Update

Hello, just wanted to write a quick post to apologize for not posting a new message sooner. Since leaving Berlin we haven't had a stable internet connection and so haven't been able to post sooner. After leaving Berlin Leah and I spent a number of days in Paris, then flew to Iceland where we spent 6 days, then we made our way to the UK where we met up with Leah's parents. We stayed with their friends Mike and Diana who live outside of London, spent a couple of days in London, and then went to Bristol to visit Leah's cousin Mika. Now, we are in Denmark and staying in a little summer cottage. We have visited some of Marian's family so far, spent two days in Copenhagen and will see a few more family members before we leave Denmark on Sunday. On Monday, we fly to Spain, where we will spend another week. After this, we are still deciding (Jeff and Marian are off to Barcelona and then Paris) we may go to Geneva or possibly to Barcelona or Paris . . . we have too many options.

Sorry about not posting more frequently, but we have gotten a little lazy and are just enjoying the couple of weeks that we have left.

Berlin - Back to the DDR

The outside of our hostel

Me, when I lived in the DDR (inside the DDR museum)

Brandenburg Gate

Leah in front of the Bundestag

Inside the Holocaust Monument/Memorial/Museum

Section of the Berlin Wall still intact

TV Tower standing on the Alexander Platz

After touring around Vienna for three days, Leah and I were then bound for Berlin. Unfortunately it took us over ten hours on a train to get there from Vienna, but we knew that we wanted to visit the capital of Germany. Other than a few of the major attractions, we didn't really know what to see and so booked ourselves only one full day in the capital. However, almost immediately after arrival I knew that I loved Berlin. In fact, Berlin is easily my favorite city of the trip so far (I know I keep saying that, so don't judge me if it changes again). Berlin blends historic buildings with ultra modern architecture, shopping and convenience flawlessly. The two museums we did see, the DDR Museum and the Holocaust Memorial and Museum are easily two of the best museums I've visisted. Once we arrived and looked at the map and saw some of the tours and attractions; we certainly had many options to choose from. Since we arrived quite late in the evening (around 8:00pm) we grabbed a quick dinner at the main train station and then onto Berlin's metro system to the stop nearest our hostel. The directions given by the hostel on the website had changed slightly as, instead of a parking lot there was a massive building, but after asking two very nice Berlin ladies we were shortly on the correct route again, and after less than five minutes walking from the metro station we were at our hostel. The hostel was in a superb location, within walking distance of the major attractions, while also being less than five minutes from a metro station. It is in a converted factory and was very clean and modern, furnished almost entirely with Ikea (or Ikea wannabe) furniture. Having learnt our lesson in Krakow, we again had a private room with very comfy beds and fluffy duvets. The only downside which we found on our last night there was the noise from drunken backpackers crawling in around 4:00am from the organized pub crawls, but this is to be expected when one stays in hostels.

The next day, and our only day of touring started quite early, as we wanted to make the most of the day. The weather for the whole day was gorgeous, bright and sunny around 20-25 degrees. We ate at a nice little cafe, near the hostel and then made our way to our first attraction of the day - the DDR Museum. DDR in German stands for the German Democratic Republic, also known as East Germany from the time of 1949 - 1989. It was the DDR who erected the infamous Berlin Wall, and was a seperate country supported by the Soviet Union until its collapse. The museum we went to was amazing as it re-created life as it was in the DDR (not all bad) by showcasing everything from the infamous Trabant car, what school was like, commercials, music, parties, the Stasi (secret police), the wall, products and my personal favorite part was a recreation of a DDR apartment. The museum was unique in its approach as you could touch and look at everything. In the apartment portion you could turn on the tv and flick to different channels, which played programs from the DDR period as well as open the drawers, sit on the couch etc, it was great! (Ask to see the book that I bought on the museum). This of course was all housed in a sleek, modern concrete building right on the water. Oh, in Germany (at least in the former DDR areas) you can still buy some of the products that were available in the DDR period such as their own brand of Cola, pickles, coffee, candy as there are many people who are quite nostalgic for the DDR. After the DDR Museum we walked along one of the major streets to the famous Brandenburg Gate, walked under the gate and to the German Bundestag (like our parliment building in Ottawa), and then south to the Holocaust Memorial and Museum. The Holocaust Memorial and Museum is a fairly recent sight in Berlin, constructed not long ago. It is located on the former no mans land, the area that existed between East and West Berlin near the wall, and is on the sight of the former office and bunker of Goebbels (one of Hitler's close associates, who was the propaganda minister of the Nazi regime). The monument is almost impossible to describe with words, but it is on an uneven square, very large, covered in grey cement blocks, of varrying sizes, some come up to your knee, others are quite massive, which are arranged in rows. It's quite incredible once you're in the middle, as it is supposed to give an oppressive feeling to it. Near one of the streets on the outskirts of the square is a staircase which descends down to the holocaust museum. Again, it is quite difficult to describe, but it has a very cold, modern feel to it and chronciles the Nazi attrocities committed before and during the Second World War. Near the end of the museum it has a number of personal accounts, letters, postcards and pictures of individuals which make the holocaust much more personal. Of the eleven million Jewish people living in Europe at that time, around six million were murdered by the Nazis. We walked from the Holocaust memorial to the infamous Checkpoint Charlie, which was the most famous border crossing between East and West Berlin. We chose not go into the Checkpoint Charlie museum, but had a delicious lunch nearby. After lunch we walked to the war monument and took the metro back to our hostel where we deposited our coats and souvenirs. Leah and I then journeyed to an area of the city called the East Side Gallery, which is the longest surviving stretch of the Berlin Wall. Some of the paintings and graffiti on it are original to the time of the wall, but other sections are used as art projects and so are the host to modern paintings and murals. We walked the whole gallery and then took the metro to the Alexander Platz, which is the host of the massive TV tower in Berlin (you can see it from almost anywhere) and then went out for nice late dinner at one of the restaurants. After a long day of walking we then headed back to the hostel to get ready for our next adventure...to Paris!

Vienna

Day I
We left Krakow, Poland before 7am on May 28th making our way to Vienna, Austria on the next leg of our adventure. Luckily, we were able to get on a direct train, so we did not have to bother with making connections and risking missing our next train. Because we left Poland so early, we arrived in Vienna in the early afternoon (our train from Poland was about 8 hours long, but given that it was passing through 3 different countries, this can be forgiven). Since our experience in the Krakow - Tutti Frutti (have a laugh now, its quite a funny name) Hostel sharing a room with 8 other people, some snorers, and knowing that we prefer to rise earlier in the morning so that we can visit the attractions of the city before they close, we decided not to stay in a dorm hostel again. Instead, thanks to the marvelous expedia.ca we were able to find a fairly inexpensive hotel (about 110$ CAN a night as opposed to paying 40$ CAN each a night in a hostel) which conveniently included a great buffet breakfast everymorning. We decided that paying a little bit extra to get a better night sleep, have our own bathroom, and to get the included breakfast everymorning was worth the extra 15$ each a night.

Once we had dropped off our things and checked into our hotel (our room even had a kitchen!) we decided to spend the evening wandering around the city centre so we took the tram from the station right across the street from our hotel and got off at VIenna's Opera House. One of the only downsides to our visit to Vienna, was that much of the city centre was currently being refurbished, some of the streets in the central shopping and tourist areas were being redone, and many of the churches and older buildings were being restored and so were hidden behind scafolding. We snapped some photos of the Opera, visited the tourist information to get a map and a listing of the city's attractions, and then just strolled through the shops. At one point we passed a massive cathedral located right in the downtown of Vienna called the Cathedral of St. Stephan. Sadly this was one of the buildings which was covered by scafolding on the whole front side, but since it was one of the major sights mentioned on a walking tour map we had picked up we decided to visit the inside of the church. It is a Gothic Cathedral which was built in the 12th century, its roof was destroyed during the Second World War but is considered the primary landmark of the city. It is, like many of the other churches we have seen, impossible to describe in words, comparable to nothing I have seen before. After seeing the cathedral and visiting a few souvenir shops, we ate dinner and returned to the hotel for the night.

Day II
We enjoyed a great, massive breakfast early on our second morning, and then took the tram back to the city centre to begin our first full day of sightseeing in the Austrian Capital. Following a map which we had picked up that outlined a route that would show us the majority of the attractions, we passed by the St. Stephan Cathedral again before making our way to the Hofburg Palace (on the way we passed but did not visit the house of Mozart in the Hofburg Palace we saw a room in which at age 6 he played for the royal family). Consisting of around 2600 rooms, this palace was the home of the Emperor of Austria who was also, during a considerable portion of the Hapsburg line, also the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Inside the palace we visited an exhibit of the staterooms, a section on the history of one of the last Empresses (Elizabeth, or Sisi, who is very popular but who led a rather tragic life), and the palace's collections of Silver, Porcelain and the Treasury. Again, the Hapsburgs were a very lavish royal family (although not quite as lavish as the Russians of course) having collections of dinnerware for every occassion which took up several rooms, gold detailing on much of the mouldings in their staterooms, and of course collecting all manner of gold, jewlery, icons, silks, etc.

Unfortunately appart from the first half day, and the afternoon of our third day, the weather while we were in Vienna was quite rainy and cool so after seeing the palace, and the exterior of it and the famous museums just across the road, we decided to visit the Butterfly House behind the Palace. Since it is located in a greenhouse, it was very nice and warm, and it was certainly more cheerful inside with the butterflies, plants and flowers, than it was outside fighting with our umbrella and dodging puddles. After the Butterfly House we took a detour off of our walking tour and found a cafe where we had Viennnese Schniztel for lunch, then we continued on our way to see first the Parliament building and then the Rathaus (City Hall). By this time the weather was getting quite cool and rainy so we grabbed a tram back towards our hotel, stopping to get some groceries in order to make dinner and some sandwiches for the next day.

Day III
After again enjoying a great breakfast buffet, and grabbing the umbrella which I had purchased the day before, Ross and I headed out for a somewhat soggy sightseeing morning. Having seen many of the cities major landmarks the day before, we took the tram past the Opera, the Parliament and the Rathaus until we reached the Votive Church. This building too was sadly undergoing reconstruction, and it was raining quite heavily so we didn't get any photos of its exterior but instead bought a few postcards so that we can show what it was like. This is one of the newer, historic cathedrals of the city, having being built in 1879. It was dedicated to the Emperor Franz Josef and Empress Elizabeth for their 25th wedding anniversary. After the church, and seeing as it was still raining, we decided to abandon the rest of our walking tour route that we had not finished the day before and opted to take the metro out of the city centre to the Schonbrunn Palace. This palace was first used as a hunting palace for the royal family as it was then located in a thickly forested area. It also includes a famous zoo which like the palace was built in the mid 1500's. The palace was renovated and finally completed in 1700 and is an absolutely stunning baroque building (it rivals some of the palaces in Russia). The palace is made up of 1441 rooms including 139 kitchens (!). By the end of our tour of the interior of the palace, the weather finally turned cooperative, the clouds had been blown away and it was warm and sunny again so we decided to spend a few hours walking through the palace gardens.The park, our guide book tells me covers 197 acres, and is strewn with fountains, hedges and roses (which were blooming when we visited) and also has a zoo, a hedge maze and Roman ruins. An entire day could probably be spent in the park itself, but we took in only a small part of it before returning to our hotel where we cooked dinner and then packed our backpacks since we had to catch our train to Berlin the following morning.

Sadly, the poor weather made our visit to Vienna less than ideal, and I am sure the city would have been higher on my favorites list had the sun cooperated with us, but we have otherwise been lucky with the weather so I can't complain too much. Vienna is a very pretty city, and learning about the history of the Hapsburgs was very interesting too!

Still to come: Berlin and Paris!

Poland - Part 2

After seeing most of Krakow's major sights the day before, Ross and I had a more leisurely second full day to spend in Poland and having really enjoyed our tour of Auschwitz the day before we decided to take another tour with the same company. This time we visited Krakow's famous Salt Mines - I know sounds a bit silly - but the mine is actually very interesting.

It is located in a smaller village outside of Krakow, so we took all took a bus from the city centre to the mine. Once we arrived, our group was split into two groups - one group was intended to be the faster walkers group, and the other for slower walkers but it didn't really turn out that way. Our group, intended to be the faster walkers, but including some elderly people with canes, were shown the mine by one of its own guides. The other group was led by our tour company's guide and while I am sure his tour was equally interesting our guide was hilarious! He kept making these great jokes throughout the tour (I wish I could remember some of them) as well as being very informative.

A bit about the mine: It was first explored and excavated in the middle ages, consists of nine levels underground and its tunnels cover an area of over 300 kilometers. We walked for over two hours, and saw under 1% of the mine's total area! The tour takes you down an initial 370 odd stairs to level one, and eventually travels down to level three. Along the way we were shown numerous caves, all extremely large, which were at one point filled completely with salt! In some of these caves, there are now sculptures, lakes, and underground cathedrals. Mom, you would have hated this place, deep down underground (at least the tunnels were well lit and not cramped), gnomes in several of the caves, and at the end a freaky metal elevator with two levels each holding nine people tightly fit behind a grated metal door! However going up in the some what questionable elevator was defnitely preferable to climbing back up the hundreds of stairs to the surface. The mine would be nearly impossible to describe to you, especially the massive caves which now have huge cathedrals carved into them, so I will put up some photos and leave the rest to your imagination.

After a day of touring the mine, we strolled the streets of the city for a while, and eventually ate dinner in a great little Indian restaurant which we found on one of the many little streets between the outer ring of the centre and the busy central courtyard.

That's all for now. Stay tuned for Vienna, Berlin and upcoming Paris!
Love Leah and Ross!