Alex & Danika's 2010 Adventures: Europe from South to North

Istanbul to Copenhagen – Europe from South to North!

We've had a whirlwind few weeks as we make our way to Munich to add Carly to our number :-) Lots of trains, not as much sleep as usual, but on top of it all we've been to some great places and enjoyed lots of experiences.

We took an overnight train from Istanbul to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, where we more or less had to stop there on our way North. The overnight trains are reasonable, especially if you get a sleeper – we did on this one, three bunks in a tiny little room. We stayed in Sofia a single night, where we took our selves on a walking tour of the city to see nothing super spectacular, just loads of old architecture, parks, statues etc. Free dinner and beer at the hostel, and breakfast in the morning, super friendly and helpful staff made this one of the best hostels we've stayed at.

On to Brasov in Romania the following day, a long day spent on the train. 12 hours or so and we were at Bucarest which we skipped in favour of the smaller medieval city of Brasov, another few hours up the line. Our train was late and after cruising through the empty city in a taxi we arrived at our hostel, only to get no response when we rang the bell and banged on the door – slightly alarming for 5 minutes until we finally roused someone! Again only one night here, but crammed a lot of stuff into the next day. We took a tour to Peles Castle, the summer residence of the Romanian royal family. We were impressed by it from the outside – and then we went in! Unfortunately it cost an extra 32 Levs (A$32) to pay for a photography permit inside, so we can't share it with you but it was unreal! Something like 160 rooms (30 of which were bathrooms), all decked out in amazing fashion – carved wood panels, tapestries, weapons decorating the walls, suits of armour in the hallways, beautiful furniture – it looked like a palace, I suppose because it was! When we came back into Brasov we walked around the centre and up to the Black & White towers that are ancient city defence points. There was a medieval festival on which we wandered around, unfortunately we missed the jousting :-P We also happened upon an APT Challenger tennis comp of which we watched a couple of sets whilst having a beer – these are the random unexpected things I love finding while you're travelling :-)

Later in the evening we headed back on the train, this time to Budapest. This was one of the least fun experiences on our trip. Due to a super full train and perhaps some misunderstanding at the ticket reservation office, we didn't have a sleeper ticket as we were under the impression we could get it from a conductor on the train. Not only were there no sleepers, there were no seats either – not the most exciting prospect for a 13 hour trip. We sat/lounged with our bags in the isle and attempted sleep fairly unsuccessfully until the wee hours of dawn, when a whole lot of people cleared out at a stop and we secured an empty seat for the last 6 hours. We were glad to see a bed in our hostel/apartment after stumbling out of the train station and around the surrounding streets trying to find it for half an hour! Not much more happened on our first day in Budapest, we left our exploring to the next when we took a great free walking tour for 3 hours. They gave a good historical overview of Hungary and Budapest, and took us around to or pointed out all the major sites. For lunch we went to one of the market halls, where we had a traditional Hungarian meal (no, not goulash); a kind of thick deep fried pancake with sour cream, cheese and ham on it – exceedingly fatty but yum! As it started raining we chilled out in a great little cafe with interesting décor (see the pics).

The following day we had a short trip to Austria. It was at that point the most expensive place we've visited so we changed our plans and cut our visit to one night instead of two. The rain followed us, but we still went out in it to have a look around Vienna. I didn't love it when I visited in 2005, and it still isn't our favourite city, but it is pretty impressive. So many great buildings with nice architecture on every corner, and parks aplenty. We wandered for hours and finished our afternoon with a coffee and cake at one of the traditional Vienna coffee houses, complete with a live pianist :-) We went out for breakfast the next morning, picking a random stop on the underground system. Nik had a schnitzel for lunch the day before, we'll need get a strudel when we go back to Saltzburg in a week or so with Carly in order to tick off traditional Austrian food :-)

Some friends from our Middle East trip had recommended a little place in the Czech Republic called Ceske Krumlov to us, so we altered our plans and skipped Prague in order to chill out for a few days in the much smaller Ceske Krumlov. It's a beautiful little town with only 15000 people, a medieval place with cobblestone streets, a winding river, a castle, church – everything a small tourist town wants! We stayed in a great little hostel right on the river in the middle of town. We loved just wandering the streets in search of something to eat (supermarket shut at 5:30 on week days and 11:30 on Saturday – forget Sunday!), or just looking around. We went around the castle; over the moat with the bears, up the tower for great views of the town, and up to the royal gardens – amazing! Again it was a bit wet off and on, we're fast running out of dry clothes. One morning we hiked out of town a few km in search of a chapel on a hill which was unsuccessful but nevertheless a nice couple of hours. Lunch in the park, naps in the sun, cheap pastries & ice cream. There was some sort of disability awareness event on one afternoon, we watched a jazz/funk/soul band for a while. More unexpected niceness.

We'd made another spur of the moment decision to change our plans again and go to Auschwitz Poland to visit the concentration camp. That meant an overnight train (3 actually) to the town, on which I managed to leave my phone when we left at 5 am in the morning. Including a few hours sitting at stations waiting for trains it took a good 14 hours before we arrived on a sleepy Sunday morning.

Everybody knows something about Auschwitz, concentration camps and the holocaust but it was still a very educative experience. Probably the most sombre, most awful place we'll ever visit, but also so memorable and important. Like everywhere we go, actually visiting somewhere replaces your imagination of it with reality, usually giving it context and making it feel more normal. What happened in Auschwitz was in no way normal but it gave us a feeling for the reality of the millions of lives that were lost. We had a tour of Auschwitz I where a maximum of 20000 prisoners were held at once. The Nazi's used existing Polish army brick barracks to house initially Polish political prisoners and then later anyone on their list of enemies of the state. The first gas chamber extermination experiments were carried out there and led to the construction of purpose built gas rooms and incinerators. Most of the buildings are still in good condition and house various displays and information. There are rooms full of thousands of kilos of human hair (the Nazi's wasted nothing except lives), prosthetic limbs, spectacles, dishes, shoes – and this is all only the stuff they didn't have time to distribute to where they could make use of it. Today Auschwitz I is right in the middle of a town, it feels bizarre.

Auschwitz II (Birkenau) is a much larger site (380 acres?) built after the “success” of Auschwitz I. A much smaller percentage of the buildings survived, mostly because as the Nazis deserted the camp days before it was liberated they destroyed a lot of evidence and buildings. There were rows upon rows of brick and timber huts with up to 130000 people crammed into the whole camp. Here were the two main gas chambers and incinerators, capable of burning 5000 to 7000 bodies per day. There were times when they couldn't cope so they just burnt bodies in the open. The ashes were poured into the nearby river or dumped into a pond. Here's where the trains with cattle cars with 100 people in each pulled up for people to begin their “new life”. 75% were deemed unfit upon sight and with the flick of a wrist were sent straight to the gas chambers after being stripped of all their belongings and later their clothes. Most of the remaining people eventually also died from over work, malnutrition, execution or the gas chamber. This was the oppression of people at an elite, professional level. Realising the reality and truth of Auschwitz was depressing, sick and harrowing, but also good for us I think. In the words of the memorial “Forever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity where the Nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women & children, mainly Jews, from various countries around Europe. Auschwitz – Birkenau 1940-1945”

We only spent until 4 or so in the town, and left on another overnight train to Berlin. Arriving in the morning we checked in and went straight on another 3.5 hour free walking tour. I'd done this when I was in Berlin in 2005 and remembered it was good, so the same this time plus more rain :-) We visted Pariser Platz, the Brandenburg gate, the holocaust memorial, the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, various squares and important buildings, Museum Island, all the while being fed history and relevant information. Nik made the comment that we've learnt more history in the last 2 weeks than 2 years at school! The following day we ventured out again, still in the rain. We walked through the Tiergarden and around the fence of the zoo, getting some free glimpses :-) We arrived at the Reichhaus intending to go inside to climb into the big glass sphere that sits on top of their parliament. We did end up going in, but only after 1.5 hours standing in a queue in the blustery rain. That took us right up to the time we needed to be on our way, so a few quick trips on the subway had us to the hostel and back to the Hauptbanhof and on our way to Kiel.

In September last year we had someone contact us though a couch surfing group asking if she could stay at our place in Armidale for some time over the UNE mid semester break. Consequently we met Claudia and greatly enjoyed having her stay with us for a few days. Now she's back home in Germany and was kind enough to return the favour and have us stay with her in Kiel right in the North of Germany on the Baltic coast. She treated us very well, feeding us and taking us around town. In the evening we stopped at her little local pub on the corner around from her apartment for a beer and to watch a live band, that turned out to be from Sydney. They were really good and we were sad we only caught the end of their set. The next day before we continued heading North we headed into the centre for a bit of retail therapy. I also did a quick walk up to the harbour and yacht docks then back through some picturesque parks.

Next we were on to Copenhagen, in expensive Scandinavia :-) Our train was 5 hours, some of which was on a ferry where they drove the train on, we all hopped off, sailed for an hour or so then hopped back on and went on our merry way. Gives you an indication the size of the ferry! In Copenhagen we're staying with Anders, a friend we met on our Africa tour. We really liked the city; great architecture, lots of bicycles, parks, canals etc. We did our own walking tour from home to Tivoli (a famous fair/park), the town hall, the amazing university library (complete with sliding ladders), a couple of churches, Kings Park, the National Art Museum, an old fortress which is still a military baracks, past the “Little Mermaid” statue (although she's currently on display at the world expo in Beijing – along with 1 million litres of Danish sea water she's sitting in :-P), through the courtyard of the royal palace, around the colourful and often photographed Nyhaven, down to the houses of parliament (old royal palace) then back home for home cooked dinner; a long day! The rain's still following us, but we managed to do a few loads of washing and now have dry clean clothes again. We've been cracking out the warm stuff too, it's max 13 degrees some days. Perhaps our endless summer is coming to an end!

Out again the next day to do a tour by boat of the harbour and city. Everything here's expensive it seems, except this one tour which was only 30 Kronor (A$6) for an hour tour, the same price as a coffee. This tour was good, more sight seeing than informative, but we had a nice surprise when we were told the Royal yacht was out on the harbour and we had a chance of seeing the Queen. We were checking out the yacht when there was a commotion from the royal house and we saw the Queen coming out, down the red carpet and into her little transport boat, then sail across to the big royal yacht and board. Exciting! No sighting of Princess Mary though. We were hoping she'd take us fellow Aussies out for drinks, maybe next time.

We also went to the Church of Our Savior, which has an amazing tower you can climb inside and then later outside as a staircase winds around. It was super windy and the view over the city awesome. We went for a quick tour around Christiana, an infamous suburb where people took over some apartment buildings a few decades ago and turned the whole area into a big alternative scene. Little cafes and shops are dotted around, and there are plenty of musos, skaters etc making it feel like a cross between a ghetto and Bellingen. There's blatant drug dealing; shops that only sell marijuana which is freshly grown on the side of the streets. Different!

Back to Ander's place and then onto another overnight train to Munich, where Carly joins us on our travels :-) Looking forward to that!

We're having a great time, although this part of the trip with moving every few days and having to organise transport and accommodation is a little more straining. We knew that would be the case, but the amazing places we're seeing are far outweighing the cost!

Until next time,

Alex