Grand Tour of Praha

For those of you wondering, Praha is the local name for Prague.

Right... today I woke up pretty early considering. I was up and out on the streets by 9am. Today I decided I would do the "Free Walking Tour" and get an overall view of the city. So off to the centre of the Old City to get to the meeting point.

We weren't meeting until 10:30am, so I decided to watch the Astronomical clock go off at 10am (it goes off every hour dusk - dawn). It is a really big build up to something that is a little bit of a let down. When the clock goes off, 12 saints appear through these doors at the top, then go away... yip as good as it sounds. The clock itself is quite cool though... try reading it, I think there are 7 hands! I only found out how to once the tour guide explained it fully.


So after that I took some photos of the Old Town then waited at the meeting point. I wasn't the only person from our neck of the woods. There were about 4 other Kiwis (older people) and around 8 Aussies (older people again). The younger people on the tour were from England, Italy and Spain. Our tour guide was Nicole (a German born Czech), but she had a Billabong bag, with a Paua Kiwi attached to it. She had lived in Aussie for 6 months or so.

Anyway, first she showed us the Astronomical clock and explained it all (no I'm not going to write an explanation). After that the tour went like this: headed around the back streets of the Old City to see some more sites, then the Jewish Quarter, then over Charles Bridge, past the John Lennon wall (which is the only wall you're allowed to tag on in Praha), past St. Nicolas Church in the Lesser Town, then up to the Castle, a quick walk through the castle and done. It doesn't sound like much but it took over 4 hours.


The highlights for me were the story about Josephov (Jewish Quarter). Basically, one of the queens kicked all the Jews out using high taxes and other such methods (poor Jews)... then once she started kicking them out she realised that they were a bunch of her revenue (tax etc). So she got her son to start the Jewish Quarter and invite them back. I'm sure you can guess what his name was :-P

Throughout the tour I was chatting with Nicole about all sorts. Also chatted quite a bit with a pommy chick and an irish lad (ummm... Kate and Toph... I think... too many names in such a little time). Who had been to NZ and Canada to work for some ski-seasons. I learnt a bit about Belfast and the tank-like-police cars that were kitted out during the IRA days :-P After the tour they took off to catch up with his parents for dinner.

It was Nicole's last day doing the tour as she had a new job. She got some photos taken during the tour so I'm going to be famous (along with everyone else on the tour)! I ended up talking with for about half an hour about all sorts after everyone had left. She said she might head out to NZ and got my contact details (hopefully I can remember all these people when they come calling on me). She then had to run off because the boss was taking her out for dinner.

(Me and Nicole)

Anyway, I would recommend the tour, once again the "Free Tour" (you tip what you want) was great. The tour guides seem to be more passionate about it than on the paid ones for some reason. It wasn't run by the same company as in Berlin, but was still pretty good.

After that I wandered down to see the inside of St. Nicolas Church... which I was told was impressive. Now, Prague has got soooo many churches, and throughout Europe I have seen many many more, so it had a lot to live up to. It was pretty cool, but I have seen others that are just as great.

I was then walking down the street... and I bumped into two Asian fellows that I had helped at the metro station on my first day (the day where I almost got caught!). They were heading to see the "Baby Jesus"... which I had no idea about. So I tagged along with them. And it was exactly that... a little doll of a very young Jesus.


I was a little tired (shock... horror) so took a walk back to the hostel to relax. I had been walking around for 9 hours so I thought I deserved it. There was one guy asleep in my room... so I took a nanna nap as well :-P
The sleeping-guy woke up when his mate arrived back. So, I started chatting to them. Two Portuguese guys named, Filipe and Miguel. We ended up going out for dinner then hitting the town. I found out they live in Lisbon (where I'm heading in 4 weeks time) so they offered themselves as tour guides for me... looking forward to it!

We went to a club that had 5 different dance floors, each one playing different styles of music. Ranging from hip-hop to 70's disco. The hip-hop floor was quite funny, there were guys on the dance floor having dance battles. They also had two live dudes rapping on stage. Which was pretty cool.
On the top floor was the "chill-out" room which had bean-bags and comfy sofas to lounge about in... we headed after a bit (well, Filipe and I, we lost Miguel as soon as we got there).

After a few minutes, I wanted to test my Aussie-dar (which is pretty accurate now). I walked up to these random chicks and asked them what part of Australia they were from. I was right on the money :-P 2 girls from Perth (Sam and Naomi) and 1 from Sydney (Jules). Ended up talking and hanging out with them the whole night. Had a lot of fun... and may bump into them at Oktoberfest... along with the other millions of people there :-P


We got home around 5 or 6am and we crashed.

Onto the Czech Republic

Hello Kids,

It's story time again :-)
This week was a very short one for me... Monday night I booked a 4 day trip to Prague leaving Wednesday night... how's that for last-minute planning! I'm becoming a pro at it now... hehe.

So busy busy Mon and Tues updating blog and working. Then Wednesday night.... the overnight bus to Prague... woohoo and oooh damnit all in one breath. The overnight bus is not fun.

Onto the travels.....

I arrived at 5:30am after getting a couple minutes sleep the whole night. I had this lovely old Indian dude sitting behind me who loved to cough then spit out whatever he was coughing into a bag.... yummo.

I got onto the Metro (subway) on my way to my hostel. Now, I didn't have any Czech Crown (currency) and there were no exchanges open, so I had to get on illegally. Now, what does Murphy's Law say? Some metro police got on board and started flashing their badge around checking tickets. Luckily, my stop was next... but those 30s seemed to go on forever and my heart was racing. I managed to get off just before they got to me... phew. That was an adrenaline rush for the day! Who needs coffee for a wake-up call? :-)

I then got off and started walking trying to find my hostel. I couldn't find any landmarks as I was surrounded by massive old buildings (kind of like Vienna). I wandered around and then found I was walking the complete wrong way. I had managed to walk half way to town before I realised :-P

Anyway, got into the hostel and checked in. The hostel was run by this lovely middle-aged woman and her son. She was very friendly and really willing to help. It was too early to go into my room (at 7am), so she gave me a map and told me of all the places I can go. So I left my bag with them and headed out for adventure!

My first views of Prague were simply breathtaking. I walked along the river and you could see the magnificent views of the Praha Castle, the biggest castle complex in the world! Now, before visiting Prague, Vienna was the most impressive city that I've seen. I think Prague topped it as a first smack-smack-in-the-face impression of a city.


There are so many old buildings around the aptly named "Old City". Prague was not bombed during the war because of the Munich Pact (whatever that is) so everything is very much intact.

I walked along the river taking in the grand architecture of the place and headed straight for the castle. Over Charles Bridge which is a medieval bridge with statues along the side. Then up the hill to the top. I got an audio-guide and wandered around the castle for about 6 hours (yes it is just that big!). It was very very touristy, but was an entertaining way to spend a day.
It was not cheap though... Prague has two extremes: the touristy area - where everything is way overpriced, and everywhere else - where you get $1 beers from a bar! I'm not going to bore you with too much about the castle as the pictures speak for themselves (check out my online photos - when they are ready). The St. Vitus Cathedral was very spectacular though and a randomly cool thing I did see was a guy doing some blacksmithing with some old gear which was pretty cool. Oh Chris (my brother-in-law) would have loved it. There was an armoury of all sorts of medieval forged war-gear, which could be purchased :-)


After the castle I headed back to the hostel. I was pretty shattered and just wanted to chill. So I grabbed some Chinese (really cheap as I wasn't in a touristy area) and some beers then went back to the room to eat.

I talked to some random Pommy chicks that were travelling, then 2 of my room-mates came home. It was two Polish people named Luke and Ewa (Eva for us English folk). They were pretty cool and we talked about Polish politics.... now I know what you are thinking. But this was good. Polish politics are a complete joke, the stuff they were saying was just so funny. In Poland, if you commit a crime, you can't leave the country or do almost any job (teacher, etc.)... but you can still become a politician! They have got one leader who went to jail for... "raping a prostitute"... how silly is that!

(Luke and Ewa)

I also learnt a few Polish swear words... 1 of thousands. Polish has the most swear words of any language. They even have a Polish swearing dictionary that is 500 pages. A lot of Polish people use the word "coorvah" (bad name for a whore) as a comma in their sentences :-P Also a word that sounds like "who-ya" is a really offensive saying in Polish. So they laugh when they hear it in English songs. Oh, and the Czech name for girl... is the Polish name for "prostitute".
Random huh?!

Anyways, after talking half the night we managed to get to bed around 2 or 3... so was a long day for me :-P

Farewell to Anna + Alex :-(

Today was Anna and Alex’s last day in Stuttgart.
We woke up at 9:00am… and eventually got up at about 10. I caught up with Le Fourgue and Janath, who wanted to join us to see the Porche museum.

We were on our way via S-Bahn at 11… with a quite bite to eat at subway (which is almost exactly the same here).

We arrived at around 12:30… and we only had 1 hour and a half before they had to leave. We hoped we had enough time!

Walking into the museum, we realised we had plenty of time. The Porche museum is nothing compared to the Mercedes museum. It is one room with about 30 cars around the sides… a bit minor to the 7 stories that is the Mercedes museum. We did notice they are building a new Porche museum… which looks like it will be bigger than the Mercedes one. Car companies and their competition huh?


So after about an hour we were done. And on our way back to the S-Bahn. I saw Anna and Alex off at the Hauptbahnhof and said our see yaz (I’m going to see them in just over a month… so not goodbye yet).

Le Fourgue, Janath and I had some late lunch then headed back to the dorm... where we all had a nana-nap :-)
Janath cooked dinner for all of us this night... our own resident Indian cook, yummo!


That’s about the end of my weekend. It was very nice… and great to see Anna and Alex again. Reminding me of my friends at home. I will be back in a couple of months… and I have a lot of destinations to visit before getting there :-)

Oh… last week I planned a whole bunch of weekends and firm bookings on flights. So I have a massively busy travel schedule now… check out "My Planned Calendar" in the right hand panel to see, or just click on my map for those of you interested. :-)

Tschau

Mercedes Museum and Ludwigsburg

Today we woke up at 10am and headed out for the day. Had some bakery food for breakfast along the way, then straight to the Mercedes Museum. We arrived around 12. The building was pretty big… so we thought it should be good.


We were not disappointed. The museum was English friendly, with audio headsets and every sign being in Deutsch and English. We ended up spending nearly 5 hours in there! Very entertaining way to spend a day.

Timeline:
As you went through the floors, it worked its way forward in history. As you went between the floors there were snippets of major events in history and it showed where Daimler fitted into everything.
Daimler invented the first ever combustion engine to power a horse drawn cart. It went a massive 18km/h. And was called the “Grandfather Clock”

Daimler were involved in the World Wars, creating planes and other weaponry. They even had forced labour using POWs to do their manual labour.
After WW2 they admitted their faults and turned the image of DaimlerBenz around. They created their safety first approach and headlined the automotive industry… and still do today. They invented and were the first to commercially install ABS (anti-lock breaking system) and airbags. Also, they were the first to initiate crash testing.
They merged with Chrysler for financial reasons (and now have recently split after a massive loss in the company).
They are still producing a large number of cars, and are number 2 in Germany for car registrations (after VW).

Highlights:
The guy who founded Porche, was a designer for Daimler in the early days.
The Pope-mobile was designed by DiamlerChrysler.
Mercedes are still headlining the safety systems research for automotive companies… and that’s what I’m working for guys ;-) I even saw some people I work with, and software that I have seen on display in part of the museum, which is quite cool.


After this most of the day was gone… so we decided to grab some dinner then see Schloss Ludwigsburg by evening light. This time we got into one of the restaurants Alex wanted to go last night and had some traditional German food… really, A&A had schnitzel and I had pork roast.

We made it to the Schloss around 7pm. It was quite pretty by the evening light and seemed like a really new castle. You could walk through the courtyard for free… then you had to pay to go see the gardens. There were hundreds of people heading there and we had no idea why. We found out that there was a fireworks display on tonight. So we decided to spend the evening here… why not?


The evening was pleasant. We found ourselves a seat and enjoyed a couple of drinks. The entire place was lined with tea-light candles and reminded me of the lantern festival in Auckland. Shortly after dark they started the fireworks… to the songs of Queen… random. They didn’t last too long, and weren’t overly exciting. But they were still fireworks!


After that, we found our way to the S-Bahn and made our way home… straight to bed because we were shattered. It was a really pleasant day, and a nice way to spend the evening.

Another Taste of Home

Hello peeps.

No real news from the week. Did my work as per usual, Wednesday night I played Squash and had a sauna, other than that... status quo.

This weekend Anna and Alex were coming to visit me in Stuttgart… and this was going to be my last weekend in Stuttgart for the rest of my time here :-P

So… I left work early on Friday afternoon to meet up with them at the Hauptbahnhof (main train station). After the hugs and greetings we went on to see Stuttgart.

The first stop was lunch, we had some traditional German cuisine… Doner Kebaps (hehe). After our hearty meal we decided to head up the Stuttgart TV Tower. This is the oldest TV tower in the world. Now I didn’t have the “local” know-how of the city that one should have… as I had only spent a couple of days in Stuttgart, and hadn’t done any of the touristy stuff yet. So we had to muddle our way through the map to find out which U-Bahn to catch etc. Luckily we had Mr. German Alex who could translate anything perfectly... finally a use for him ;-)
We got there in the end. The view from up there was pretty cool. The day was absolutely beautiful and you could see for miles. Unfortunately… there isn’t much to see in Stuttgart. Lots and lots of orange/brown roofs that all look the same, and some of the factories. Stuttgart was bombed heavily in WWII so everything is relatively new. One of the things we found amusing was the “Anti-suicide” barriers… which were these massive spikes. If you didn’t make it over… you weren’t going to be very happy.


After this we headed back into Stuttgart. We had a wander around the city… I got lost a couple of times trying to find some gardens I had been told about, and in the end we gave up. We did find some small “gardens” and we aptly named these “Tobigarten” :-P

We walked back into the main part of the city and found ourselves at Schlossplatz. We stopped for a drink and ice-cream. This square of Stuttgart is beautiful.


We wandered around the city for another hour seeing some of the side-streets and then found our way back magically at Schlossplatz, no matter where you go you always seem to end up here! It’s like the city wants you to go here. We sat down for a little while enjoying the sun and catching up. (Don’t ask me what we talked about… but it was good to see them again).

Dinner was the next stop, and all the restaurants that we wanted to go to were either way too expensive, or had no tables free. Eventually we stopped and had Pizza Hut, which was nice anyway.

A final walk through Stuttgart by night, we walked again past Schlossplatz, then found our way to the Hauptbahnhof. Went on our way back to my place.


We spent the evening having a couple of drinks and catching up and talking about all sorts. We were in bed by 1am.
This was my 2nd taste of home in 2 weeks :-)

Auf Wiedersehen Berlin

Today was my last day... and there was only a couple of things I really wanted to see today.

We headed to the first touristy destination, the Reichstag Building. This is the the main government building of Germany. It has a really cool design with the glass dome on top. The architect designed it as such so that anytime the people of government need reminding who's running the (democratic) country, all they need do is look up and see all the people above them. It's free to go up and have a look... it also offers a premium panorama of Berlin. Unfortunately... everyone wants to see it so it took an hour and a half queueing to get in! The time flew by though, because Ruth and I started chatting to a couple of Americans, father and daughter; Bob and Claire, who were "touristing" (my new word) Berlin. I found out about one of the places that I missed in Berlin which is where there are a bunch of palaces. Oh well, next time. The wait was worth it because inside the dome was pretty cool and the view was amasing.


We walked from here through the Tiergarten, and saw the Soviet monument... which had tanks and artillery! Cool huh!
We also walked through the Sony Centre where there is a massive giraffe made out of Lego.

After this we left the Stadtmitte and headed out to Schloss Charlottenberg, which is the only remaining castle within the central city of Berlin (the rest being bombed or demolished). This was a "relatively" small palace and we had a quiet walk around the gardens... we were pretty tired after our full on last days.


After this we went back to Ruth's place and went out for a final drink. I had to try the Berliner-Weiser, which is a famous Berlin beer with green syrup (Waldmeister, kind of like spearmint only not) in it. It was a bit too sweet for my liking.

After that, I got my things, walked down to the U-Bahnhof and said my farewells to Ruth. She was a great host and I had a fantastic time in Berlin.

I got to the airport with no dramas... and slept on the plane. Back home and in bed at about midnight... ready for a week of work :-)

I highly recommend Berlin as a place to visit... sooo much history there and you can feel it because some of it is so recent.

Sunday in Berlin

Now after our big night out, we didn't get up until 2pm. That was ok, we still had plenty of time to make it to the walking tour. So 1 breakfast + a bus trip later, we were at the meeting point.

Just to summarise this walking tour... it is fantastic! It is FREE and probably the best guided tour I have ever had. Well, it's not actually free, the guides work for tips... so they are very very good because otherwise they don't get tips.
Their website is here: http://www.neweuropetours.eu/ and I recommend people go if they are heading to London, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Amsterdam or Edinburgh.

Ok now onto the tour itself. We met our tour guide Katie, who was an over-energetic very-excitable extremely loud American... and that description is an understatement. But, once you got used to her, she was very well informed, entertaining and passionate about Berlin. I learnt so much on this tour that it would be half a novel to write it all down :-)

We started at the Brandenburg gate, which is one of the most famous things in Berlin. It has been around since the Prussian-Empire, and was part of the Berlin wall.


We then went onto the Jewish Holocaust memorial which was quite cool. Nothing in your face, just a bunch of blocks. Then straight onto Hitler's bunker... which was a parking lot :-P The soviets destroyed it when they took over East Berlin. We then walked past the Nazi Luftwaffe headquarters where they were still doing some filming for the movie. And again saw Checkpoint Charlie, which Katie called the "Disneyland of Berlin" because everything about it is fake. The only original thing left is a sign saying "You are now leaving the American Sector".


This was the half way point (after 2 hours) so we stopped for a bite to eat. The cafe we stopped at had an English menu... it had the UK and USA flag (normal) + the Aussie and NZ flag, I felt proud for our nation to make it onto a Berlin menu :-P It was at this point I realised there are only 4 main countries with English as their primary language... so you wonder why it is the international language now don't ya :-P

The tour continued through Potsdamer Platz which is a new part of Berlin. It was pretty cool, after the fall of the wall, this place was empty. So they decided to let a bunch of architects go nuts and make all these cool high-rises there. The most famous building is the Sony Centre.


We then walked to the main concert house of Berlin. There were identical churches either side of it... strange. Katie explained the story. The Swedes invaded in the 16th century and killed a lot of Berliners. They used evil ways such as tying a bunch of Germans together and having competitions to see how many they could kill with one bullet, and forcing them to drink the "Swedish Cocktail" which consisted of raw-sewage (which of course will kill you). After the Swedes left the population was decimated, so they got some French Huguenots to help repopulate. The Frenchies demanded something for their efforts... which was church #1. The people of Berlin wanted something too since they had to go through the atrocity... so they built the exact same church so no-one would be offended :-P


We walked through the square where the famous Nazi-book-burning took place, there is a memorial that is simply empty bookshelves. The tour ended in the Lustgarten where Ruth and I were the night before. I learnt a bit about the place here too. This is where the tour ended... but first we heard the best-part-of-the-tour (Katie had been talking about this all the tour). It was the story on how the Berlin wall came to fall.

Now the Berlin wall officially was opened in 1989 (only 17 years ago!), and it was all a mistake. To make a long (and very entertaining presentation ala Katie) story short. A new "travel policy" which would allow travel from East-to-West. The proper policy was supposed to involve so much paperwork that nobody would actually ever be able to travel. Günter Schabowski, the person who held press releases, had not been properly updated about this as he was on holiday before the press release. During the live press release, they asked him some questions about it and he mis-read the quote. Thousands of people swarmed the boarder guards and in the confusion, they all got through. This event triggered the government to allow travel because once the people had been let out once, they couldn't keep them caged anymore.
(That is the very brief version)
It's amasing how recent the history of Berlin is... in our lifetime this occurred peoples!

Anyway, that was the end of the tour, so Ruth showed me around some of the Eastern Quarters, a bit off the tourist track. I got to see some of the soviet buildings and statues which are quite different to the German ones.


We stopped here for dinner, which was Chinese Hot-Pot (very yummy). The owner was very friendly. He was retired and decided to start this restaurant just for fun, because he liked the cuisine when he was in China. He lived in West Berlin during the Berlin wall days and told us about the times then. It was party time for West Berlin, everyone had "reverse-tax", i.e. you got 10% more than you earned from the government. And everything was made easy to keep people in Berlin! A vast contrast to the communist East Berlin.

After dinner we checked out a small cocktail bar and had a drink. Walking on our way home, we stopped at a "horror-rock" bar, which was cool! It was called "Cathedral"... and was anything but. Skeletons on the wall, and skulls on the beer taps. Main clientèle were of course Goths.


After seeing this part of the city we found our way home via bus... it was a relatively early night and we were home in bed at about 2 or 3.

First day in the Deutsch Hauptstadt

Ok… so I had only seen the German Capital’s nightlife so far… and we got up eventually at 1pm :-P Had a nice traditional German breakfast consisting of bread rolls, cheese and jam… all bought from the local flohmarkt (flea market), was very nice.

Out to see the day, starting by seeing West Berlin. We walked past some of the common shops you can see in parts of Berlin: leather clothes and sex toys. It was good because my last gimp costume was getting a bit old :-P

The main shopping street of West Berlin was pretty nice. We wandered around, went into the big shopping mall which was 7 stories up. There was a massive chocolate bear… oh the bear is one of the symbols of Berlin, so there are lots of them about the place.

(Ruth with the massive bear)

We saw the church that was bombed in the war as well. There are many places in Berlin that they have left the same since the war as memorials, this is one of the main ones.


We wanted to try and catch the last walking tour of the day, but it was getting too late so we would have missed it. I took this as an opportunity to see more of the West. We wandered around some of the not-so-main streets. Saw a Anne Franke museum… it was very sad and we only stayed for a little while. I felt a little too emotional in there. (Not sure how well I’m going to handle Auschwitz when I go in a couple of weeks)

Also saw a photo exhibit by Peter Lindbergh, who is a very famous fashion photographer. One photo was of a bottle of water… and was worth $30,000.


After wandering for a bit, we headed into East Berlin… well the Stadtmitte (city-centre) anyway. We got off the bus near Check Point Charlie… the street just up the road was full of smoke, I was curious so of course went to check it out.
Turns out they were filming the controversial "Stauffenberg" movie, which is about the Nazi General that tried to kill Hitler. This is the one that Tom Cruise stars in, and because of his Scientology beliefs, they were not allowed to film this in the original locations. However, it was still a cool sight. A bit strange seeing a street full of smoke with the Nazi Swatzstika flags raised high and people in SS uniforms doing the Nazi salute… probably a once in a lifetime thing to see in Germany. For those of you who don’t know, it is illegal to wear or bear any Nazi memorabilia… an imprisonable offence. It’s amazing what you can get away with if you are in Hollywood.


We wandered down past Checkpoint Charlie… probably the most unimpressive famous thing I have seen. I didn’t really want to see too many of the main stuff in the city, as we were going to see it on the walking tour the next day. We headed into some of the not so touristy areas of Berlin’s centre. I learnt about the “Ampel Men”, or in English “pedestrian crossing traffic light symbol” (isn’t German easier?). The East Berlin ampel-men are quite unique. They were designed to be cartoon like so children would take notice… and for those of you wondering… that is his arm!


We continued walking and saw the Döm of Berlin which was cool. We stopped at the location of the ancient Berlin Royal castle.... which was now a square with carnival + eating stuff. The Soviets destroyed it during their occupation of East Berlin. We stopped here for a Currywürst and Beer, can't get too much more German than that!


After our snack, we went back to Ruth's to have a rest before heading out for the evening. We had been walking around for about 7 hours so I think we deserved it :-) After sitting around and chatting for a while, Ruth cooked a very nice dinner. By this time it was about 11pm, so time to go and see a Berlin Electro club!

We went to a club called Tresor (means wall-safe in French), which is one of the famous clubs of Berlin. We arrived around mid-night, and things were just about starting up properly. This club was really cool! There were 3 different dance-rooms in various locations throughout the building. To get between them you had to go through a maze of stairways and tunnels. The main one we stayed in was the "hard-trance" genre. The lighting was fantastic, the sound was good, the atmosphere was pumping. Unsa-unsa :-)


I met some Pommy guys that were on a stag due. Also met a local Berliner who could barely speak English, so between my bad German and his bad English we managed a conversation :-) Also had several dances with a couple of girls... they just come up and start dancing with ya... that doesn't happen in NZ. We danced the night away until 6am, and we didn't even have much to drink (or take anything else for that matter).

Leaving the club we were more awake than when we were on our way to the club... but as soon as we got home we both crashed :-) Fantastic night!