much beer and no flash.

Posted by Troy Wass at 02:41 PM | Permalink

So the train ride was awesome. It took troy a bit of getting used to as our room was really small, but it was heaps better than the 6 person per compartment room I had the last time I went on an overnight train (Which was right before I met Troy).

We got a “bed” compartment, which as for two people. Our beds stacked, there was a sink and cabinets. We had our own window on the world and full control of the A/C, which by now you know Troy was excited about.
We slept well and about an hour before we got to Vienna the woman who is in charge knocked to bring us our breakfast. It was a full breakfast which was yummy and included in the price, so we were two happy campers upon arriving.

We picked a good campsite, which was pretty easily accessible via the U6 train and 62A bus. So we set up and went back into the city. This is how we envisioned getting around in Germany, but with all of the people the really accessible campsites were overbooked, etc. We’ll plan to stay there several days and do other Austrian cities coming back to Vienna at night until we go to see Iris and family in Austria around the 10th.

Our first day in Vienna we walked around a lot seeing the sites. I didn’t remember a lot of when I was last here so it was almost all new to me. The temperature here is MUCH cooler than Germany and rainy. Getting used to it now, so it’s not that bad. Yesterday was a bit tough.

Last night was a bi-annual concert they have “A Konzert fur Europa” in which Placido Domingo conducted the Vienna Philharmonic. We knew we had to go – despite me thinking Domingo was going to sing and Troy thinking it was the Vietnemese and not Viennese philharmonic.

It was supposed to start at 8. It didn’t start til after 9. When it finally did start it was about to pour and was windy and cold. We had a great time at the concert itself – it was at the Schonbrunn Palace grounds which are lovely – but conditions were such that we went home.

With a tiny, chocolate covered pretzel...mmmmmmmm

Domingo on the big screen

The lovely Schonbrunn Palace garden

We were happy to see that our tent setup withstood the weather wonderfully. (Phew).

This morning we got up and prepared to go out on the town. Troy had a visitor stuck to his rain jacket (a nasty 4 inch slug which makes me me itch thinking about it.) It slimed his jacket so I washed it while he chatted to a tent neighbor. Phil, an Englishman who lives in China.

Ultimately we all went to the KunstWienHaus, the Hundertwasser museum where I first learned about Hundertwasser. It was fun. In addition to the Hundertwasser stuff, there was also a H.R. Giger exhibit – he did the artwork for the Alien movies. Deep, scary, interesting, stuff.

Then we walked to the Hundertwasser Haus down the street a bit and came to the brewery bar 1516 to watch the World Cup games with England v. Portugal. Troy can write about the soccer aspect. End of the story is that England lost so now we’re hoping Germany win.

We’re still at the bar. I got free wi-fi so beers and blogs it is!

Posted by ewass at 02:04 PM | Permalink

We’ve found that the German people have been overall quite nice. Today we had a strange last situation here at the train station. While Troy was writing blogs I was just people watching in the food court of the main train station.
I noticed after a couple of hours that a piece of luggage was just sort of “there,” unattended in front of the Kebab place we were sitting next to. Knowing that Troy was always sensitive to unattended luggage from his awareness of IRA and bombings, etc. I said to him – should we tell someone about that bag. He looked and thought it belonged to the guy in line, but I said it wasn’t his. Afterwards, he asked and it wasn’t. Troy asked all of the people in the area and it wasn’t theirs either.

He asked the workers if they knew who it belonged to and they didn’t, so they moved it to the side. We were a bit, well, shocked. I thought that they would have notified the police or whatever to make sure it was safe. I thought they would have been trained since Frankfurt’s a big city, a financial capital and because a lot of World Cup games (some of the biggest – England’s) have been played here. But nope. They just put it up so if it was someone’s they’d see it.

We got a bit freaked and quickly packed up. We went to the police counter and tried to explain that it was there if they wanted to do something and they sort of indignantly kept saying that they don’t check baggage.
We gave up on them. Then we saw some harder-core cops walking the hall and we told them and he said “We’ll check on it” so we kept walking to the other end and felt a bit better.

It’s been more than an hour and nothing’s happened so fortunately, it looks like we’ve overreacted. Still glad we did though. I thought that the first people should have acted. Alas.. I’m looking forward to our train leaving.

This was one of the low points. Overall people have been great. Standouts were the guy at the wine shop in the Frankfurt Mall near Heddernheim, the people we have met at the various post offices, and the volunteers for the World Cup who wear the light blue shirts.

Posted by ewass at 02:03 PM | Permalink

We decided to drop the car off in Frankfurt. It was a bit traumatic dropping Greta off, even preparing to, since we’ve had a car for the past 3 weeks and we’ve had to deal with our little scratch. We decided that at the hotel we’d re-pack for mobile travel, rest, regroup and plan going to Austria.

The car drop-off wasn’t much of a fiasco. All in all we came out happy because we discovered that they don’t take the insurance deductable now, but only after the repairs, etc. So we have about three months before we’re charged for it. That leaves us with extra during-trip money, so that’s a plus.

We had wotif.com’d a “cheap” hotel room at the InterCity at Frankfurt Airport. It was fine – bed comfy, but the Wifi was SSLLOOW (so we couldn’t update you yesterday) and the A/C wasn’t proper so Troy was pissy. (There’s little A/C here and it’s been hot all the time, so, with the heavy bags, etc. he’s been generally overheated…hence we give him some slack.)

We came into Frankfurt to get train tix to Vienna, where we’ll spend several days doing day trips and basing ourselves out of a campsite. It’s 9:35pm. We spent the day exploring and killing time in Frankfurt. We took a boat trip on the Main (pronounced “Mine”)… the reason the city is called Frankfurt am Main. It was nice. Then we walked a lot of the old city, and sat in a park for about an hour. Our train leaves for Vienna at about 10:45.
We got a night train which will arrive at about 8 am. Troy’s not been on a sleeper train, so he’s excited. We got the most expensive type of room. The plain seats were sold out. The other option was the “couchette” was is 6 people in a little room, which was only a bit cheaper than our option – a two-person room with a bed. Should be exciting. Hopefully we’ll sleep well and have fun at the same time.

We’ll write again from…Austria, where we’re planning to visit heaps more Hundertwasser sites, visit some mines, take a Danube boat tour around Vienna and another to Bratislava, visit my friend Iris and her family in Klagenfurt and who knows what else!

Posted by ewass at 02:02 PM | Permalink

I knew, by reputation that Baden-Baden was nice, but man, it was lovely.

We went there after the soccer game because Aunt Ann wanted us to take a tour and find out a few things for the Conference (the reason (or excuse) we are staying here through August).

First we looked around and made sure there were lots of restaurants in the area of the Conference. There were. Every diet, taste, etc. can be accommodated. Good thing!

We ended up dining at a place called Wall Street im (something er other). It was nice. It was next to a little stream – there are tons of fountains in the city which makes it feel airy and fresh, I think. The food was good. I had rigatoni with ham and cheese (they LOVE their ham and cheese over here). Funny story actually. The first day we were here we saw “schinken” on the menu and Troy was going to order it because he was sure, by pronounciation that “schinken” was “chicken”. Having once thought that “frutta di mare” was fish and fruits (and not little sardines and other nasty whole boney fish) I thought to ask. Indeed, schinken is ham. It’s good, but it’s ham. Troy had the turkey breast sandwich. It was good.

We continued walking around and then met with the Conference people. Details not needed, but we had a nice time.

We learned about the spas in town. One sounded really fun – multiple pools at different temperatures, massage/rub-down, sauna. At the end he said “Oh but the Americans often need to know ahead of time, it’s a nude spa.” Ah, good to know, good to know. We haven’t decided yet if we’ll do it. Why no suits? That’s my question.

Before leaving town we got to enjoy some ice cream. The Germans love their ice cream – almost as much as their ham and cheese and beer. Some stores even have signs with an ice cream cone in a circle with the slash across it (meaning, no ice cream allowed.) it’s hilarious.

It was good. We shared it since it was huge, but saw people having theirs on their own.

We didn’t take any photos yet so you’ll have to trust that it’s lovely. We’ll get to spend A WEEK there in August so there will be lots of photos then.

Posted by ewass at 02:01 PM | Permalink

As you may know we have a GPS system in our rental car. Being in Germany we called her Greta and she has been a godsend, guiding us to places that we would have spent hours trying to find normally. That’s not to say that she’s perfect however. Here are two of her more outrageous gaffs.

The first one was not a fun time at all.

We had been using the onboard computer to best just when to get fuel…it tells you how far you have left to drive with the fuel available in the tank. When it got down to about 25kms we programmed Greta to take us to the nearest petrol station. She told us it was about 5 kms away which would be perfect.

Unfortunately I got off the autobahn one of the places that has two exits within about 20 feet. This caused Greta to brain-fart (me too) and I took the first exit when we wanted the second. Greta did a quick recalculation and the new distance was about 12kms – still plenty of leeway. She guided us through a few small towns and while this was happening we began to worry. It was about 8.30pm on a Sunday night and very few things even open on Sunday.

Sure enough, as we neared our destination we could see that the prices were not lit up. Still, we headed on, hoping that it would be open. Nope…actually looked like it hadn’t been open for awhile. Oh, Greta, what have you got us in for? We sat for a couple of minutes and tried to find the next closest petrol station. It was 8.1kms away and the computer was telling us we had 8kms of petrol left. Uh-oh. Oh, did I mention that it was raining on and off?

We ploughed ahead, driving at about 40kms per/h in attempt to get the fuel to go further. Perhaps the worst part was that she was taking us further and further away from the autobahn and into the countryside. Still, we had no choice but to trust Greta.

Slowly the kms ticked down until the computer was telling us we had less than a km in the tank as we approached the petrol station. If this one was closed we were totally screwed as we would be stuck in the middle of nowhere until the next morning. We pulled in and the place was pretty dark, and so became my mood…the only sign of life was two women walking through the car park. They kept walking and just as I was about to move the car into space for the night E noticed that they went into the petrol station. It was open! Now that I could breathe again I looked at the computer and we had 0.1 kms left in the tank.

The next funky choice from Greta came on the second to last day we had her.

We were heading to a suburb of Frankfurt (Heddernheim) to see the last of our Hundertwasser sites in Germany and she gave us a message that there was an accident of some sort ahead and that there would be delays. We’d had this before and one time we used her suggested detour and she added about 20 minutes to our trip but we avoided a traffic jam. The time we ignored her we sat bumper to bumper for about 30 minutes so we trusted her this time…

It all seemed pretty normal, shortcuts through small towns on the B roads, until she took us down a rather small road. As we got near the end of the road I knew something was strange because we were looking at a massive river but saw no bridge. We followed her directions for another minute. Then she said, “Turn right and then board the ferry”…huh. What Ferry? How is this a shortcut? How much does it cost? How long does it take? Old Greta neglected to answer these questions.

We managed to decipher from the signs that the ferry ran every ½ hour and that it would have cost about 10 euros. We were going to take it but before we did we looked at the GPS map and it seemed that there was another traffic incident on the road that we would have taken once we disembarked the ferry. At that point we decided to just go back to the original route and found that there was no traffic jam left.




at least the view was really nice.

Posted by Troy Wass at 01:58 PM | Permalink

Can you believe after three weeks of eating German food I managed to have a cheeseburger two meals in a row? As we were looking for parking near Gruga Park we drove past a place called the NYC bar. It was too good to pass up. E even got to have a bagel with lox…yummo

The Gruga Park was brilliant. It just had a magical feeling about it. We walked around for awhile and saw beautiful flowers, some lovely water pieces – one thing that has been common to the whole of Germany is the number and quality of the water pieces in each town – and some fantastic, large form, sculptures. We were even treated to a full-blown opera performance in the band shell.

The real star of the park, at least for us, was once again Mr. Hundertwasser. This time he had designed a Ronald McDonald House like no other you would ever see. It had all the trademarks of his work and yet managed to stay true to the McDonalds colors. If one ever had to be in a Ronald McDonald House, something that I not wish on anyone, then this would surely be the one to stay in.

The visitors to Gruga park also had a very special from Erica that day. She was laboring up a hill so I offered some encouragment, “Come on, slow poke” and then reached back to grab her hand. Unfortunately I missed he hand but somehow found her halter top. The momemtum of my hand continued and let’s just say that there was a major wardrobe malfunction ; - ) …and no, there are no photos of that.

Posted by Troy Wass at 01:51 PM | Permalink

Okay, so we're posting these older ones entries now (which you'll notice by the comments) a bit late. We wrote them but are still aclimating to urban wifi as opposed to the ease of the Autobahn rest stops, so we have a bit of a lag and not much time.

Posted by Troy Wass at 01:50 PM | Permalink