26.08.2007

Another early start as the shuttle to LaGuardia airport came at about 7.25am. We flew United to Denver airport. In there airport there are signs every now and then showing where the tornado shelters are.

We arrived in San Jose and were greeted by Neda’s childhood friend Suzana, her husband Robert and their cute 3 year old daughter Madelynne. Last time we were in the States, we stayed with Suzana and Robert where they lived in Seattle. Since then they have moved to San Jose (Silicone Valley) about a 45 minute drive from San Francisco. It was great to see Maddie, last time we saw her she was 6 months old. Now she is a very lively and talkative (once she got over being shy) little girl. Robert and Suzana live in a residential community that immediately reminded us of the suburb of ‘Agrestic’ from the TV show ‘Weeds’, very pretty and well manicured. We spent the night catching up on the last few years and Suzana made a beautiful meal. By about 10pm we were pretty tired though due to the early start and the 3 hour time difference. Neda and Suzana stayed up talking til 1am though.

24.08.2007 – 25.08.2007

We had been to New York for another previous visit, so we have already seen a lot of the big monuments and buildings so we set out to see a few other things we didn’t have time for the previous visit. We started up 5^th Avenue and soon came upon a curious sight of at least 1000 firefighters in their ceremonial uniforms lining up along the street. We asked a local who couldn’t believe that we hadn’t heard that during the previous week a couple of Firefighters lost their lives fighting a fire in an old bank building near Wall Street. This was the funeral procession. It was quiet and the line of firefighters stretched as far up the road as we could see. They paraded the coffin on the back of a fire-truck and the families followed.

We then had a look in a few shops, including Saks on Fifth. We headed up to Central Park. Last time we only saw the park at night time on a horse drawn cart. We spent some time exploring the southern 3^rd of the park. The gardens are pretty with lots of places for children to play and climb rocks, and lots of people laying about on the grass. There is a zoo, lots of large grassy fields for playing sports, and gardens with lakes and statues. It is really serene in contrast to the metropolis surrounding it which is guess is the point. We exited the park on the West side to go and explore the American Museum of Natural History. They had a special frog exhibit so we went to that as well.

The following day we looked through the Guggenheim Museum. The building itself is really something to see. The building is shaped like a slightly deformed cylinder and when you look up from the foyer, you can see all the way to the roof of the building. The path through the gallery spirals up along the walls of the main part of the building and there is an annex where they show more collections. We found some of the conceptual art a bit of a stretch to interpret, but a lot of the modern art from the early 1900s was really impressive.

We also spent time in the Soho area, and Little Italy and right down to Ground Zero and Wall Street. Ground Zero didn’t really look much different to when we saw it 3 years ago, just a bit tidier maybe. Wall Street was quiet because it was a weekend, mainly just tourists. We then headed along the south east bank below the Brooklyn Bridge where we were offered numerous opportunities to buy fake Rolexes and hand bags.

23.08.2007

4am and we are up and packing. We said goodbye to Eveline and found our way to the car drop off. We flew to Frankfurt for the connecting flight where we found that we could not get a seat next to each other. I guess the Germans are too quick with their internet check-ins or something. This happened to us last time we were flying from Frankfurt to New York. Last time they upgraded us to Business Class, fortunately they were feeling generous again J. We spent the 8 hour flight traveling in style and comfort. Still, when we arrived at Newark Airport, we were a little groggy. We arrived at our hotel pretty late and tired and decided to have a bit of a disco nap, which ended up lasting til morning, whoops.

22.08.2007

Our last full day in Europe. The 3 of us took the train into central Amsterdam. We all had umbrellas because today had 80% chance of rain.

Our first view of Amsterdam straight out of the train station is the canal, and a 3 storey bicycle parking building, the stock exchange and a lot of shops. Straight ahead was the busy main square where the rarely used royal palace is.

Amsterdam is pretty. It has many canals and crooked houses. All of the buildings are built on poles because the ground is too soft, but most of them seem to be leaning on each other, or to the side or even looming over the sidewalk below. We saw the outside of the Anne Frank Museum and the 100m line up to get in, that was enough for us. We spent most of the day strolling through the ‘9 streets’, a section of Amsterdam where nine parallel streets cross canals (Is it 7? Not sure). This area is very trendy, and most shops here are quite expensive as well but very cool. We had a quick look inside a typical house-boat, some people live on boats on the canals.

We saw some flower markets, selling bulbs of just about any variety of Tulip that you could want (as well as marijuana starter kits). Tulips aren’t in season now so we could only admire the pictures.

We walked through the red light district (while it was still light). It is an interesting place, but I wouldn’t call it pleasant. There are the famous ‘coffee shops’, not as prominent as I had imagined. There were also the buildings with full length window booths in which the prostitutes stand and pose on display waiting for their next customer. It was either not their regular working hours or they were all with customers as most of the windows had curtains drawn. We left the red light district for the railway station area where we hopped on a canal tour of the city. It was good to see Amsterdam from a different angle. While waiting for our train, we bought some Dutch junk food, a cone of chips with mayonnaise, and a couple of deep fried treats called kipcorn (nothing to do with corn) and Krocket. These are crumbed and deep fried parcels filled with pureed meats, not sure which ones. Not a health food but a must for connoisseurs of fried foods.

21.08.2007

We decided that we would spend our 2 whole days in Nederland with one day in Amsterdam and the other exploring a nearby national park that Eveline knew followed by a tour of Zwolle. The weather report showed a 70% chance of rain today and 80% the next day so we decided that we will visit the park on the day with the marginally lower chance of rain. That was this day. We drove for about 45 minutes to find the De Hoge Veluwe National Park. The park is a mixture of forests and plains covered in tall grasses and purple flowers. It was a really welcome change to spend some time in nature again. With the exception of some of Croatia, the last few weeks feel like they have been city after city. A different thing about this park (for us, not for the Dutch) is that almost no-one walks, everyone is riding bicycles. They supply these free white bikes for people to borrow. We spent a couple of hours riding around and taking pictures. We had lunch in the park restaurant. We then road off to look at an old hunting lodge in the middle of the park. It started to rain a bit as we started our 15km ride back to the car. It still seemed nice to be riding in light rain while the trees provided some shelter, but that didn’t last long as then it started bucketing down. I went through stages of thinking ‘okay, my jeans are completely drenched and my shirt is sticking to me, but at least my socks are dry. Ten minutes later it was ‘okay, I need to let the pools of water out of my shoes but at least the underwear is dry. Then it was ‘oh well, we can’t get any wetter’. I could hear Eveline starting to sneeze behind me. At least the weather was still warm.

At the time we dropped off the bikes and walked into the car park the rain actually stopped. We all saw the humour in it, but the ride home was a wet one. In Zwolle it was hot showers, warm clothes and hot tea and lots of chocolate to try to avoid getting sick. Once fully recovered we went into Zwolle for a tour. Eveline tried her best to answer all of the tourist questions that we were firing at her. The old town is surrounded by a canal or moat. We took in tours of the shopping strip, two of Eveline’s family's restaurants Poppe and Pampus, and tried a few pubs. One of the pubs was hosting its weekly ‘Murphy’s’ quiz night (though the pub doesn’t actually stock any Murphys). We were able to help out Eveline’s friend in the music round, taking them to a position of second to last.

20.08.2007

Bye bye Berlin. Even when we were about 10 km out of the city we still caught a glimpse of the TV Tower. We rode the Autobahn for most of the way to the Border with Nederlands. Once into Holland, we found the terrain very flat and very green. Once we made it to the city of Zwolle, we parked and called our friend Eveline for directions to her apartment. Driving in Zwolle was a bit scary because there are more bicycles on the road than cars and I didn’t want to hit one.

We got to Eveline’s new apartment just a short walk from the town centre. It is very nice and Eveline was kind enough to sleep on her guest bed so we could have her double. We met Eveline when she stayed at our friend Eddie’s house in Adelaide as she was traveling around Australia with Eddie’s Cousin B (Bertha). We chatted for a while to catch up, before freshening up for dinner. Eveline,s parents own and run 3 restaurants in Zwolle, and tonight Eveline treated us to a magnificent dinner at ‘The White Goose’. If you want to enjoy a nice night at a restaurant, try dining with the restaurant manager . The setting is a small village just out of town, surrounded by fields, and trees. The atmosphere is great. Eveline talked me in to trying a ‘surprise’ menu, where you choose between 3, 4 or 5 courses (we chose 4) and you simply tell the waiter of any foods you don’t like. They then bring out 4 courses that are a total surprise (sometimes even for the manager). Each course was superb with the highlight for me being the meat course of Ostrich Meat. I have never tried that before but I like it. There really should have been the demand for it that they were expecting in the Ostrich Farm phase. The meat is like really nice beef, very red. Neda’s meal was nice too, she ordered beef steak from the menu.

Eveline did not put us up to this review, it was honestly the best meal we had on the trip.

19.08.2007

At the time of writing this (New York – we got a little behind again), I have already posted home the Lonely planet guide to Europe, so I apologise for the numerous mis-spellings of places or inaccuracies of explanations here-after:-

We jumped on the metro to Haymarket Square again. Here we wanted to look at a famous market area called Haymarket Hoff, a warren of about 12 connected courtyards housing shops and apartments. Unfortunately most shops we found in Berlin were closed on Sundays. We walked south to the square again where you can clearly see the ‘TV Tower’, a 368m tall spire, with a restaurant and viewing platform at about the 200m mark. This tower is actually visible from almost anywhere in Berlin and is very handy for orientation. We headed south west through the Museam Island, an island in the river that has 4 different museums on it. We continued onto Unter Den Lindon, the main street of East Berlin. It runs from the Museum Island right through to the Brandenburg Gate. The street is lined with a university, various embassies and important buildings. On one of the squares at the Humbolt University we saw a memorial of the first of the Nazi book burnings. This is made up of a glass floor in a part of the square that looks down to empty bookshelves below.

On our way to the Brandenburg gate, we noticed about 50 police trucks, each full or surrounded by about 12 police. When taking photos of the gate, we asked a local why all the police. She told us there was a demonstration for free speech or something happening within the hour.

The gate itself used to be the main entrance to the city and connects East Berlin with the Tier Garten (the central park) and was incorporated into the Berlin Wall as one of the major checkpoints. North of this we visited the Wall victims memorial (191 people died trying to cross the wall) and onto the Reichstag. The Reichstag is an old parliament building where a fire broke out in 1933 which Hitler blamed the communists for and allowed him to take power. The building is stunning, and beautifully set on the rivers edge. It also overlooks the Tier Garten. We spent some time walking through the Tier Garten which was a very nice park, with gardens and forest in the middle.

We exited on the south east side and made our way into Sony Centre. This is a massive steel and glass comlex surrounding a central courtyard that is sheltered by a tent like peak of glass and wire. Quite impressive. There is an Australian restaurant here, but we resisted the urge to have some damper with cheese.

There is a section of the wall outside with some explanations of the ‘death strip’. The wall itself was on the actual border between the east and west or Berlin, there was another wall a few metres in on the East side. Between these walls the border gaurds patrolled and this was called the Death Strip, I think the Sony Centre is on these grounds, might be wrong. We headed south along the path of the wall to try to see the Topography of Terrors and Checkpoint Charlie but our path was interrupted just next to the former site of Hitler’s Bunker by council employees guarding some red taped border. After asking someone, we learned that the area was roped off for the shooting of Tom Cruise’s new movie Valkyrie so we had to take a large detour. I took a photo of some of the set including an old truck. We heard later that on that night a bunch of cast were injured when they fell off a truck during filming, I wonder if it was the same one :-)

We saw the Topography of Terrors, a section of wall which has details of the events and methods used by the SS but we didn’t get anything out of it because it was only in German. There is almost nothing to see at Checkpoint Charlie, except the sign still standing saying ‘You are now leaving the American Sector’. We then headed back to Unter Den Lindon for some well deserved Hagen Daas ice-cream.

That night we went for dinner on Haymarket Square and later to a bar further north called the Berger Bar, a cool little indie joint which apparently hasn’t been redecorated since the GDR days. It also hosts regular “Russian disco” nights.

18.08.2007

The drive to Berlin was long enough after only a short sleep. The countryside is really pretty the whole way. Just as we were about to reach the German border we started seeing these little wood cabins on the sides of the road, with prostitutes in their underwear and long coats waiving towards us. It was a sad note to our last few minutes in this country.

After the German border we were treated to some nice villages (think Hahndorf but even more German) before happily arriving on the famous German Highways. The Megane handled an average speed of 160km comfortably. On our way into Berlin, we drove past our first glimpses of the remains of the Berlin Wall. We arrived at the Holiday Inn in Mitte in time for a bit of a snooze before heading out for dinner.

We got a little dressed up because it was a Saturday night. Neda wore a dress. Once we got out of the Metro Station, we got some funny looks. After looking around we noticed that we couldn’t find any women in dresses, they were all wearing pants or jeans and top, usually a T-shirt. It seemed as if legs were a rare sight. Neda got a bit annoyed with all the staring. We ate Japanese at this nice little courtyard near Haymarket. Neda ordered a wine and I ordered a beer. The waitress came back with a wine and something green in a fat cocktail glass with 2 straws. Upon enquiring I found that this was the beer I ordered, a typical Berlin Weiss beer brewed with some kind of flavour which the waitress couldn’t remember the English for. I will do some research. To me it hardly tasted like beer but is very refreshing. Doesn’t go well with raw tuna though.

17.08.2007

We decided to stay on another day in Prague. Apart from wandering around, we spent a lot of the day in an internet café updating the last few weeks of the blog and adding photos as this was all long overdue. It was good to slow down for a day.

That night we took a break from schedule and went out for dinner and a movie. Dinner was at a really nice restaurant in the ‘New Town’ (only new in comparison to ‘old town’). I had the biggest calzone I have ever seen, until I stuck the knife in and it literally deflated. It was too big anyway. The movie was another cultural experience; Transformers J

At about 12.30am we made sure to see what we were told we couldn’t miss; the Karlovy Bridge at night time. The bridge is lit up with the ornate street lamps and you can see all of Prague and Prague Castle lit up and reflecting off of the water.

16.08.2007

Today we took a day trip out into the countryside to visit the town of Kutna Hora. This town was a very powerful town some centuries ago due to a wealthy silver mine which supplied a great deal of Europe’s silver. It was nice to stroll around another, quieter city in Czech Republic. We finally found evidence of the famous cheap eating in Czech Republic, trick is you need to be out of the centre of Prague. Here we spent about $6 for 2 pizzas that were too big to finish and 2 soft drinks. The people here (or at least the few we spoke to) are very nice. Once we parked the car, we needed to get a map to see where things were and we couldn’t find the tourist centre. We stopped in a local trinket shop and I asked the lady to point out what direction the tourist office is. Instead of pointing, she called her daughter in to come and watch the shop and asked us to follow her out to the street. We kept expecting her to stop and give basic directions as to where to head, instead she actually walked us through about 500m of street right to the actual tourist centre. We were a little embarrassed at this but grateful.

On the outskirts of Kutna Hora there is the Sedlic Ossuary, better known as the bone church. It is a small chapel in the middle of a grave yard, but the inside is decorated with the remains of about 30,000 people, most of whom died from the plague. There are four bells, one in each corner of the room, about 4x4x4m in size, all made entirely of bone. There is even a chandelier that includes at least one of every bone in the human body. We cannot say that it was enjoyable, but this was something we wanted to see. It is a very strange place, made to feel even stranger when the tourist bus turns up and you see children playing tag next to the ‘décor’.

Given that we had access to a kitchen and to supermarkets, we took the rare opportunity of cooking pasta for ourselves tonight. It might not seem exciting but after such a long break it is nice to have a simple meal.

15.08.2007

We set out to explore Prague in daylight. We saw the old Astronomical clock perform its little show on the hour, a couple of doors open each side of the clock and you watch little models of the 12 apostles parade past while a small skeleton rings the bell. We toured through the streets of Stare Mesto (the old city). The old town of Prague is like no other city we have seen. With winding narrow streets weaving between old buildings, many of which have some sort of interesting theme, packed together into a strange fairtale like montage. It is hard to explain with words, unless you studied architecture through history I guess but the photos should explain some I hope.

We left the Stare Mesto for the west side of the river. We crossed via the Karlov Most (Charles Bridge), the most famous bridge in Prague. Everything about this bridge is ornate, starting with the towers at each end, the statues that line each side of the bridge the whole way across to the view all around that takes in the west façade of the old town, the river and the islands, including Kampa (see further down) and of course the spectacular Prague Castle up on the hill north west of the bridge. Street vendors are everywhere here.

There is a superstition that the rubbing of two particular spots at the base of one of the statues along the bridge brings good luck. As a result there is always a crowd of tourists (us included) who gather around to touch the dog and the lady for luck. There is so much of this that those parts of the statues are perfectly polished and smooth whereas everything else is a weatherworn brown like a new copper coin.

One the other side, the township is similar to the east side. We weaved through the streets and up a lot of stairs to reach the castle grounds. The palace is situated on an area that appears to be about half the size of Stare Mesto itself (though I could be mistaken). It is extensive, and quite stunning. In the centre of the grounds is a huge cathedral. The castle grounds are surrounded by small gardens and the best views of Prague below. After taking this in we made our way down the long stairs to the town below, on the way stopping to have a brew in what claims to be the oldest pub in Prague. I can’t recall the exact year but it was somewhere in the late 1400’s. It seems more people are happy enough to have their picture taken outside with the ‘Golem’ mannequin. We walked south along the west bank, and onto the small ‘Kampa’ island which is mainly taken up with parks and restaurants (they are everywhere).

Hey, for those of you who prefer to look at the pictures than read, we have now finally managed to upload photos to the last few weeks of entries, so please have a look. Leave some comments too. (there are a lot of photos of rellies, sorry, but it is our blog).

love to everyone from Prague. We will write about Prague soon.

14.08.2007

Because we were leaving Vienna today (because we wanted to be in Prague tonight for a particular concert) we got up and did the fastest self tour of Vienna that we could. We wondered the streets and saw some great sights. We saw numerous churches, buildings and took a tour of Mozarthaus. This is one of the apartments that Mozart stayed in in his time in Vienna and today is a museum dedicated to him. We took the tour, but unfortunately the musical performances are currently on summer break. We walked through the Hofburg palace complex, which includes the Spanish riding school and the famous Lipizzaner horses. Unfortunately the riding school is also on summer break so we couldn’t see the horses either, good time to visit Vienna L.

The drive to the Czech border was reasonably quick but soon slowed right down as the Highway disappeared and we found ourselves overtaking endless caravan convoys of Czechs and Italians on a road that seemed to pass through every town it could. I think that our GPS was to blame as we later saw that there was a Highway that would have halved our time on the road.

The Old town of Prague is nestled in the kink of the river Vlata, and is full of squares and small alley ways meant purely for pedestrian traffic. Finding our way through this to our hotel on the other side was an experience. I would gladly sign a petition for the local council to more clearly mark the borders of vehicular accessible and pedestrian only areas as we found ourselves more that once backing out of cobbled squares with lots of bemused onlookers.

Our room in this guesthouse is awesome. We didn’t think that anything could top Singapore, but this might. We have a huge apartment on the top floor of our building. From our balcony in the roof we can see the spires of the Gothic Church in the old square, just next to the famous Astronomical Clock Tower.

After parking the car and cleaning up, we raced to the venue for the concert of one of our favourite bands “…and you will know us by the trail of dead’. We got there shortly after they started (9pm! What’s up with that?). They played a great set, even though the 2^nd guitarist was sick and couldn’t stand to play. They apparently hate their latest album, calling it a total failure and so played a set probably the same as any set from four years ago. Pity because we like that album anyway.

We then had a late dinner in the old square, right next to the astronomical clock.