Zurich und der Rheinfall

Next morning up at 8am to have breakie... the food was quite nice, the usual bread + jam + cheese you get for breakfast, good coffee though and a nice selection of cereals. The triple S and we were out of there to head to Zürich.

Arrived at Zürich at 10:30am. Had a walk down to the lake, and fed some swans. Then wandered around the city for a while, took lots of pictures of the city. It was quite nice, nothing special but still a pleasant walk. We had a look at the National Museum, it was relatively boring, nothing that stood out as special, except for this big f**k off sword that was bigger than Janath... we were wondering how anyone would pick it up.


After the museum we stopped for lunch by the river. It was very nice, we fed the swans here as well. They came very close and did not bite you when you were feeding them.


We continued our walk around the city, it was quite nice... except the weather packed in and we were walking around in a light drizzle. We found one thing that was quite amusing, which emphasised the Swiss snobbery... a seat that said "Nur für Steuerzahler der Stadt Zürich" which translates to "Only for taxpayers of Zurich"... so of course we took a photo of us sitting on it :)


During our walk we went up the Gross Münster (biggest church in Zürich). It was a good walk up and very much worth it. The view of the city was definatly cool.
We were getting bored of Zürich, so we decided to head out of the city and see the Rheinfall.

After driving an hour or so we parked up and got out of the car. We could already hear the waterfall in the background. A 10 minute walk and we arrived... it was very impressive. We took many photos and videos of the waterfall. You could get so close you were almost touching it. We even took a boat ride to the centre of the waterfall where you could climb up some steps and onto one of the tall rocks in the middle. My camera battery ran out just after taking a movie in the centre... so that was the photos for the day :)


After the Rheinfall, we decided we wanted to go to an Asian restaurant for dinner... so we searched the GPS and found a Vietnamese restaurant in Vallingen. This was a nice little restaurant called Saigon. The owner could speak German and English very well (he was Vietnamese of course). Both Janath and I asked for our meals "very hot". The owner said "I have something for you to try"... he brought out this bottle of sauce, got Janath and I a toothpick each, dipped the tip into the sauce and gave it to us. We touched it to our tongue and nothing happened. Within 10 seconds your mouth was completely on fire... even Janath couldn't handle it! My eyes and nose were running for at least 10 minutes and my mouth didn't stop burning the entire time I was there. If you guys wanna try it go to this website: www.chilliworld.com
We had the "Da' Bomb Ground Zero" which is a measly 235 000 Scoville units, out of a possible 16 million!

Got home just after 11... so crashed and that was the weekend. Nothing too major but was a very nice relaxing weekend.

Trip to Luzern

Got up at 7am and got ready to head to Lucerne. It was by car this time. The travelling party was: Le Fourgue, Janath and me. A quick stop at the supermarket and we were on the road at 9am on our way to the Swiss boarder.

Arrived at our hostel at lunch time, and we couldn't check in until 2. So conveniently we had lunch outside to kill an hour. Then we had a drive around the city to check it out, it was really cool so we decided to head straight back then walk into the city.
While waiting to check in I got talking to a pommy guy named Adam. He was taking a 1 month trip around Eastern Europe, and stopping in Switzerland on the way. Also got talking to a yank, Josh. He actually studied in Christchurch for a year, so wasn't ignorant of the rest of the world. He was taking a 12 day holiday to visit Switzerland (from the USA).

(Adam, Josh, Le Fourgue and me)

So after we checked in the 5 of us walked into town. The first stop was the "Dying Lion". This is a famous statue (which I knew nothing about until Josh mentioned it to me) of a dying lion (funny that), that symbolises the Swiss mercenaries that died defending the king and that were guillotined during the French revolution. It was a very impressive statue.


After that we walked around some of the city, took the compulsory stop at the church (so many massive churches in Europe!) where a wedding was taking place... we tried not to get in any photos ;-)
Then we headed straight for the waterfront. The views on Lake Luzern were breathtaking. The mountain backdrop with the sailing ships on the lake were fantastic... except the fact that they were Swiss sailors (I'm bitter about America's Cup... grrr). It kind of reminded me of Queenstown. On one of the mountains you can even stay in the hotel up there... the views would be amasing!
We had a walk around the board walk... you could just feel the wealth of the locals oozing out. People were wearing very flash clothes and all made up like they had somewhere to be. I felt a bit like scum, all unshaven and wearing my ripped jeans... was fantastic :)
After walking for a bit we chilled out in the sun which was nice.

Next stop the old bridges in the city. It was pretty nice, wooden bridges with paintings in the ceiling. At one point all the church bells in the city were going off, it was pretty spectacular with a surround sound going throughout the city.

There was a music festival on, tonight was the last night. So after walking about for a couple of hours, we headed in to check out some music. One of the guys we saw playing was staying in the hostel the night before and Josh stayed up listening to him jam. So we checked out him for a bit, then checked out some of the other stages.


Eventually, we grabbed a few beers and sat down by the waterfront and chatted with the music in the background. After that we had a walk around the city by night which was very nice. The city was quite beautiful by night as well.

It wasn't a very late night and we were back at the hostel and in bed by midnight.

My overall impression of Lucerne was very nice. The kind of city you would want to take a girlfriend, or to just chill out on the waterfront, there was plenty of eye candy.

Week in summary

Hello kids,

Last week was a relatively busy one for me.
Skip this if you just interested in my travels :-P

Tuesday night... Jan (workmate) had a box of beer which had to be drunk because he was leaving this week. So Jan, Stefan (room-mate) and I stayed up and finished the box of beer.

Wednesday night: Jan's birthday. So of course, most of the people from work met up at a biergarten to enjoy a few fine German beers. I learnt some new German phrases which was quite fun. The main one was: "Ich möchte diesen Teppich nicht kaufen, bitte", which translates to "I don't want to buy these carpets, please". You can use it to order beer :-P as there is a commercial with this phrase and the people get given beer. I tested it and it worked!
Oh, and after much pestering (and the help of a couple of beers) they got me to do the Haka for them. Now I haven't done it since primary school, so I was a bit rusty on the words... but the actions came naturally. I even got Jan up to teach him how to do it which was quite fun.

Thursday: Jan, Andreas (workmate) and I headed out to a fitness centre called "Pink Power" to play squash. Now you know how much I am one for innuendo, so the whole week I had been playing on the fact "three guys are heading to pink power to go into a room together and sweat... etc etc"
All jokes aside, it was good to have several games of squash. I was very rusty, but still managed to win every game. Afterwards we had a sauna. I haven't had a sauna before, strange experience going into a room and 'sweat like a pig' for 15 minutes at a time. Andreas was a sauna expert, so we had to go through all these phases, like dip your feet in cold water, then hot water, then rub salt on yourself to increase the sweat. Didn't get home until midnight, but it was very relaxing and tiring.

Friday: Jan left work today. I really got on with him and he will be missed. He will be back in 2 months, just before I head off. That night, I went out with Thom (workmate) and Jon (Thom's flatmate) to an English pub for a drink or two. Was pretty casual and I caught the 3am bus home because I had to get up at 7am on Sat.

My Job... in summary

Well... since I didn't have much to write about the weekend I have decided to give people a run down on what I'm doing for work. Next weekend I'm going to Lucerne and Zurich in Switzerland, so will probably have a bit more to write about.

I have had many people ask "are you actually working or just writing a travel guide?" and also several requests to write something about what I'm doing. So... here goes... I'm pretty sure most of you will think "geek" and will go to sleep during this :-P

First a bit of a summary of what I'm doing here. I'm doing a PhD in Computer Vision: getting computers to see the world as humans do. This is a massive field, so my primary focus is; free-space detection in construction scenes for driver assistance systems using binocular stereo vision. (In English: using 2 cameras to look at the road, in road-works situations, and tell the assistance system where the car is allowed to go)

I am working at a DaimlerChrysler (Mercedes Benz for those of you not familiar) in a research department. The business model is very different here, basically they are doing the work that their suppliers should be doing. So if they generate anything beneficial, it is given freely to their suppliers. The company only gets a 6 months first to market advantage, then the other car companies can just use the same products.

The first few weeks here I spent setting my my laptop and learning the framework of the software that I am going to be using / writing. Basically learning how everything fits together and how the analysis works with the camera system. There is 20 years of research / development that has gone into it, so I was only scratching the surface. I hadn't touched coding in over 2 years, so it was a drop in the deep end and getting my head around things.

I also learnt how advanced they are in research. The research is about 10 years ahead of serial production. So the systems that are coming out now which you may be familiar with (auto-parking, ABS, anti-slip systems, collision avoidance) were started 10 years ago. They have already got cars that can drive themselves in certain situations, e.g. following another vehicle and grid-locked traffic. Of course, our main focus is the algorithms for the systems, I.e. designing "how a system works" as opposed to "designing a working system". So kind of the opposite facet of what I was doing in my Engineering Degree.

The next few weeks I spent writing manuals on what I had learnt. How to set up a laptop from scratch, and also overviews on the whole system aimed specifically at Camera Calibration (taking the left camera and mapping it onto the same coordinate plane as the right camera). It was during this time that my supervisor (Prof. Reinhard Klette) needed some assistance for setting up the project back in NZ. We are applying for funding so we can set up a "basic" car in NZ to record and analyse data. The aim is we will have a small research facility in Auckland that is compatible with the research here at DaimlerChrysler.
I was very comfortable with this part of it as, it was similar to the organisational stuff I had to do at COGITA. A nice way to ease me into my stay here.

The last couple of weeks I have actually started getting my hands dirty back in programming. Remembering how everything works with computer software and trying to read other peoples code. I got a lot of assistance from Clemens (guy at work that knows everything) to get me up to speed. I have started producing some real results now, working in my research area. The theory is starting to settle in, and because it is all on-screen visually, you can see your work immediately which is nice.

The rest of my time here will be continuing my research and increasing my theoretical knowledge about computer vision. Also assisting the Masters Student back in NZ when he is having trouble with the software. I may be going to a conference or two, so I can network and get new ideas on what types of algorithms / methods I can apply to my area of research.

In my final weeks I will be concentrating on learning how the car computers communicate to each other, and how to get the information out of the car. The aim is to get enough knowledge so we can set up the car back in NZ. The aim of this task is I will be co-supervising a Masters students who will do the car set-up with me assisting when they get stuck.

When I get back we will hopefully have some more PhD and Masters students, who I will be working with and co-supervising, so we can expand the project.

Hopefully that brief summary of what I am doing didn't go over your heads too much... and I won't blame you if you went to sleep and/or skipped half of it. I know I'm a geek... and better start accepting the fact ;-)

Bis später (see ya later)

Work Trip

On Sunday there was an organised work trip to do a "GeoQuest Challenge". Its something I only heard about over here. Basically, you go to a forest with a GPS, a list of questions, coordinates and challenges to do along the way. It was organised by Heidi (work mate) and her boyfriend Tobias. They did a great job and it was an entertaining way to spend a day.

So, we turned up at Tobias + Heidi's house in Reutlingen. Had a drink then headed off to the forest. We were divided into two teams and we went on our way.


Everything was in German and so I just cruised along for the walk through the forest. I helped search for some clues, but basically was dead weight :-P

The 3 hours it took flew past... only felt like an hour. In the end our team ended up winning... woohoo!!! So we went back to Heidi and Tobias' house to start the BBQ. German BBQ's are different to the Kiwi one. It involves starting a fire and cooking on the embers.


The food was really nice, it's been a while since I've had a good BBQ. I stuffed myself and really enjoyed it. After we had all finished, the other team turned up... we had beat them by about an hour.

The evening passed by with eating and of course, a few beers. At home and in bed by 11:30.

So the weekend was a pretty quiet one. The next 6 weekends are going to be a bit more full on me thinks.

Schloss Neuschwanstein

Well the week just gone has been pretty good.
My room-mate Stepan finished his final exams on Tuesday and arrived back at the dormitory on Wednesday. We decided to have a few drinks to celebrate his achievements. It was pretty low key, just Stepan, Jan (guy from work), Michel (Frenchie) and myself. Had a few beers, a few whiskeys and talked crap for a while. Got to bed about 2am so it wasn't too late.

On Friday night, I was planning on having an early night... but Stepan was out celebrating once again. So I headed into town to catch up with him. Didn't do anything too exciting. I was kind of the party pooper because I couldn't walk very far without stopping for a while... wearing shoes with a sore toe is not that pleasant. We only went out until about 2am, and Stefan continued back to his home town for the weekend.

On comes Saturday morning... well late morning. I got up at 10am and got ready to head to Neuschwanstein Castle. In German they have two words for Castle: Schloss (new castle) and burg (old castle). Neuschwanstein (New-Swan-Stone) is one of the most famous castles in the world... you will recognise pictures of it if not by name (I didn't know the name but recognised it). It was a candidate for one of the 7-wonders-of-the-modern-world (didn't succeed though).

I went with 2 guys from work, Jan and Andreas. It was only a 2 hour drive down to the Bavarian Alps, very close to the boarder of Austria. Driving into the small town, Hohenschwangau, at the base of the mountain you could see the side of the castle. I was automatically captivated by the sight of it, and I hadn't even seen it up close. The backdrop of the Bavarian Alps with low cloud made the aura of the place feel like a fairytale scene.


There were actually two castles in the area: Neuschwanstein Castle and Hohenschwangau Castle. Hohenschwangau was the "main" castle where the Bavarian royalty lived for their vacation home. Neuschwanstein was built late 1800's as a pet project of King Lutwig II. The place was very touristy and there were 100's of people about.

We decided to get the "Royal Ticket" to make us feel important... well actually, it was just a fancy way to say "you can visit both castles in one day". The first tour of Hohenschwangau was first.

This castle was pretty small, and not very inspiring at all. The rooms were small (for a castle/palace) so you could tell it was not a main living place. The main purpose was a "hunters" getaway for the royal family. The guided tour was ok, but you were not really amazed by the inside of it. And you weren't allowed to take pictures anyway. There was one cool fact where the servants and king/queen were completely separated to the point where the stove-fires were fed from passageways in the walls. So the king/queen were kept warm without having to see the servants working away. Brings a new meaning to snobbery doesn't it :-)


The tour of Neuschwanstein was not for another couple of hours. We we sat down and had a drink to kill an hour. After that we continued to hike up the mountain which took about 40 minutes to reach the top. We stopped at Marienbrücke (bridge behind the castle) to see the spectacular view. The bridge itself was high above a river and cave system that was quite spectacular.

This castle was much much better than the other castle. The outside is spectacular and I took heaps of photos. This castle was built in a time that it fulfilled one purpose, to look good. No practical purpose of defence... and you can definitely tell and appreciate the toy project of Lutwig II that was built in honour of Richard Wagnar (composer).
The tour of the inside was good, the inside was more just as beautiful as the outside, if not more so. The "kings room" was amasing. They had 14 wood-carvers working for 3 years on that room alone, and you could tell. The top of the bed had spectacular carvings of other castles from around the world.

Our tour guide was funny, she kept getting her dates mixed up and getting numbers confused. In one room she mentioned the ceiling had 69 compartments... we counted and there were actually 96. So afterwards, we went up to her and Andreas made a bet with her about some of the facts. She messed up the numbers because of the translation of German numbers to English (in German you say 9 and 60, instead of 69). So it was understandable. Andreas achieved his goal anyway and got her email address (she was quite hot) and bet her an ice-cream for her answer on the number of steps in the castle.

By the time we finished the tour and got back to the car it was already 7pm. On the way home the weather was atrocious! Heavy rain and hail. Cars were stopping under bridges just to stop being pounded. We just drove through it.


We stopped at Ulm on the way home for Burger King. Ulm is a famous city because it has the worlds tallest church, the Münster. It was quite cool, but didn't stay too long. Got home at 10ish so had a quiet evening watching a movie or two.

Onto Bratislava.... almost

The next day I woke up early again and it was very hot. After having breakfast I caught up with the pommy girls. They had done the exact same things as I had yesterday, they even bumped into David (the pommy guy) on his way out.

I had decided to head to go to a museum for the morning then head to Bratislava (capital of Slovakia) for the afternoon. It was only an hour away... so why not?

First I stopped at Stephensplatz and decided to get a good look at the city. So up I went to the top of the Stephenplatz Dom. 343 steps up and it was 37 degrees... wasn't the most pleasant experience... but the cathedral was well ventilated.


I went into one of the main Museums in Vienna. The Sisi Museum, Royal Apartments and Silverware museum (they were all in one place). It was an audio-guided tour, which I am starting to get used to now. The silverware part was quite boring as you would expect, but the Sisi museum was good.

It talked about Queen Elizabeth (Empress of Hungary) who was nick-named Sisi. She was very famous for being absolutely stunningly beautiful, and also for being assassinated in the early 1900's. The museum explained how she came to be Queen by marrying her cousin (... it was normal back then). It went through her life and how she became increasingly depressed when her only son committed suicide. And eventually went on to explain the assassination. Here is a dress she wore.


The Royal apartments were quite good too, you got to see where Sisi and King Franz Joseph lived. You were not allowed to take photos... and they had a woman that was telling people off who took photos... what a crap job :-P

After this I headed to the Südbahnhof (South Rail Station) and got on the train that was about to depart for Bratislava. Now here is where I made my mistake... I decided to use the bathroom.
I was standing there and someone knocked at the door. I said "someone in here", as you do. Then the door was unlocked and a cleaner opened the door. The door was that perfect height and clipped the top of my toe.... which ripped the toe-nail straight back so it was only attached by the bottom. Not the most pleasant experience you can imagine. All the cleaner could say was "Entschuldigen... ach scheißen". At this point there was blood all over my flip-flop so I covered up my toe with some toilet paper and washed my shoe off.
Eventually the cleaner came back with some bandage and tape to tape my toenail down with. At this point I decided it wasn't the best idea to go to Bratislava right now.
If you wanna see a picture of my toe... click here. It's not very pleasant.

So I cancelled my ticket then headed to the Krankenhaus (hospital). The health system works here. Within 2 hours I had filled out a form, had an preliminary exam, had an x-ray, and had my toenail stitched back on by some ER surgeons. And I would consider this a minor injury. They told me that all they could to was stitch it on for now, and wait for the nail to fall off in a weeks time. The most painful part of all of it was the actual injections for the anaesthetic.
I am really getting my money's worth out of travel insurance, because that escapade was 220 Euro ($440NZD).

So, instead of going to Bratislava, I spent my afternoon in a Hospital.... it was air-conditioned which was nice, as the weather outside was near 40 degrees.

After all this I didn't feel like walking about... well it was difficult. So I went back to the Hostel.

I sat down beside a random couple and started chatting to them. They were two Canadians, Nathan was half American, Isha was half Japanese. They had been living in Japan teaching English, and were travelling on their way back to Canada. Nathan was really into movies, in fact he was going back to complete film school in Canada. Now I am also passionate about movies so we talked about all the strange little movies we have seen and talked about our opinions on great actors, directors etc.

It was actually film festival time in Vienna, and they were heading out to watch the 1958 original "The Blob", and asked if I wanted to join them. It sounded like a perfect thing to do... not much walking. We hoped on the U-Bahn and got there. There were heaps of people and it was an open air movie right beside the fanfare.

The movie was cheesy as you would expect for a 1958 Sci-Fi horror. We really enjoyed it and also the audience all clapped at the over-dramatic cheesy ending :-P

After that, we left and went home to bed... I had to get up at 5:30 to catch my plane.

Overall... I enjoyed my time in Vienna, even with the minor hiccup today :)

Next day in the Austrian Capital

Up at 8:30... because it was already too hot to be in bed. After a shower etc, I went off to breakfast. I bumped into Ben (the Aussie from Perth whom I met in Nürnberg 2 weeks earlier) which was just weird. So I sat down with him and found out what he had been up to. Some other people joined us who he had gone out with the night before. 2 Pommy girls, 1 Pommy guy and a French-Moroccan dude. They were all shattered after getting in after 5am.

They told me about the Viennese night clubs, saying that all the people were wearing Gucci, Prada, Armani etc, smoking their cigars, and looking down upon the plebs. They said it felt really snobbish.

I told them I was heading to the palace and they were welcome to join me. They all said yip and I told them to meet up in the main reception. In the reception area while waiting, I got talking with an American guy that had just checked in. Asked him if he wanted to tag along. At 10:30 when I wanted to leave the girls were busy on the net booking hostels for their next destination and Ben was a no-show.

So off we went: A Kiwi, a Pom, a Frenchie and an American. We got to the Palace late, around 11:15am... it didn't matter because the Canadians were running later than me :)


The palace was pretty spectacular, and we decided to walk around the gardens. This place was well kept. Very beautiful and we walked around here for a couple of hours. Everyone getting to know each other a bit better. The French-Canadians got talking with French guy speaking in foreign toungue ;-)

We went into the city after this and got something to eat. Again, traditional Austrian food... a Bratwurst in a hotdog bun :-P They were really good... or maybe I was just really hungry. Then the compulsory icecream for the hot day.

Again, it was just too hot to do anything at 35 degrees, so we went to the Alte Donau again. This time we were prepared (well the girls and I) and had our togs (or swimmers or bathing suit... they don't use togs anywhere else Kiwis!) The water was good. Cold enough to cool you down, but warm enough to stay in for a while.


Fast forward a couple of swims and a few beers and a couple of people heading off to other destinations, we ended up back in the city outside the Rathaus (cityhall). There were all these food stands with different cuisines at each one. I ended up getting a chicken curry. There was Opera music playing the the background to add to the Ambiance and infuse the theme of Vienna. Caroline, Catherine, Will (the Yank) and I were the only ones remaining. We enjoyed dinner and a fruity beverage. The girls then left to get ready for their departure the next morning. We said our goodbyes and it was just Will and I remaining. We got a coffee then headed back to the hostel. My plan was to get out of my sweaty clothes then head back into town (with new clothes on... of course hehe).

On arriving back at the hostel Will and I got chatting with some Poms. They were quite interesting and we talked American and British politics. The war on Iraq, the Bush fiasco, Tony Blair etc... So I assume most of you are asleep now after reading that? It was quite in depth discussions and we talked until 1am... so I went to bed and didn't make it out.

Last minute trip to Vienna

Well,

I had semi-plans for this weekend but nothing was confirmed by Thursday. So I took some initiative and decided to just go somewhere rather than wait for others to make their minds up.
I got on the net and booked some flights to Vienna, Austria. People had told me it is a nice place to go and the flights were relatively cheap at 85 Euro.

I left on Saturday morning, I had to get up at 4:30am to be at the airport by 6:00am as my plane flew out at 7am. I'm getting used to the "get up and go to the airport" routine now.

There wasn't much of a line to check in and also the flight wasn't very full. This is the 4th different airline I have flown with since being in Europe, called Germanwings. They were pretty good. They are a low cost airliner that act kind of like a bus service :-) i.e. you don't get allocated a seat, you just get on-board and sit down. Makes things a bit easier.

The flight went well and only took an hour. So I was in Vienna and on my way to check-in to the hostel at 8:30am! I couldn't check in so I just left my bag in a locker and went into the city.

Up until this time I hadn't seen the city yet, I had been on the underground subway since the airport. My hostel was half an hour out of the city, and an hour from the airport. So it's strange being on a train for an hour and not actually seeing any of the city :)

I stepped out of the subway and saw daylight... it was now about 30 degrees at 9:30am. Wow... is the only way I can explain my first impression of Vienna. The buildings are huge, and extremely old.


You forget that Vienna was once home to the great Austro-Hungarian Empire, and before that the Holy Roman Empire, both of which controlled most of Europe. The city speaks for itself thought with it's grand scale of architecture and the number of monuments erected around the place. Everywhere I walked I was awe struck with the impressiveness of the place.

I got lost at first because you can not see any landmark, wherever you are you are surrounded by at least 4 storied buildings, most of which are hundreds of years old. I eventually found the Info centre and got some map and an idea of what I wanted to do.

I started with a self-guided walking tour where you can see most of the main sites. I ventured off the "directed" path on the map because there were just amaising buildings and sites to see at every turn. The pictures in my gallery show some of the main sites... but I took so many photos.

My favourite site was the cathedral in Karlsplatz.


After walking for several hours, I realised what the time was. I noticed these stands with bicycles locked into them. Me being my nosey self, walked up and investigated. It was a public bike system that cost 1 Euro to register, then taking the bikes was free. The catch was you had to return it to a stand within an hour, but then you could grab another bike. The public transport system in Vienna is just awesome!

So I got on my bike (hehe), then continued my "walking" tour through the city. I got even more distracted because I could now get further quicker. Saw many amasing buildings in the Museum Court and cool little streets everywhere I went. I lost track of the time and realised that it was almost the time a guided tour of the city was taking place... so I cycled back to the info centre (getting lost several times along the way), found a bicycle stand to lock the bike back up, then tried to find the guided tour. I found them, just in time. In fact, I didn't even have to pay because I was late and turned up after the money collection time... oops ;-)
(I think I should write a "dodgy" guide to travelling... because I can see how you can exploit a lot of the systems around Europe, especially public transport)

Anyways, the guided tour was not bad. You didn't get to see too much but learnt a bit about Austrian culture. Why the coffee shops are expensive, and we got a guide around a cool cake shop. I got chatting with a few people on the tour and discussed some of the things we were being shown.


At the end of the guide most of the people said byebye. I was still talking to some Canadians. They said they were heading to the river (because it was f***ing hot) which the guide had told us about. They asked if I wanted to join them.

So off we went to the Alte Donau (the old river that runs through the outskirts of Vienna) it was about 15 minutes from the city by U-Bahn. They had made this little beach on the side of the river and it was a really nice place to sit and have a beer. You had to pay to enter, but it was worth it. So we got chatting and found out about each other. Summary: 2 French-Canadians, Catherine was an English teacher and Caroline was a French teacher, 1 English-Canadian, Ryan who was working for the Canadian Embassy in Serbia. We had a couple of beers to cool down, and the afternoon flew by.

At this stage we were starving, so we went into the city to find somewhere to eat / drink. Ryan lead us to a micro-brewery which he had found in his previous travels to Vienna. I ordered some traditional Austrian food, sausages and sour-crout. Ryan and I worked our way through the various different beers that they brewed there. It was relatively quiet there and we had 4 waitresses to our table... we would constantly have different people coming up to us and getting drink orders... it was great!
The waitresses all spoke English, and one even said she was an American. We were a bit confused because she had a strong German accent. She had been living there for 4 years... but in the end we came to the conclusion, she can't be lying, only an American would ever admit to being an American :-P


At about midnight we decided to call it a night. Ryan was heading back to Serbia in the morning so I swapped contact details with him. The girls and I decided to meet up at the Schönbrunn Palace in the morning.

I headed back to the Hostel to finally check in :-)
I was a little hazy eyed after trying most of the beers on the menu, but found the hostel, unpacked and got into bed at a reasonable hour.

Pretty good first day, and it was still around the high 20's at midnight... just ridiculous.

Tag Zwei in München

The next morning Noel and Mohammed got up at 7am to go for a run through the park.
Michel and I did the smart thing and staying in bed until 9am.

We had some breakie then headed out for a day at the Deutsches Museum.

This place was very impressive. It was 7 stories high plus basement and had 55 exhibits. They ranged from Petroleum and natural gas to paper to musical instruments to astronomy. Each exhibit had lots of hands on stuff... so you could play!


It was an engineers dream. Anybody that has an interest in the way the world works would absolutely love this museum! One of the things I found very cool was a small flowing river with foam bubbles on the surface. You could change the shape of the river using all these different obstacles. It showed how they effected the flow and explained about eddy-currents and all the other nerdy things that my engineering friends will understand.
Also in the chemistry section, you could push a button and watch experiments happen in front of you. Most of them were ones you have done at school, like putting potassium dichromate with alcohol and watching it go from orange to green (In laymen terms: the crystals in the breathaliser bag).
I loved the aeronautical section, they had dozens of planes and models for you to look at. Everything had a board so you could read about it (half of them were in German... so didn't understand those ones).


There was way way too much to see in one day. Mohammed and Noel got tired and decided to sit down while Michel and I did a flying visit to some of the upper floors which we missed.

If anyone goes to Munich and has a spare day, I suggest they visit this museum. I'm sure there is something you will find interesting. And it was quite cheap to visit as well.

After leaving the museum, we headed back to Mohammed's place because we were all a bit shattered. We packed up and headed back to Böblingen.

(Michel, Mohammed and Noel looking pretty shattered after the day at the museum)

This weekend was a pretty relaxing one. Although, the other guys seemed to think it was full on?
It was good to see Munich during Summer and not in a drunken haze. It will be a different experience during Oktoberfest for sure!

The Bavarian Capital... München

Well... on Friday night I went to town with the guys from the dorm.
It was Wayne (Yugoslavian), Janath (Indian), Rui (Chinese), Jan (German) and myself.
I was driving and also recovering from being sick. I had to take Mon/Tues off work to see the doctor. So only had a couple of drinks. It was an ok night wandering around the bars, nothing eventful, but got back home around 4:30am.

I got up at 8am (body clock woke me up) so I went to the kitchen where Le Fourgue was with his mate Noel (French) having some breakfast. They asked if I wanted to come to Munich with them. After only 4 hours sleep I wasn't quite with it... but I said "sure". I had 20 mins to get ready... enough time to have a shower, get packed, have something to eat, then get to the car :-)

The trip there was ok... I lay down in the back of the small Citreon and had a bit of a sleep. The trip took about 3 hours because there was a bunch of traffic and accidents along the autobahns.

We arrived in Munich just before lunch. We were staying at one of Michel's mates, named Mohammed (from Tunisia). They were all spoke French... so had to listen to French all day :-P but it was a nice change from listening to German all day. Have I mentioned before I hate not knowing what the conversations around me are about?!? I'm actually starting to now say in some conversations... "what are you guys talking about?". I usually get a translation, but still miss the conversation. Anyways... back to the trip at hand.

We started our adventure by walking into the city along the scenic route through West Garten. It was very nice and only took about half an hour to get to the city. The first stop was Marienplatz, which contained the Rathaus (old city). This place was spectacular, but there were hundreds of people around and you were constantly trying to avoid walking into someone. I took lots of photos of course.


We walked all around here and saw the sites. We then walked through the Englischer Garten (huge park near the city centre). This place was interesting. There were many naked people sunbathing along the riverbank, so I guess it was deemed ok, because there were kids around and everything. Most of them were men, so seeing naked penis everywhere was a little strange. I couldn't help but imagine how bad sunburn would be..... well yes.


It was a lovely park anyway with some very beautiful scenery (try not to think dodgy thoughts). We ended up at a big biergarten in the centre of the park. You could definately tell you were in Baveria when there were people sitting around drinking in lederhosen. I was in Munich... so I had to get "ein grosses bier bitte!"


After that we decided to head home and have some dinner. Mohammed made us some yummy Arabic food, then we got ready to head out to a carnival. I got ready in 5 minutes flat, the Frenchies spent half an hour looking in the mirror and making sure they looked good. They were like girls (no offence to either party).

We headed out to the Olympic stadium to a carnival. It was nothing special, lots of people about, food, drinks etc. But you paid Munich prises for everything... $8 for chocolate fruit on a stick.
We stayed until about midnight then went home to bed.

All in all, a pretty relaxing day. What I needed while I'm still recovering from being sick.

The Nazi Fairgrounds

This day was the more educational and interesting of the two. Not too much spectacular views, but a lot to take in.

We woke up and got out of the hostel at midday. We had talked about the Nazi Fairgrounds with the guys last night, so decided to head there and check it out. It was a few kilometers out of the city, so we decided to drive there.

We knew we had arrived because of the monolithic stadium before us. You can see a picture of it below. This stadium has a lot of history behind it. Hitler wanted to build a monument, so impressive that it would not be recognised in the year 2000, but thousands of years in the future like the Roman and Greek ruins. He wanted the world to know that Germany was a superpower above all others.


Attached to the side of this monolith was the "National Socialist Documentarium" (Nazi Museum). This place was very interesting. You pay 5 Euro and you get this thingy to carry around. There is very little to see, you walk around the place and look at a few photos, and watch a few movies. Every photo though has an audio commentary about it. We spent over 3 hours in here.

This history behind this was just spectacular, I would recommend anyone in Germany visit this place. It goes through the history of how Hitler rose to power by forcing his way in through peaceful and non-peaceful protests. There is also a lot of history on the importance of Nurnberg and the Nazi fairgrounds to rally the Germans and to orchestrate the entire event.
- How he wrote "Mein Kumf" while in prison, which is the book he founded German society on.
- How he made himself out to be more of a God than a man.
- It goes through the detailed steps on a time line, showing how the segregation of the Jews + Gypsies happened. The systems put in place to trace them easily.
- How he was allowed to take over Austria and Czech. Republic with the permission of France/England. But war broke out when he invaded Poland.
- Onto the methods of tracing and rounding up the "bad-blood" into concentration camps, then specially designed extermination camps.

During some parts of the museum I shed a tear or two just in shear sadness about how something so horrific could happen, and how the whole thing was planned from the start.

The whole impression I got from the museum is that Hitler was a man with exceptionally good manipulation and organisational skills. But was misplaced and used for inhumane means. A great man, but very evil.

After walking through the Documentarium, you walked onto a gangway leading into the inside of the Arena. Here you could see what Hitler had planned. It was supposed to have a ceiling, but production on the arena halted after the war.


We left the arena to go see the rest of the Nazi fairgrounds. The entire grounds are 11 square kilometres. And are the largest collection of National Socialist monuments still around today. We walked down Grosse Strasse (great street) and down to the Zeppelin field (where Hitler held the Nazi rallies, more than 400 000 people were on the field and up to 3 million at each rally!)


After that we walked back to the car and went to Room 600 of the court house where the 23 remaining leaders of the Nazi's were tried, most commonly referred to as the Nuremberg trials. They are very famous because it was the first time political leaders were tried for their crimes against peace and humanity, making them responsible for their actions. 11 were sentenced to death, 7 to major-life imprisonment, 4 were acquitted and one committed suicide before the trial began.

This day was a history lesson and a half... it was a good day, but I don't think the words "enjoyable" or "fun" are quite correct here. It was just a very interesting day.

After this we drove home and went to bed... we were all shattered.