Month: April 2011

Euro Day 13 – Austria

24/042011
Today I headed north for Austria via Switzerland. It was only a short drive back down to the main road and a 30min drive to cross the border back into Switzerland.

The road was winding its way through some quite mountainous areas, lots of snow around the edges as I it climbed. Perfect weather, clear and sunny with a dry road. I then rounded three or four corners in quick succession. The view got better each time.

Truly stunning views. Absolutely quiet except for the running water. I could see hikers off the distance heading towards the mountains. It was a chilly 5 degrees celsius, but a quick walk across the snow and I was too warm with just a jumper on. This explained why the hikers were wearing t-shirts.
Continuing on towards Austria I stopped a few more times to appreciate the fantastic views.
  
Crossing the border into Austria I began the hunt for a public toilet. I got of the main road and headed into Stams to continue the search. I found a sign that appeared to indicate the presence of the facility I required so I parked and attempted to follow the signs. It was a very pretty place to be searching.
Eventually I was relieved and continued towards Innsbruck. I was staying just out of Innsbruck on the side of the hill overlooking the city. 
Great view from my guest house
Looking the other way.
I spent the afternoon and evening sitting outside drinking local beers and much later on chatting with a friend back home.

Euro Day 12 – Italy

23/042011
After a bit of a video chat with my best friend back home, I packed up the car and headed down the mountain. Lucky there was a lot less traffic on the way down than there was on the way up. Mind you once I hit the city it was jammed.  I followed the lake for a bit, before having to turn inland and back track a little bit to head the right direction.
 
 
I them came across Maggie’s nemesis. Tunnels, one after the other after the other, I’m guessing 20km of tunnels with a gap of 100m to 500m between each one. They varied from 250m to 3 or 4km in length. 
The drive towards Valmalenco followed the valley floor through numerous towns. Most of which had traffic jams. But not too bad. Eventually I turned off and headed up one of the hills about 8km.
 
It’s a picturesque ski town. Surrounded by snow topped mountains. Unfortunately much like the rest of southern Europe it has a heavy haze which makes getting a good photo pretty much impossible. But that’s okay, I have seen it. I kind of hoped the cable car would be operating, it would have been nice to pop up another 500m, even if there was no view.
It was then time for lunch and a relaxing afternoon reading my book.

Euro Day 11 – Switzerland – Italy

22/042011

Heading through Switzerland for Italy it was amazing when you crossed the border, yes they had a border, with a guard looking at number plates, that was it. But everyone pretty much stuck to the speed limit, and fair enough too, the police had a radar/laser trap 5km up the road. My plan was to go over the St Gotthard pass, but alas it’s still too early in the year and is closed to traffic due to snow. So the next best option (probably the only one) was the 16km St Gotthard tunnel. Well, that had a 7km traffic jam to get into it. 



I guess that’s to be expected being the Easter long weekend.  The tunnel was completed in 1980, and is one lane in each direction. Hence the big jam.  It was like any other tunnel, except it kept going. Perfect mobile reception of course. Popping out on the other side, still in Switzerland, but not for long. I soon passed into Italy.


Everything was different in Italy. Travelling through the Netherlands, German & Switzerland the look of the roads and infrastructure was pretty much the same. Instantly in Italy it all just looked older and tattier. This didn’t change much once I got off the freeway and headed into Como. The other countries have old buildings, but somehow they look nice and old. Como reminded me more of Bangkok with that feel of a filthy but vibrant city. Oh and the traffic! The GPS was telling me to turn left, I couldn’t as the police had it closed off, same at the next one, and the next. So I tried to circle around, no luck, still closed off. I was getting to the point of heading off and finding another place along the way. The traffic was gridlocked. Italians drive more like Thai’s too. But with more flair of course.

It was then I realised I had Armani jocks on, but they were fake ones, from Thailand. Could they tell that I was a fake? An Aussie (kinda) driving a German car in Italy wearing fake Italian underwear made in Thailand. I expected something to drop on me and any second.

After circling for over an hour, and as I said, about ready to run away the police suddenly opened up everything. So the GPS and I high fived and off we went. Wow, what a road to get there. Climbed to 975m. Super narrow in spots. Which isn’t good when you’re in a strange car on the wrong side of the road. Judging the distance on the other side was a skill I didn’t have. Being a Mercedes it told you off if you got too close to anything (that also went off when scooters passed in traffic, surprised I was) but I figured it would be too late for a beep to stop the wall from hitting the car. But I made it. What a spot. High above the city. So quiet. Just a perfect place for a couple to spend a day or two, chilling out, going for walks. . . .



I had a lovely dinner in their restaurant, with a glass of Italian red wine of some sort (the waitress didn’t speak English, I speak less Italian than I speak German). I then settled down to read and send the occasional email to my best friend.

Euro Day 10 – Germany

21/042011

Up early again, packed up and headed off to get to the other (Speyer) museum nice and early. I got there just before 9am, and was the second person through the door. I headed straight for the U-boat, figuring a crowd there would be a pain later on. 



I was the only one there, perfect. After climbing down through the forward hatch (no stairs, no warnings..)  I had a good look around. Talk about tiny. You start in the torpedo room, but take one step and there are beds and a galley. Another couple of steps and you’re on the bridge (is it even called a bridge in a sub?). Amazingly the toilet is more spacious than on most aircraft.  I then had a look around the 747, nothing new there really, I’ve flown on the things enough times. But I haven’t stood under one that is sitting on poles 30m above the ground. 



They had the floor removed in part of the cabin so you could see into the cargo area. Always interesting to see what’s under your feet when flying.
Heading back inside I made a beeline for the space shuttle. Very similar looking to the American one. But for whatever reason it never flew (could google it I guess) in to space. Still a fantastic machine.



I couldn’t hang around very long unfortunately; I had a bit of driving to do.
I continued south, heading for Friedrichshafen on the shores of Lake Constance. At last the Germany countryside started to get interesting. The undulations became hills. There were forests all around. Very pretty. The lake itself has the meeting point of Germany, Austria and Switzerland in it. I dropped my stuff at the hotel and drove into town to find some food. 


It was a perfect evening, warm, with just a tiny breeze. 



Lots of restaurants on the waterfront. I had Italian. A perfect evening. I watched the sun set for a while (takes a while around here) and headed back for the night.


Euro Day 9 – Germany

20/042011

Up bright and early and off to the museum. I got there just after opening, perfect. It’s a huge place. So much stuff, too much to take in. Outside they have a number of aircraft on display, some of which you can enter. Like an Air France Concorde and the Russian version, the TU-144.


On the inside of the two giant sheds there are cars, bikes, trucks, trains, tanks, organs (the large pipe sort, with built in drums and saxophones!) and so many variations of each (http://www.flickr.com/photos/zippet/sets/72157626539614436/) The Concorde is tiny inside, two rows of two seats. Not luxury either. You might have got there very fast, but the seats are nothing special. But then again, it was the journey, not the seats that got you on board. The Russian version is very similar. It actually felt a tiny bit more spacious on the inside, but I could be imagining it. I spent quite a few hours wandering around. Definitely worth the visit.

Then I noticed the sign for their sister museum, only 40km away. It has the same sort of thing, but includes a U-boat that you can walk though and a 747 that you can walk out on the wing of, and the Russian space shuttle (Buran) that never actually went into space. The next morning’s plan was set.
I headed back to my hotel to relax for the afternoon. 

Euro Day 8 – Germany

19/042011

I awoke just after 7am. Wow, over 12 hours sleep. Feeling quite a bit better, I decided on breakfast. One piece of toast, one small yoghurt and a coffee. That got things rumbling. I ventured out to have a look around Daun so I would at least have some memory of the place. Lovely little town. 



I then hunted down my first successful overseas geocache. Feeling very proud of myself I purchased some new sunglasses from a shop in town. They desperately tried to fix my old ones, did an okay job considering I didn’t ask them to and they didn’t charge me.

I quickly packed up and departed, only stopping for fuel (first fill since picking up the car, it only took 53.81l of diesel, at $80 euros which is about $112, still that’s cheaper than petrol and less of it used) and headed south for Sinsheim. I set the GPS to avoid all autobahns, so I would hopefully get to see a bit more of the country side. This mostly worked, except for going through some major cities when I’m sure there was an autobahn only kilometres away that could have got me past in minutes. 

I stopped in Worms since I was driving through the middle of town and grabbed a Vodafone top up. I also had a very quick wander around Worms cathedral that was next to where I parked. 



Then back into traffic to keep heading towards Sinsheim. I stopped at a keep/castle that caught my eye on the way past.



I arrived at the hotel just after 4pm, unpacked and sat down for a bit of a rest and to catch up on the interwebs that had been missing for the past 4 days.

A quick check showed no geocaches within walking distance so I headed down for a light dinner of fish and a few chips. Boy did that get the stomach rumbling. Now I think it’s time for bed. Big day tomorrow at the Sinsheim Auto & Technik museum.


Euro Day 7 – Germany

19/042011

OMG.  The Mexicans have poisoned me! Up and down all night answering the very urgent call of nature. Then the nausea kicked in. Oh dear. Not the best night’s sleep. Probably about 2 hours of restless sleep. I got up in the morning, still feeling terrible. I did a bit more packing before having a huge spew and finishing up. Feeling a tiny bit better, and it being 10:45 with checkout being 11am I headed out of the hotel to find my way back to the car. That included two tram rides of which I spent chanting, ‘do not spew on the tram, do not spew on the tram.’ I didn’t, phew! But it was touch and go for a bit there on the nice warm tram, swaying gently.

Waiting for the tram
Got into the car and headed for Daun. No stuffing around today. I would have liked to have taken the scenic route, but not trusting my innards to remain there I decided on the most direct route. Only two rather urgent stops required for relief, a couple more as I was so tired from the lack of sleep I could feel my concentration going, which is a scary thing on an autobahn. I passed the Nurburgring track on my way. I had intended on doing a lap or two as it was an open evening. But with how I was feeling I decided not to and headed the last 20km to my hotel. I arrived in Daun at about 4pm. It seemed very nice. The nice man offered me the larger single room for only 4 more euros, I declined. I laughed when I opened the door to my ‘smaller’ room as it was still 3 times the size of the single room in Amsterdam for nearly 1/3 of the cost. I unpacked the necessary stuff, put things on charge, had a shower and was in bed by 6pm, and asleep by moments later.

Euro Day 6 – Amsterdam

18/042011

I got up nice and early and set out on the hunt for breakfast and coffee. 



Well, it looks like the population of Amsterdam had a good night. Quite the mess. The cleaners were hard at work cleaning the roads and footpaths.



I wandered past the doors of doom. One of the residents opened her door and asked if I wanted a cookie. I declined politely. She said she didn’t like that sort. I smiled and kept walking. I found a nice café where I had scrambled eggs with toast, ham & cheese for breakfast.

After that I walked down past the central railway station and browsed a few of the souvenir shops. I came across the Amsterdam Madame Tossauds. The queue to get in was quite long, so I kept walking. I found a square that appeared to be the movie murderers buskers spot. 



There were a number of ‘Death’s’ and some guy with scissor hands. Quite odd.

Shortly thereafter Doug made contact as they’d had to check out of their rooms. I made my way back so they could put their bags into my room. We walked to Rembrandts house, where Chris and Peter went in for a look around and the rest of us had a coffee/tea whilst we waited. I then managed to convince them we should walk to the Van Gogh museum. On the way we past the Richts museum.



That place had a massive queue to get it. Aaha! We thought, we’ll keep heading to the Van Gogh museum. Oh dear, It also had a scary queue.  So we gave up, found a café/pub and had a bit of a rest/beer/snack. 

Peter and Chris decided to go and see some football stadium somewhere and John wanted to find somewhere to watch another football game that was on. So Doug and I chilled beside a canal and read our books.

Eventually they all returned. They grabbed their bags and headed for the airport. I set off to hunt down a couple of geocaches and get some washing done, YAY clean clothes FTW! . Unfortunately the areas were very busy with people pretty much sitting on the cache locations. A quick dinner and a few dusk shots of a canal (30secs @ F30 with ISO 200), a tripod would have been handy.



Now to prepare/pack for tomorrows drive back into Germany. Hopefully I can find the car.  

Euro Day 5 – Amsterdam

17/042011

Three of us headed of just after 9am to hunt down a canal boat of some sort. We picked the hop on hop off one and jumped on to the next boat. 



We hopped off a bit later and found our way to the Heineken Experience. That was a great interactive tour of sorts. With a tasting at the end of course! 



We hopped back on a boat and got off at the central station where the other two lads were. We then found out that they’d been out to 5am the previous night.

We headed back to the hotel to freshen up, the off to dinner. I had the best steak I’ve had in years. Fanbloodytastic. I might go back tomorrow, if I can find the place again. The boys then said something about a game of soccer they wanted to watch. I left them to it at a pub and went for a pleasant wander around for a couple of hours.


Yes it’s true; Amsterdam’s ladies of the night display their wares behind glass doors/windows. If the curtain is drawn then they’re ‘busy.’ There are a few on some of the main streets, but they are mostly concentrated it two or of three narrow lanes. And yes there are LOTS of cafes where you can sit and have a smoke or a certain green vegetable matter.  Maybe that explains the cycling style!

I didn’t manage to catch up with the lads again that evening. Apparently they had a relatively early night after their soccer team (Manchester City) beat Manchester United. That meant that 3 of out 4 of them were happy. Peter supports Manchester United.  As you can imagine, the others were being extra smug about that. 

Euro day 4 – Amsterdam

16/042011

I got up fairly early and headed down for breakfast. I was tossing up two options. Wait for Chris to surface as he had some experience driving on the wrong side, or just go. Not knowing how late the others stayed out for, and not getting a response to a text message I headed for Haupbahnhof railway station to pick up the car alone. I located the Avis shop front and completed the paperwork. I then discovered that the cars are parked 10 minutes walk away in a back street car park. It amazes me that I show them a licence, give them some money and they chuck me the keys to a Merc and let me go play in the middle of the city, sitting on the wrong side of the car etc.


Now is when it got weird. Sitting in the car, on the wrong side, trying to get the satnav in to English. Otherwise I’d need some quick German practice on left, right and distances etc. The satnav turned out to be the easy bit. I soon had that speaking English to me. I set it to take me back to the hotel. Now for the fun bit. Just driving out of the car park was weird enough, then came the traffic. In a way the traffic was good. At least I had lots of cars to follow while I tried to reverse all the road rules and tried to follow the satnavs directions. After a very tense drive back to the hotel I was relieved to park the car and wait for the rest of them to wake up.   

Eventually Doug appeared (after I rang him) and we piled in and headed off towards the Netherlands.
We hopped onto the A1 Autobahn, which immediately dropped its speed limit to 80km due to road works. The limit went up to 100 or 120km/h between groups of works. There was one 5km long bit of unrestricted autobahn before more road works. Eventually we cleared them all and the autobahn opened up, the traffic lightened a bit and the again the magical sign that says, drive as fast as you like. We zipped along and a reasonable rate of knots. One that according to the government back home would mean instant death. It’s all very sane, keep out of the right lane unless passing or going exceptionally fast. At one stage when I went a little fast a voice was heard from the rear saying ‘found the accelerator at last eh? Smart arse.
We crossed in to the Netherlands where there was no a speed limit sign sighted for over 100km. People seemed to be going a bit slower than in Germany, but many were still cruising along at 130km/h.

Arriving in the outskirts of Amsterdam we were looking for the Park and Ride signs. We saw one, which we followed, but alas there was only one sign. Doug powered up the GPS and found us the closest one. 8 euros for each 24 hour period which included return tram tickets for all four of us. Seems like a bargain. We headed into central Amsterdam were hopped off at the central station where we waited 15 minutes for Pete to show up. He’d just flown in. A 10 minute walk had us at our hotel.  The rooms could be called compact, but a better description would be a shoebox.



The cyclists, OMG. I guess you could call the place bicycle friendly. But I think it would be scarier on a bike that that first drive in Hamburg. They ride with, umm, passion. As in, they pedal, you move. If you don’t they’ll hit you. They fly through intersections. They use the road, the bike lanes and the foot paths. I’d far prefer to driver a left hand drive car over here than cycle 5km in Amsterdam.

We settled into our shoeboxes before heading out for dinner and a quiet night.