Farrrrk, 3.30am is early to be getting out of bed, it’s ok it you’re just going to bed and you’re under 30 I suppose.

Genelle has the auto alarm clock on and is out of bed before the alarm proper goes off at 3.30, I try and sneak a few extra minutes while she’s in the shower but it doesn’t help me feel any better. And here’s me with a reputation for early starts!

At 4am we’re out the front door and the black Mercedes taxi is waiting for us. He’s a Bosnian man with little English but enough that we can have a conversation and know that he has relatives in Sydney. The trip to the airport at 4 am takes 1/2 an hour and we’re quickly rid of our bags thanks to the helpful Austrian Airline’s desk and through security after half undressing, luckily the extra kilos I’ve added help keep my jeans up and I don’t have to waddle through the metal detector with my pants around my ankles. A bottle of water, a muffin and coffee make my feel half human.

At 6am, the Eurowings attendant takes the tapes off the boarding gates and the stampede begins, but it’s only downstairs to a bus where we then wait until 6.20 while the stragglers and other dozy buggers how spelt through their alarms wander down the stairs yawning, wiping the sleep from their eyes and no apologetic shrug of the shoulders or tilt of the head  to say sorry for holding you up folks. The bus is finally off, it seems to take forever to get to the plane, we’ve driven half way to Nuremberg by the time we arrive at the plane, dismount the bus and find our seats on the plane. Thankfully it’s only about half full so we don’t have to sit next to some fat German pig farmer smelling of garlic and pig shit. It’s still drizzling and cold as we head south to Rome, daylight sneaking over the horizon on the left side of the plane when we finally get through the clouds.

Rome not far away

The bags arrive despite a bit of doubt by one traveller that carousel 11 was where they were going. Out the doors and we see a bloke with our name on it. We assume he’s the bloke we booked on the net but we latter find out the accomodation organised this one and we ended up having to pay the trip into Rome twice – €50 f…k up, I think we were mucked up by the accomodation people assuming we wanted transport. 
Mamas Home Rome in Campo de Fiori is fantastic, in a fantastic piazza, just near Piazza Navona, near the Jewish area. The accomodation has been really modernised and has hand made modern furniture made of brushed stainless steel and glass, the shower and bathroom is all glass and is all seeing unless you pull a curtain for a little modesty. Our room is at the side not overlooking the Campo, but is still a beautiful room. Our initial host is Enrica, a late 30-40 something daughter in law of the “ Mama” who owns the building, “Mama”has 2 sons and we gather both are involved in this enterprise and we think a restaurant downstairs. Enrica is mother to 2 boys of 7 and 11, well dressed, confident, full of knowledge on the building and the area, I think Mama’s son has done pretty well.
Campo de Fiori was once a garden area on the banks of the Tiber River and at some stage hundreds of years ago some of the gardeners started selling flowers (Fiori) in the area and now while the piazza fills with food and clothing markets during the day, the 4 flowers stalls are the main permanent stalls.

Enrica takes over to Obica Cafe for some breakfast and coffee, where the “breakfast” bit of B & B happens. It’s good to get Italian coffee again. There is an easy feel to the cafes and staff when you sit down in an Italian cafe/ restaurant.

Genelle finished her breakfast quickly and immediately buys some clothes and does a recce of the market.

Back in Berlin I lost a cap that I’d bought in Paris, so I bought hats at a market stall in Campo de Fiori last year and decide to replace it at the same stall. A nice line cap is the go and it’s cooler than the woollen ones I was thinking of. It’s a warm sunny day in Rome and I need to cover my head so a necessary purchase. My acquisitions other than food and drink have been 2 pairs of jeans, 2 pairs of work trousers, 4 fridge magnets and a couple of caps. My travelling companion has, as somebody commented, helped the European economy with her purchases, my reply was Europe was doing ok but the Reid’s were facing a serious deficit.

Genelle buys a bag in a laneway beside Mamas Home, a pair of shoes in the Jewish Quarter, scarves, more bags, dunno when it’s going to end and where she’ll fit it all? Probably stuff my bag full of it ( which is what happens. 

We then walk to Piazza Navona, 5 minutes from Campo, sit a while and rest. The crowds are huge, much bigger than when we were in Rome last year ( November). We then walk the next 5 minutes through the crowds via the laneways to The Pantheon, my favourite building of anywhere at this stage. No photo’s do it justice, you have to see it to understand, the ocular in the roof is enormous but how they managed the engineering of the roof over 2,000 years ago is fascinating. There is a bloke that we saw here last year, busking, playing Pink Floyd music on an electric guitar with and amp and speaker connected to a car battery, he’s amazingly good. We then walk the further 15 minutes to Trevi Fountain to do the coin toss ( means you’ll be back) which has worked for us 3 times so far. Our feet are killing us so we limp back towards Campo de Firori for a rest.

After going our own way for an hour or so we meet at a restaurant Osteria Fortunata which is right under our room at ground level, we were told it’s authentic and the pasta is renowned. It’s a bit early so we get straight in, there are 2 female cooks making pasta at a large table in the front window, fast, all sorted of pasta, fetuchinni, spaghetti, gnocchi, macaroni, and other stuff, flour is flying and they talk and laugh with the waiters as they come past. The place is busy, the waiters skid around corners, there is the incessant noise of a busy chatty restaurant with the machine gun patter of Italian added. It’s a fun place and the food when we get it is good, Genelle cleans here plate, and that doesn’t happen often.

Then it’s a final pack ready for planes again tomorrow.

Ciao from Rome

Pauolo.



Our room at Mammas Home Rome in Campo de Fiori

In front f Mammas Home Rome, our room is 2nd top floor near the chimney.

Singers in front of our B&B

Rome Street.

Campo de Fiori markets

Hat purchase in Campo de Fiori

Genelle in Piazza Navona today

2 pasta makers at Osteria Fortunata

Osteria Fortunata after we ate there

Me at Osteria Fortunata

Best building in the world – Pantheon

Genelle at Trevi Fontana – convincing the Gods that we’ll be back

Paul in the Jewish Quarter Rome

Street scene in the Jewish Quarter

In Vienna it’s Sunday, which is a day of rest, hardly anything except some food places, museums, churches and a few other bits and pieces are open. 
The hotel have organised a taxi to the airport for €40, ok value after we do a little check around on the net.

We’ve also organised a pickup at Rome airport tomorrow morning, €42 cost, and we’re leaving the hotel in Vienna at 4am for the Wien International Airport, The Super Shopper wants to be in Rome before the shops open. Go figure! In Rome we’re staying in the Campo De Fiori, right in the piazza, in a little boutique place called Mamas Kitchen. We liked the area when we ventured into it by accident on the last day of our trip last year, so we thought let’s give it a burl this year. 

So today, here’s the thing, Genelle went to Museum, the Wien Museum, I figure just to humour me, but non the less she walked in the door, then had a quick look and sat on a bench. It’s raining and cold outside. This Museum focus’s on the history of Vienna, and not a lot of time is needed, plus, there is no shortage of museums in Vienna, so I decide to move on to the DK – the Museum of Applied Art  ( the DAK) Genelle opts to go back to the area where there are people and leave me to the Museum. The DAK is fantastic and it has about 5 levels of stuff from cutting edge tech stuff like solar powered self composting toilets, the future of kitchen designing, recycling anything they can into stuff we use every day, fabrics, fashion items from about 2003-4 that models wore in a big Paris show – what may you ask would that be, well it was thin strips of material that wouldn’t cover much, vented bras made of leather, see through stuff that left nothing to the imagination, all very interesting. It took quite a while, a quick coffee and then back to all the people in Stephenplatz and a rest at the hotel.

Dinner is back at Renthalers again for Wiener snitzel for me and sausage and gravy for Genelle.

Bags packed and ready for Rome tomorrrow.

Ciao from Vienna

Pauolo

Reinthalers Beisl – a good spot for a meal

Stephenplatz from in front of our hotel

Inside the DK – Museum of

Solar powered self composting toilet at the DK

A chair that’s like a show at the DK

Horse and cart – Vienna style

So today is the last day of retail activity by the said Olympic Class shopper, on Sunday Vienna shuts down except for church, food and museum activity. For Genelle this will mean a quiet day, church might be needed after a visit to the Sex Machines Museum but museums ain’t her big thing and shut shops could bring on anxiety and depression, I’ll have to watch her closely. For me, well I’m going to use my Vienna Pass and see a couple of museums by myself. I’ll work out which ones tomorrow.
Once again I think the internet wifi speed will be a problem to load photos up on the blog so as per yesterday check the photos on Facebook.

It’s raining outside when we get up, it’s grey and drizzling, and oddly enough this is the first real rain we’ve had in the 3 weeks we’ve been on the road. So for the first time the Gortex coats come out, scarves around necks and off we trot to Stephenplatz U Bahn station, of to Karlsplatz U Bahn and the Nachmarkt, a  fresh food market during the week and flea markets added on Saturday. Now I pride myself on being pretty good with directions but once again Karlsplatz throws me and I go the wrong way until Genelle’s trusty iPhone Google maps gets me on track, much harumping and hairy eyeball activity from you know who makes me feel a bit small, but I’m used to it and let it all slide over my head.

First thing at the market is breakfast, a serious pastry with coffee and tea. The food area is huge and the food and vegetables area is great and cheap. The Viennese do good coffee, not as good as home but getting close. We wander for ages through all the food and then the flea market area, which has mainly 2 nd hand junk and Chinese scarves with some knock off  Addidas and Jack Wolfskin clothes. Genelle negotiates hard and buys some sweats and some biscuits, but there isn’t anything really that catches her eye, and there is no chance anything is going to tempt me.

We leave the market and get on to the U Bahn and head out to where the big European cruise boats dock in Vienna on the banks of the Danube River proper. There are about 3 boats moored on the main old Vienna side of the river, it’s raining steadily, it’s bleak and we drop some of Tim’s ashes into the Danube. A huge river, and who knows where the waters of the Brown Danube will take him. The river isn’t blue like folklore would lead you to believe.

The afternoon is spent walking, resting, walking and resting. It’s hard to do too much in this weather.

Dinner tonight is at Reinthalers Beisel Restaurant, where we ate last night – I think ai had the wrong name last night. As before the food is really good and well priced. A Viennese man sits beside us and we strike up a conversation, he says this place is well renowned by the locals for the Viennese style food, the price and the quality, and we’ll vouch for that, €8.90 gets me a beautiful Wiener Snitzel pork with salad. He’s been to Australia 4 times and has friends who live in Canberra and has travelled all over Australia. As he’s getting ready to leave a young American couple sit beside us on the other side, they are from Minnesota, she’s a HR recruiter for a big international law firm and he works for Target ( different to the Australian one) as manager of their “Intimates” section – the women’s underwear, lingerie etc etc. We learn how they book accomodation and ideas for travelling, food and site seeing etc. by their use of Rick Steve’s book. A lovely young couple and they suggest that we see Alaska and Delouth in Minnesota if we ever go to America.

We leave and head for the streets, to see what is happening. The city is alive, people everywhere, no sign of drunks or trouble UNTIL as we wander back past St Stepehens and a brawl has just broken out between what looks like 2 groups of about 6-10 people of what looks like middle eastern decent, the language sounds like Arabic, there is pushing, shoving, punches and screaming, there are girls involved and possible knives, by then we’ve moved well away. About 6 police cars with sirens roar in, their are police dogs, lots of people with guns appear and the noise goes on for a while. Bit scary but we’re about 70 metres away by the time it got really scary. 

Tomorrow is our last day in Vienna, a quiet day I feel.

Gute Nacht aus Wien

Paul

Nacho Markt today, wet and lots of people

On the U Bahn Train Station at Stephenplatz today

Some of Tim’s ashes go into the Danube River today

Out the front of our hotel – Pension Nossek tonight

Genelle on Stephenplatz, Vienna today

( There are problems loading photos again- check the ones out I added to Facebook earlier)

It’s a late wake up, again, but we’ve been going pretty hard with the travelling and sleeping in strange beds and I guess we’re getting a little weary. 

We wander out the front of Pension Nossek, turn right, 3 short blocks down, turn right into Dorothee gasse and a little way up we see a funny looking place and try our hand, it’s Leopoldo Hawelka Cafe, a bloke in his 60’s waves us in, almost like a John Cleese sort of character, a serious look on his face and asks us German what we want (at least that’s what we assume he’s asking?), Genelle says “breakfast “,he says “eggs?” So I end up with a cheese omelette and she ends up with bacon and eggs scrambled in a dish, she with a tea and me with a nice cappuccino. The place is full of locals reading newspapers on sticks, and except for us only German is being spoken. Our waiter does speak English, but he uses it sparingly, I think it’s a ploy to make us feel a bit like wanker tourists in a place reserved for the Viennese. Anyway the food is good, we pay and wander off into Stepehanplatz trying to work out a destination to start exploring. 

Like Dubbo golf course, the greens run downhill to the river, well, so the hill runs down towards the Danube River, or at least a fork of it, the main Danube is about 100 metres away.  We wander into the colossal St Stephens church, it’s huge and spectacular enough to be another collection point for church fundraising, so we pay €0.75 for a candle and light it up, one of the little rituals we do in big churches because the poor buggers are so broke.

We wander down the hill past the shops, the cafes, the theatres, the shops and more f….g shops, I hope the river turns up soon so I can jump into it. We check out the annabranch of the Danube, then wander into another street going back up the hill. Vienna appears to be a place of serious money, very tidy, very opulent, very clean and pretty polite relaxed people. 

We get our Vienna cards organised and head to the U Bahn at Stephanplatz to get a train to Karlsplatz where we are doing a Segway tour after lunch. It’s all pretty easy, we get out at Karlsplatz, and try to find Bosentrasse, I get us lost, not good when Genelle is stressed about how she’s going to handle the Segway, I take my medicine and we find the place early, so we decide to walk on a little further and have a coffee before we start. There is a group of Germans outside the Segway place, they leave no space to walk past so I quietly shoulder one bloke to make space for me, Genelle politely walks through a garage to avoid them ( does something sound wrong here?), I get the evil eye and we walk on. 

The coffee is good, it washes down an apple strudel, we have a little chat to a Sydney couple who are in Vienna on a big cruise boat then hard back to the Segway place, thankfully the Chermans are gone and I won’t have to defend my rash behaviour  half an hour before. Our co tourists are an Austrian Retired fireman and Helga his wife, a Retired  New York gynaecologist and his wife who is an artist, and our leader is a nice bloke named Horst Harriet, divorced for 21 years and a former banker. Horst gets the training going, Helga struggles, Genelle picks it up easy, the fireman is ok, I’m ok, the 2 New Yorkers have done it before ( and let us know!), so we hit the road. It feels really weird first up at pace in pedestrian and push bike traffic as well as trams and cars as we tear along in the bicycle lane single file with Horst leading. Within 200 metres I feel like I’m going to come off backwards and like a good bronc rider I dismount the Segway, land on my feet, the Segway hits the bitumen. How embarrassing, just like dropping the bike while it was stopped in Charleville last year, I try to pick the Segway and get going but something is not right, the centrifugal thingy that keeps it balanced has switched off. Horst gets me sorted, we leave again but this time my face is red and Genelle is sniggering (I can tell she is even if she doesn’t let on) . Anyway the rest of it does go swimmingly, we see right around Vienna in 4 hours, dodging horses, pedestrians, trams, the odd cop, cars who get a little impatient, we go to the Danube where they had a Texan woman run up the back of her husband ( too close behind him) who had crashed into a wall, she speared off into the Danube with the Segway as a sinker, Anyway after the ambulance took her to hospital, and they decided they would change the track and not go so close to the river. 

We return to the Segway base tired with sore feet and legs after an great day. Genelle had really got the hang of it, I think I did too but let’s not too carried away -I was the only accident in our group and it was a small one. The funny thing is that the Chermans on the footpath, the group before us, had 2 major bingles, there is a God !

We stroll back to Stephenplatz, rest the feet and then back to another little restaurant/ cafe called Kein Ruhetag in Dorotheegasse for a great dinner of chicken and pork schnitzel, washed down with a .5 ltr of bier. 

The we walk the streets exploring until 10 pm, until my knees are dusted and Genelle can’t read any prices in windows. Time for bed and blog writing.

Tomorrow it’s the flea  markets at Nachmarkts, a big deal once a week on Saturdays, apparently for some people!

Gute Nacht aus Wien
Paul

Vienna today – from Stephenplatz down a laneway

Vienna this morning – looking down Stephenplatz towards our Hotel

Breakfast today at the Leopold Hawelka Cafe

Segway tour around Vienna today

Dinner tonight at this place. Great food at a good price

It’s a late start again this morning. Breakfast is the usual healthy start, then Genelle makes a couple of phone calls back home using the free wifi. Free wifi is almost a must these days, you hardly need a mobile phone to call home, what you a smart phone for is the data so that you can use Google maps to get you places, the 2 hotels that we’ve stayed in that have the “Handy “phones in the rooms and you can use them locally for data like Google maps while you are walking the streets or working out public transport! as well as international calls are certainly on to a winner for travellers in an unfamiliar city.

We head out and go our own ways, Genelle to look at some other options for shopping and me to walk up towards the castle and the plan is to meet again at the hotel at 12 midday and check out then go again prior to our taxi arriving at 1.45pm at the hotel.

The day is gray, not too cold, not raining, a light fog over the river and the city, the tourists are treating across Charles Bridge to the castle and lots of school kids mixed , on excursions I guess. Not a bad spot for an excursion!

We reconvene at Pod Vezi Hotel at 1.45, our taxi is on time. The hotel organise a taxi to the train station for 350 Kr’s (Czech Crowns) which is about $16,pretty reasonable we think and the price is locked in and we don’t have to negotiate with taxi drivers, we know the rate is ok. Our man gets us to Pragaue Hlavni Train Station in about 20 minutes, in plenty of time as our train doesn’t leave until 2.52pm. The trick is working out which platform, there are 6 platforms with options a,b, s, and f. As out Tain eventually comes on the board, 4 S, we make our way to Platform 4, an old bloke is very helpful and gives us directions but he seems a bit too helpful really, hanging around like a bad smell, and then it falls into place when the train arrives and he rushes to help Genelle on with her bag then asks for €2, which I give him so he’ll piss off. I suppose he was helpful and gave us a bit of confidence we were in the right area and getting on the right train.

We’re on Train 79, travelling from Graz to Vienna, or maybe its to Graz via Prague and Vienna, dunno really but I know it’s going to Vienna and we’re on the right train. We’e going via Brno where they make the rifles’ that’s the only other name that rings a bell on the rail line we’re going on. Other names of the towns we are stopping at are Ceska Trbova, Havlickuv, Breclav, Sessenbrunn, Erzherzon head South East out of Prague through rolling hills, corn being harvested, ploughed paddocks, small villages, it’s green and looks like it’s productive country. It looks like the maximum speed is about 120 to 140 km per hour.

Travelling by rail is easy, and it’s relaxing once you have the right platform and train identified and are actually on the way with bags stowed. There is plenty of space to move around, you always arrive right in the centre of the place you want to go to and in Europe they are fast, go just about everywhere, and are comfortable and readable priced. Although saying that, we find out our train is running 33 minutes late when we get to Brno. Line problems is what we think we heard in Czech and hard to understand English. The carriage is full of locals and I don’t hear a word of English spoken the whole trip except for the conductors fractured English telling us the train is behind time. Mostly it’s Eastern European languages being spoken, not sure what ones but I guess Czech, Russian, and all have a distinctly Russian ring to them, not like the exactness of German or the machine gun sound of Italian. 

We come into Vienna, it’s modern looking but as with any entry into a city via the train lines it’s hard to tell really what it’s like.

Off the train at Wien (Vienna) Hauptbahnof, our taxi we booked in Prague is there to meet us, a black Mercedes van, sort of MI6 or CIA look about it, and for €21 it’s worth every Euro, we would never have found Pension Nossek our funky little hotel right in the middle of the name brand area of town. I can tell Genelle doesn’t like it when she says “Well, I would never have picked this place!”, but the young guy on the desk is great, it’s an old building but a nice big room, good bathroom and in the centre of the old part of the city, hopefully after a good sleep and she’ll see it differently, I think she’s a bit weary.

 We drop our bags in the room and go walking, a) for something to eat, b) some fresh air, c) let Genelle see some shops, it might lift her spirits. We find a little French cafe and have a nice meal, a coffee and hot chocolate and then walk the streets of Vienna reconoitering the shops – but this area is mostly Hugo Boss, Versace, Tag and Rolex watches so I figure I might be on a loser with that too. In future I’ll let her do all the accomodation.

Time to get some sleep, tomorrow morning is a late breakfast then after lunch we’re doing a Segway tour of Vienna. It will be interesting to see if Genelle can get the Segway airborne like her car in our driveway at home in Dubbo.

Gute Nacht aus Wien

Paul

( photos are proving hard to upload so will add them when the wifi is behaving itself)

Wedding photos in a Prague lane way today

Prague Hlavni Train Station today

Prague local specialty dessert

Mounted coppers on Charles Bridge today

Praha Hlavni Train Station – waiting to go to Vienna

Today is cooler, a bit foggy and the early morning sees few people on the streets. Breakfast is the usual healthy stuff then we head out into the mid morning mist across Charles Bridge, already teaming with tour groups heading up to Prague Castle. The view to the bridges either side of Charles is that grey low light misty look of Autumn that suits colour blind people like me, it’s greys, other shades of grey, white and black and nobody can give me a bollocking regarding what colour I see. 

We drop some of Tim’s ashes into the Vlatava River from Charles Bridge, there are bits of his ashes spread around the world, places I’m sure he would have travelled to and explored if he could have, so this time he’s doing in spirit with us. 



Tim’s ashes go into the Vlatava River, Prague



The Jewish cemetery is packed and the synagogue is very busy so we look at it externally and wander the streets back to the centre of old Prague, it is so bloody busy and ts nearly November, really strange I thought most of the tourists would be gone by now.

We venture past the Sex Machine Museum, have you ever heard or a weirder Museum? Actually, that reminds me that Alison and Dave visited the Museum of BRoken Relationships in Zagreb last week (that’s true!!!)

Genelle at the Sex Machines Museum

The Grand Cafe Orient stair way – cubist design

Paul at the Grand Cafe Orient

At about 4 we met up with Deb and Tony, the Adelaidians, for a beer coffee etc etc and a yarn, then dinner at the same restaurant as we ate last night. The food and the prices are good but the grumpy waitress hits us up got a tip when the bill is paid even though it’s clearly included on the bill we paid, so I’m outvoted about the action we are going to take and we pay NO tip and leave. I think we’re all feeling a little weary, I know my knee and legs and back are killing me, so it’s time for an early retirement. We say goodbye in lightly misting rain, hope to catch up again some day in the future and then go our ways, them to Budapest tomorrow and us to Vienna, one of the great pleasures of travel is meeting new, interesting and nice people from all parts of the Editworld.

Some things I’ve learned;

• This country is the Czech Republic NOT Czechoslovakia ( that was communist days and they hate the communists and Nazi’s passionately)
• Cobblestones are very hard on crumbling busted knees, walk on the concrete or smalller more level pavers and your legs will last longer.
• The tiled and the builder will be incurring the wrath of Genelle when we get home  – no more work done since we left, and she’s f…g really angry.
• There are lots of homeless men evident today, a few are beggars but most aren’t. One thing I don’t know is how they will survive a winter in snow and up to -25deg C temperatures? My guess they wouldn’t survive.
• The cobblestones are dirty, it’s a pretty grubby place, even though it’s beautiful. I think they need to get the Karcher out and give the streets a good clean.
• Currency is a bit weird here, some people take Euros some take Korunas (Crowns) and some take both. Be prepared with a bit of both currencies. Be very careful of  which machines and currency exchanger you use, a lot are out and out fee rip offs.
• Taxis – despite what we heard about how they are all crooks, it’s not our experience so far but make sure that you get a price quoted to your destination or get them to turn the metre on.

Tomorrow afternoon we leave by train for Vienna

Ahoj. ( Good bye)

Pavel

Trdlos – a local dessert favourite but not our favourite

Genelle having a cubist hot chocolate

Kafka’s statue – a favourite son of Prague

  Dobří čtenáři.    (Good day readers)

The forecast for today is warm, 22deg C. The forecast of warm sunny weather looks a little off when we get up for an early breakfast, it’s cool and still not very light. But, it was correct, it turned out to be a beautiful warm sunny day, as we were told “unseasonably pleasant”, apparently it had been cold and wet for the previous month. Here they get a serious winter, down to about – 20 deg C and lots of snow, although the river doesn’t freeze up these days because of flood mitigation works up stream on the Vlatava River meaning the water doesn’t get quite cold enough to get sufficient ice to skate on.

The Pod Vezi Hotel staff are extremely helpful and organise a taxi to get over town for our Intrepid Urban Adventures – walking tour of Prague today, 6 hours of walking, a bit of food and bit of beer – Czech Pilsener is the go and as our beautiful young intelligent guide says ” Zee beer is sleeper zaan zee vawta” , sound advice I decide to take.

Tereza gets her group together, 12 of us from the USA, Philippines and 5 Australians ( Dubbo, Perth, Mackay in QLD) and starts to introduce her to Prague. It’s excellent and a nice group of people to walk with. We see the main old town and the new town ( built in the 1400’s), cross the Charles Bridge, have a traditional lunch of beef and dumplings with a cranberry sauce, it’s delicious and even Genelle eats all it! The beer, a local draught pilsener is good, and cheap.

We get a tram up the hill to Prague Castle, it’s free except for the front part of the Cathedral which the Catholic Church controls – dig that eh, I though they were going broke! A fantastic day ends with me hopping down the hill like a geriatric crow while Genelle now feels free to start looking in shop windows. A final yarn with the young coal miner from Mackay who is travelling by himself and has just come in after travelling in a Russia. He said Moscow was beautiful, and cheap, I don’t think he liked Minsk, but he said it was ok as he was in a 5 star hotel in a room as big as his house for about $85 a night, he wasn’t suffering much.

A late afternoon rest turns into a doze and after a big lunch we decide on a walk back over Charles Bridge to the old town and a snack before retiring for the night. We’ve got our bearings now, tomorrow is exploring at our own leisure. 

What did I learn today;

• I’m not the only one with stuffed knees, 2 of our group struggled more than me on the steps and I saw a few other walkers with sticks that would have been younger than me.
• English detective tv shows are really weird dubbed in Czech language – we turned the tv on then off quickly.
• Prague was left relatively unscathed in WWII, but the Czech’s had a fierce resistance movement during the war and there was a Prague uprising at the end of the war when a lot of Czech resistance fighters were killed.
• Prague is a beautiful city, but after being in Berlin, it’s not as clean or any where as efficient. Still it has achar, and life tomit, music everywhere, jazz clubs, opera, ballet on every night. “A lot of culture in the old f…g town” as Sir Les Patterson would dribble and spit out.
• The Czech’s hate their current president, Miloš Zeman is very similar to Donna Trump, a classicly inapproapriate speaker and blatantly sexist according to certain people. Not me though, I want to stay here for a few more days.

Ahoj. ( Good bye)

Pavel ( that’s Paul in Czech for you non multi linguists)



Intrepid Urban Adventures tour group for Prague today.

Tereza and our group starting the day

Paul and Genelle from near Charles Bridge, Prague

The crowd on Charles Bridge today

A Guard at the Prague Castle

Genelle and Paul looking over Prague from the Castle

The astronomical clock in Prague



Last day in Berlin, and our first night in Prague.

A latish breakfast, we have a Vitality Breakfast for 4.90€ each and it’s a good start – yogurt, muesli, fruit, tea/ coffee.

Packing is finished but we leave it to finish at checkout which is at 12 midday, very convenient. I’m not sure that Genelle is confident that I know what I’m doing, so as we leave I get the ” So you know where you’re going?” Sideways head tilt with glasses on the end of the nose. I respond, not showing great confidence ” I think so”, and get the hairy eyeball from her again, and say “Righto let’s head that way” and 100 meters later we’re at the Berlin Wall Memorial, just around the corner from our hotel. I’d walked there on my own last night, but we can’t appear too confident can we, only opens the door to challenges from you know who.

The Wall Memorial is very sobering, our hotel was in the old East Berlin, and it’s all very modern in this area now. We then wander up towards the Flea Markets, Genelle umming and ahhing whether to keep walking, then says bugger it let’s try the markets, what a surprise! It’s a really interesting market, in the old East Berlin, lots of 2nd hand stuff, lots of new stuff that we’ll see in Australia next year or 2, flowers, fruit, food stalls. She buys a few things, all the while mumbling about where is she going to carry it, mumble mumble, its more weight – mumble mumble, but she buys anyway and then says to herself ” that was good buying, I’m really glad we came here”. Luckily there is an M10 tram at the front of the market that takes us back to the hotel in a few minutes, so feet and tempers are saved. 

We head down town on the U Bahn to see The Brandenberg Gate, we have to walk a little way beside the river but when we get there the area is packed, it’s a very popular area at the end of Unter und Linden ( close but not right I know). We walk to the memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe, a geometric area of rectangular blocks, then back to the train and back to the hotel

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

At the Brandenberg Gate

Some of Tims ashes into the River Spree in Berlin

The Berlin Wall Memorial area, the 2 pavers go wherever the wall used to be but doesn’t stand any more. It’s still an issue for the locals and listening to them talk it split many families

Cemetery next to the Wall where the East Germans moved the graves to allow the wall to be built. About 1000 graves didn’t get moved and are still under the area where it was built.

The flea market in old East Berlin, even I like this place

“I’m so short of bags sir, would you sell me one?”

We ask a bloke with a cap on, who looks like either a porter or a conductor, which end of the platform is First Class? The advice is that we should go to  the area between A and B, Genelle isn’t confident he’s got it right, she’s checking the train on the other platform and says “There’s no Carriage 262, this doesn’t sound right!”, I respond with ” it’s a different train, don’t worry, it’ll be right?” I get the pursed lips and the death stare for being so impertinent. She reluctantly sits with me and waits for impending disaster that will cause us to miss the train, but it never arises.

 The train leaves Platform 1 of Hauptbahnhof right on 3.07, there is a carriage 262, the ticket says 3.10, the original booking says 3.07, the board says 3.07 which Genelle thinks is early and maybe she would like to challenge, she restrains herself, this time anyway. A Japanese bloke has his bag on our seats 23 and 25, he gets the fu.k off look and words from Genelle and with a bit of a huff him and his skinny wife with a Yoko Ono cap on do fu.k off and find another 1st Class seat to steal or at least squat in. Clearly they got out of home (Japan) because of the fu..k wit in North Korea flying a few test missiles over their island nation and they still haven’t managed to find their smiles again.

The train heads out of Berlin, the country is flat, productive, green, pivot irrigators, small forrests of planted greets that look like birch trees, solar farms, sunflowers ready to harvest. We order honey cake, a Czech PilsenReally beer and Genelle has a coke, the beer is very good and the cake is excellent with layers of chocolate, cream and honey, Masterchef review = bloody yummo. Pretty cheap really about €10 all up.

Thee are wind farms spread through the farming country, as well as the odd solar array, clearly they embrace renewable energy and why wouldn’t they even when they have way less sun than we do. This train doesn’t travel excessively fast, not like the Eurostar or the TGV’s and the Frecciarossi’s in Italy but it’s very friendly. Our waiter is clearly a Czeck girl and is very pleasant, despite Genelle thinking she’d abandoned us with a menu and service. Jeez I’d hate her being my boss, wait, she actually bloody well is you clown Paul!

What did we think of Berlin;

• It’s a green city, lots of trees and the Germans know exactly how many, they are all numbered.
• The is lots of space in the city, the traffic is pretty light and lots of people ride bicycles. Not the 16 speed racers with wanker bars on them, practical  solid sit up straight bikes, ridden by blokes, women, kids, at pace in designated bike lanes that you stay out of or face embarrassment or death.
• Berlin is spread out and so it takes a bit of time to get used to how it is all connected
• The public transport – the S Bahn , the U Bahn and the trams all work pretty well, and even better when you work out how they all connect up, we got better but didn’t quite master it as well as I’d hoped.
• The old East Berlin is now pretty modern but there is still a lot of evidence of the hard days pre Glasnost and the Wall coming down, the vacant area where the Wall was located is new funky building, mainly.
• The Wall is still evident, and where it has been taken down there are 2  cobblestones running along the streets and foot paths.
• Berlin grew on me. The first day I though this is a barren lifeless place, then I started to connect the dots, get the transport sorted and where things and places with life were located. I am now really liking it and would like to come back and do some things like a lot of the other museums, probably without Genelle – she can go shopping.
• Germans are very pleasant ( especially the young people) very helpful ( especially the young people) and the Berliners like life, like a drink and food. The Berliners consider themselves a bit above the other Germans, sort of like Melbournians do over Sydney siders.
• They check train tickets, so make sure you validate you ticket before you use it, normal tickets have  a 2 hour life, we had the Berlin ABC Pass for 4 days €35 each, which gave us all free public transport around Berlin as well as discounted access to museums and the hop on hop off buses. Well worth the money.

Dresden station is at 4.55 pm, mostly modern with some old ones. From what I recall it was an industrial centre and was bombed repeatedly in WWII. A lot of people are getting off the train here, I hope the Japanese bloke and his skinny missus are getting off,  I guess he won’t be game enough to back up here near Genelle.

We head East into the Czech Republic, a loud woman smelling of a week of 40 a day cigarette smoke, wearing a big silver bike type ring on nearly every finger, plus a  weedy bloke comes picking up rubbish to recycle, speaking what must be Czech, it’s not German. I’m not sure if she’s a railway worker or a somebody who sells recycled cans and bottles. As they come back later they carry spare rolls of toilet paper and talking loudly, so I figure they are Czech Railway employees, without any customer service training. Her hacking cough reverberates around the first class carriage, wish I had my face mask and ear plugs. If I ever write a spy novel they’ll be 2 characters that I’d have, clearly as bad eggs operating under cover trying to detect chocolate and jelly bean smugglers  like us, and spreading disease by coughing over western tourists.

The country turns to hills, and a beautiful river on the left hand side of the train with a magnificent bite grey cliff behind it, forrests and green river flats, quite different to the Berlin side. It looks more alpine, with camper vans parked along roads and near the river, no caravan parks like Australia where the wagons are circled like the OK coral every night.

Through the mountains and the fast flowing river on the left hand side we’re back into farm land and now definitively in the Czech Republic, the guard is now a young blonde Czech and our tickets get checked for the 3rd time. There are no border checks or passport checks, just “come on in and spend yer money folks”.

We pull into Praha (Prague) Hlavni train station exactly on time, our booked taxi is in front of Burger King to pick us up ( the hotel organised for €15). Thank god we did, the traffic looks messy and the crowds are bustling around the train station. Our Japanese friend and Yoko are battling with what look like 4 x 30 kg bags and trying to sort cab out, I wish them the best.

The hotel is a brilliant little old hotel (Hotel Pod Vezi) right on Charles Bridge with the castle and the city as views, we also have a roof top terrace with even better views. The check in is a lengthy affair with a friendly informative young guy on reception, very efficient and informative. Our room is on the 3rd floor, there is a lift, the bathroom is very modern and roomy, the bed comfortable, wifi works, 3 restaurants at the hotel that sound good, only 26 rooms all up, very old but very good where as Berlin was very modern and very good – nothing to complain about at all.

We get some money (Czech Koruna’s – 100 = $1 Aud) from a recommended ATM, head hack for dinner in the hotel and then a walk over the bridge. It’s like a Fairy land, the castle, the churches, the bridge over the Vlatava River, the old town and the new town ( built in the 1400’s), and lost of shops. I think we’re gunna be ok here.

Tomorrow morning we’re doing an Urban Adventures walking tour of Prague at 9am, so it’s early breakfast and a cab to the meeting point as we have no idea where to go.

Cheers for today



So, continuing on about yesterday, before I forget the details.

Our tour leader is Cesar, what we see is he’s a swarthy looking man looks likes he’s Spanish, late 30’s, thick beard, ear ring, English accent. What he tells us is, he has English and Argentinian heritage and raised in Oxfordshire, he’s done a Masteres in Music, a Masters in History and now he’s doing  Masters in the Histriy of Music, he’s very good at explaining the origins of WWII which is pretty much the way I learned it from Greg Valentine in HSC history at Farrer in the 70’s, when the Cold War was going strong and the Berlin Wall was still standing strong with Glasnost a long way off. The difference is that on our way to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, and hearing about the early days of the Nazi culling process and how they ramped it up as the war got closer and then again when the end started to become inevitable with things like the Sachsenhausen death march which was really a way to cheaply kill all the prisoners before the Russians arrived, the Japanese did similar things at Sandakan.

The train trip out to the camp is confusing, it’s about 1 1/2 hours out of the centre of Berlin but there is some line problems and Cesar goes to a Plan B route with a few changes.

This means “Hard work makes you free”, not sure it actually worked that way in Sachsenhausen

The inside fence, inside this there was another border of about 3 metres where to set foot on her means instant death

The original wall of the camp with a machine gun sentry post behind

Memorial near the gas and other execution area

When we get to The town where Sachsenhausen was set up, its bleak, the cloud has come in. We get off the train at the station that hundreds of thousands of Jews, Gypsies, socialists and other minorities that the Nazi’s could lay the blame on the loss of WWI and the depression and hyperinflation afterwards on, first got off on the way to their way to death either through starvation, execution, hypothermia or torture. We walk the 2 kilometres to the camp that they would have walked, past houses that were then the Nazi SS officers houses, into the administration area and the the camp. The gates to the actual Concentration Camp have the words “Arbeit Macht Frei” on it, which means ” Work will make you Free”, all it did was make most of the incoming people dead. Inside the camp there are testing grounds where the prisoners were made to walk for kilometres testing different boots for different surfaces, if they fell they got shot, but it was important work because after a rifle the most important thing to a soldier was his boots. We see the area where they executed  thousands of Soviet soldiers through a ploy of measuring their height but as the backed into the measuring pole they were shot through the head via a hole in the all behind them, the gas ovens with Zuklon B which ended up being the cheapest and most effective method of liking people came a little latter. They even thought of the stress that the killing would have on their soldiers, it’s all difficult to process.

The return train trip is pretty quiet, we end up back at Haeckersher Markt, and Genelle is happy, the sun is out and the  stalls are still going, so after being a little bored with war and torture stuff ( she’s well versed in all forces of torture anyway), she’s back in her natural environment, more shopping ensues. Then we run into  the Adelaide guys again and have a drink and a yarn about the important things in life – sport and more sport (I’m joking – sport is more than just important!)

We stroll through the market area at dusk and wander uphill towards Invallidenstrase, finding an M10 tram that we think will get us home. It does and we rest back at the hotel for a few minutes before heading to Hauptbahnof to gate our tickets for tomorrow’s trip to Prague. We spot a fish and chip place in Hauptbahnof and have a little grease, potato and North Sea krill for dinner, thank goodness I had the gall stones out a long time ago, but good stuff to line the gut I say, at least the oil is fresh and not burnt.

Haekersha Market

An “art” shot on Invalidenstrasse late Saturday night

Paul