Salzburg, Austria

Ever since we started planning for Salzburg we have been excited for it. We were not only looking forward to the city itself, but also the surrounding area. Salzburg is a city of about 150,000 people and is situated in the northern-most tip of Austria. Parts of it are exactly what you would imagine a small Austrian city to be. There is a large portion that is just like any modern city, but the old town is quite charming. It seems to be very well preserved and, being a colder day in May, not very crowded. We liked walking around and seeing a little bit of what it could have been like to be Fraulein Maria.

Salzburg's Alstadt



Festung Hohensalzburg (Salzburg's Fortress)

Mirabellgarten - Site of the curtain dancing children (Do - a deer...)


The Fortress

So, we spent one full day checking out the Alstadt, or old city, and the other two days we headed out on day trips to some wonderful Alp-set towns. Our second day we went to Hallstatt. Hallstatt took us about two hours by train from Salzburg but about two hundred years back in time. Everything was small and very peaceful. It is situated on a lake and is said to be the oldest currently inhabited town in Europe, dating back between 8000 and 4000BC. Why is this? Because Hallstatt was formed around the oldest salt mine in the world. It still is active today. We took a tour of this mine as we went over 400m into the mountain. Awesome. With the clouds so low, whisping around the mountains, and us going deep into one, we kind of felt like Bilbo in the Misty Mountains, trying to find Gollum and steal his ring. Unlike Bilbo, we learned a bit about what it was like to work in a mine throughout different time periods and slid down a really cool wooden slide.

Hallstatt







The Salt Mines

The longest underground slide in Europe. And we rode it.

The views in Hallstatt were tremendous and the town was great, but the next day we went to Berchtesgaden, a town at the very bottom of Germany. The town of Berchtesgaden was not nearly as nice and quaint as Hallstatt. It was not nestled into a mountain overlooking a perfect lake. It does, however, have national park named after it, and for good reason. It is just minutes from Lake Konigssee where we took a terrific boat tour across. The lake was so calm and surrounded by breathtaking cliffs and glaciers. Upon reaching the other side of this lake, 45 minutes later (it was a slow ride), we walked ten minutes to another, smaller, lake that was more perfect than the last. If Konigssee was breathtaking, than this one, Obersee, was lifetaking or something like that because when we saw it we just stood for about five minutes without moving (or breathing I'm sure). It was crystal clear, turquoise blue, and calm as glass. It was just too good to be true. We hiked along this lake for about forty-five minutes before the rain drove us back, but we were quite satisfied.

Obersee Lake in Berchtesgaden National Park





We liked Austria. It was short, but it was basically all we could have hoped for from a country. It really is beautiful, at least the part we saw. Munich is next.

Prague, Czech Republic

Hello from Prague. We would greet you all in the Czech language, but the only term we know in Czech is Hlavni Nadrazi (main train station). We're only here for four days; it's just not worth the effort.
Prague, however, is worth the effort. It is the farthest east we go on our trip, and it has been great to be here. Prague is unlike the cities we've been to so far in that it is very old and very touristy. Now, our other stops have been old and have hosted throngs of tourists, but Prague has a different feel. People started settling this city before cities like Dublin and Edinburgh and it has a strong royal history with lots of old churches and elegant buildings. Prague wasn't touched by the war in the same way that Berlin was, so the majority of the buildings in the old town are around two hundred years old, some much much older. Also, if you want to get from Old Town Square, the main centre for people and pigeons, to Charles Bridge, the main and heavily tourist centred pedestrian bridge, you'd think that you could walk down a somewhat major street connecting these two significant pieces of the city. Not so. There are no direct routes in Old Prague. Not really any in New Prague either. Everything winds and jogs. Maps are essential. But it's fun. It adds to the great atmosphere of this city.

Old Town Square with the Tyn Cathedral

St. Nicolas' Church in Old Town Square

St. Nicolas' Church

The world famous astronomical clock. Above the clock are some doors where, every hour, the twelve apostles come out displaying their trinkets. It's not really anything special and kind of lame, but, like clockwork, every hour, from 9am to 9pm, hundreds of people will gather to watch the thirty second show. Tourists.


The hub of New Town - Wenceslas Square (of Christmas Carol fame). It's not really a square considering it's 750m long and only like 75m wide.

Mala Strana with Prague Castle in the back

Prague Castle's St. Victus Cathedral

Venice-like Mala Strana



St. Victus Cathedral, located in the Prague Castle grounds

St. Victus




Charles Bridge

Charles Bridge



What we like to do in Prague: walk for hours, just experiencing the character of the city; eat pork knees roasted in dark beer for supper; walk through Prague Castle and St. Victus Cathedral; and take way too many pictures of the different coloured, tightly packed buildings. Prague has been a great time. We've enjoyed our time here, but we are excited for Salzburg!

Berlin, Germany

Berlin is big. It has a lot of people, it has much to see, and it has a ton of history. We knew that we were going to be busy coming to Berlin. It was nice, though, to have another place to stay. Gudi's sister lives in Berlin, so we were able to stay with her for the duration of our time in Berlin. She had brochures and pamphlets for us and gave us a wonderful tour of West Berlin by car, since most of our sightseeing was in East Berlin. West Berlin? East Berlin? Yes, that is a reference to the past divisions the city was under due to the Berlin Wall. It was very interesting visiting a city and learning about what it was like to be, in fact, two very different cities a mere twenty years ago. We realized that with any of the major points of history throughout the past one hundred years, Berlin was smack dab in the middle of any of them. WWI, WWII, the Cold War, and the end of the USSR - Berlin starred in all of these. Berlin was also a hub for the old Prussian Empire. Lots of buildings have to do with that era as well. Walking around some of the city, we noticed some bullet scarring on a few buildings. We were told that we would only find this on 10% of the city. Why? Because the other 90% was destroyed during WWII, either during the Battle of Berlin or previous city bombings. So, we saw evidence of history: the Brandenburg Gate of the Prussians, the rebuilt Reichstag after Hitler burned it down and framed it on the Communists, the Luftwaffe (Nazi Air Force), Holocaust Memorial and Museum, the parking lot above Hitler's bunker, the book burning square, sections of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, the list goes on. We could have spent weeks trying to see everything and learn everything, but even what we did see and learn was a lot. We got a sense of what this city has gone through and how it is still a city today.

The Zitadelle in the Berlin area of Spandau. This is where we stayed (Spandau, not the Zitadelle) with Gudi's sister Karin.

The Reichstag, where German Parliament is seated. It was burned down in 1933 supposedly by the Communists which conveniently allowed Hitler, the elected Chancellor of Germany, to imprison his political opponents and rule unopposed. This is how he became dictator. The Reichstag has a glass dome on top that the public can walk up into and get a great view of the city.

The Brandenburg Gate, one of the structures that survived WWII. The Berlin Wall ran just west of this centuries old gate.

The Memorial for Murdered Jews of Europe, constructed about ten years ago in the exact middle of the city. The boxes do not symbolize anything in particular. There is a free Holocaust museum underneath.

Hitler's bunker, the one he committed suicide in, is buried below this unsuspecting parking lot.

The Nazi Luftwaffe, where much planning occurred during the war. Part of the movie Valkyrie was filmed here.

A section of the Berlin Wall still standing. There were four generations of wall over the years. This, with the pipe on top instead of barbed wire, is the last.

Checkpoint Charlie. Extremely commercialized, but still an interesting place to read and imagine days gone by. This is where the Allied military checkpoint between East and West Berlin was. A big tank standoff happened here in the 60s.

Gendarmenmarkt. A German/French square established in the 1800s. Basically a typical Berlin square.

The Bebelplatz, the primary site of the Nazi Book Burning of 1933. Over 20,000 books, written by all those considered inferior, were burnt here on that night.

The Berlin Dom with the East German TV Tower beside and behind it.

Chocolate sculpture of the Reichstag made by a terrific local chocolate store.

Us in the Berlin area of Potsdam. Behind us is some Prussian king's palace. Potsdam used to be the royal area of the city and so every street is very elaborate with a Prussian palace or structure on almost every corner.

Potsdam tower gate.

Some beautiful houses in Potsdam.

East Side Gallery. The longest stretch of the Berlin Wall still standing. It is over 2 km long and has been refurbished and painted by artists from 21 different countries.



Victoria Park.

We are now just under a month in and we are finally feeling like we are well into it. We felt like we were at the beginning of our trip in the UK, but now that we are in Prague, we realize that we are no longer just getting started. So we are becoming seasoned travellers and it feels good. We are really seeing and learning a lot and it's interesting to see what shapes each city and how each is just a little bit different. We do a lot of walking (sometimes too much), but it's good to be on the streets with people of many cultures in a city like Berlin, experiencing life in Germany.