Filed under: Transit
Friday 2nd January 2009
Good morning all! We are half an hour away from driving to Heathrow for our flight to Nairobi. After that, we have no idea how often we will be able to access the internet, but we have a fair idea that we won’t be able to upload photos very often, if at all.
We will try to keep some short blog updates coming but we must apologise if they are not of the standard to which you have grown accustomed, dear loyal readers.
Please keep sending comments and emails – we hace a feeling we’ll be looking forward to reading them whenever we find a functioning internet cafe – and we will try to keep in touch as much as we can too.
If we’re lucky, we’ll get one more Jordan post finished before we get on the truck to Tanzania!
Day 107, Wednesday 3rd December 2008 (Cath)
Taking the train from Salzburg to Budapest, via Vienna, felt like closing the loop on our European travels. The one place we didn’t mean to leave out of the loop, but have had to because of limited time and money, was Slovenia – we have heard such good things about Ljubljana and Lake Bled that we are sad to miss it.
Before we wrap up the Salzburg section of this blog, I should emphasise that it is not (shock! horror!) all about The Sound of Music. It has a UNESCO World Heritage listed old town centre, it is the birthplace of Mozart, it is in the middle of the incredibly picturesque Salzkammergut landscape, and in the warmer months (unfortunately not now) you can explore ice caves nearby.
We had a great time wandering the streets and experiencing the European Christmas atmosphere for the first time, especially at night (which starts at 4:30pm, so there’s plenty of time). The Weichnachtsmarkt outside Schloss Mirabell and the Christkindlmarkt in Residenzplatz were our nocturnal hang-outs - you were most likely to find us standing with a warm mug of gluhwein in hand, listening to a choir sing, surrounded by fairy lights, then snacking on various kinds of wurst and donut pretzl.
Mozart’s birthplace
Rugged up street cherub (don’t know if this really counts as a ’strange child mannequin’, as it is more like a statue, but I won’t keep Salzburg out of the competition on a technicality)
Poo Man – keeping the streets clean
Note: his bike/wheelbarrow is a good idea, but wouldn’t you want the poo-filled trough behind you? Perhaps here in Salzburg, even horse manure smells sweet.
The train to Budapest was pleasant en0ugh – sunny green rolling hills, villages and meadows, and an imperial city made up the world outside our windows before dark – and it was our last for some time. The next one we plan to catch will be in Egypt, which seems far, far away, but is really just around the corner.
Day 104, Sunday 30th November 2008 (Al)
As we boarded the train to Salzburg (via Innsbruck) I felt a resounding dread. A feeling that the next few days might be filled with kitsch music, silly dancing and staged photos. Let’s see how this pans out…
Nice scenery filled our train journey, as well as an Austrian woman and her son whom she was helping with his English homework. He was maybe in grade 5 and his English was way better than any other language I claim to know. We got chatting with his Mum (in English thankfully) and had a really good discussion about schooling, weather, climate change and world travel vs. early parenthood – each of us giving perspectives from our own countries.
Still in Italy
We could really have a whole blog entry featuring Cathy napping in various places around the world. Maybe one day I’ll put that together.
Getting nearer the Austrian border
And here we are in Austria…
With a warm mug of mulled wine in hand, Cath welcomes you to the Christkindlmarkt
Preeeetty
The river Salzsach at night
Tonight’s delicious dinner at Gablerbrau, and a large included breakfast tomorrow morning, will hopefully give me the strength to endure tomorrow’s Sound of Music tour – Cathy is already giddy with excitement.
<Insert audible groan here>
Filed under: Transit
Day 55, Sunday 12th October 2008 (Cath)
We’ll fill in the in-betweens later, but currently waiting for our ICE train in Munich, enjoying the fresh and hot food, abundant reading materials, clean toilet facilities, and a language we were at least roughly familiar with before we arrived in the country!
The very impressive toilets
It really seems like you can get anything here! And the ticketing system… wow. They give you a laser printed copy of the train schedule, highlight the bits you need to know, can tell you in advance which platform your train will leave from, tell you which station you need to change at, and even which platform your train will leave from at that other station, in this case Frankfurt! In contrast to our last few weeks on Balkan public transport – wow. Just needed to share that. And a familiar-looking destination:
Not stopping at South Kensington
Days 40 – 42, Saturday 27th – Monday 29th September 2008 (Al)
Today we made our way from Sighet to Cluj Napoca (also in Romania), arriving late. Straight to our nearby hostel to freshen up and sleep, `fore a 6:30am train to Budapest. We didn`t have breakfast and had few snacks, so hungry were we in Hungary – pun most definitely intended!
Budapest´s large and often ornate train station was a welcome change, although we did see a fist fight between two middle-aged men which gave it an edge. That edge was taken off with donuts from a bakery. There were long lines at the ticket office from where we would purchase tickets to Zagreb, and we swapped our queue ticket with an Austrian woman who would otherwise have missed her train to Vienna.
The train went by giant Lake Balaton (Hungary´s `seaside´), but the journey was otherwise uneventful. Arrived in Zagreb at night and got a taxi straight to hostel. Woke up starving, and expected to find only a McDonalds or something for breakfast on the way to the station. Instead, we found a gourmet health food store which was heavenly after the snacky foods that had sustained us for what seemed like a week, but was actually only 2-3 days. Vege lasagne, chicken salad, fruit yoghurt and vitamin juice (and brownie) were great…
There are plenty of buses to Zadar, on Croatia`s coast so we weren´t in a huge rush (luckily, as we spent most of the morning on the phone with a really annoying Australian car leasing agent, organising our upcoming time in Belgium and France). The bus ride was smooth, just read and watched the on-board movie. I think it was “The Skeleton Key” with Kate Hudson – boring movie with a lame ending, 1 star.
Zadar does not get mentioned as often as Split and Dubrovnik, but its old town is charming and was the beginning of my desire to one day live in an old town such as this. We went for a walk along the foreshore at sunset which was beautiful – great to be back on the coast again:
In the above photo, Cath is sitting above the “Sea Organ”. It´s a series of pipes built into the steps, that connect to the sea. As the waves come in, they push air through the pipes and play a random and soothing melody. Beautiful.
Next to this is what seemed like just a giant ring of light, that changed colours. It turns out the largest circle represents the sun, then there are others representing the other planets, with their sizes and distances to scale. Pluto has been left out – so I guess according to the artist it really does not count as a planet (or maybe it was just so far away we didn`t find it on our walk).
On the way back to the place we were staying in the old town, we had another magical musical moment – we turned a corner near an old church to find a group of about seven men and women standing facing each other in a circle, singing in beautiful harmony. They finished to a round of applause from the older men sitting in the laneway cafes and bars, and from us and the other wanderers in the street.
