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Part 1 (part 2 is lauterbrunen, switzerland)
So a quite a bit more to update you all on - so here we go.... (be warned however, this isn't as detailed and well written in terms of history and info on the places as Venice blog because I absolutely loved loved Venice - and listened to our tour guide because of that)
We left beautiful amazing Venice for Vienna (in Austria) - Sara handed out our contiki jumpers and singlets that had our own design on the back (they turned out really good) and we paid for the optional extras for the remainder of the tour. We arrived in Vienna at our hostel which wasn't too far from the city centre. The rooms were quad share with our own bathrooms again. We dropped off our bags and went into the city centre as some of the group were attending a Mozart and Strauss concert (this is one of the few optional extras I chose not to do). Instead a few of us decided to find a nice pub in town to get a traditional Viennese schnitzel - mmmmmmm. Huge pork schnitzel with chips and cider. Was a nice dinner and good to get out and do something on our for a few hours as within the tour we don't really get to experience a lot in terms of going to small bars or restaurants etc as obviously if it's something for the whole group- they need to be able to accommodate at least 50 people - so it's important that we still maintain a certain amount if independence and do these things. After dinner we walked back to the meeting point where the bus was and caught it back to the hostel with the people who attended the concert. We went down to the bar in the hostel (which was boiling hot, packed and so stuffy) for a few cocktails then off to bed.
In the morning we boarded the bus into the city again and Sara gave us a brief bus tour around the ring road of the old city to see a few of the main sights. Vienna reminds me a lot of Melbourne - with all of the trams, malls and buildings - it is the closest thing to a functioning city that I think we have seen so far. Sara then took us on a walking tour to see the things we couldn't see by bus. We started at the statue of Maria Theresa and walked through to her old palace (which her statue faces) we sat on the grass within the palace on the grounds where parades were held to celebrate heroes etc - as well as the same place where Adolf hitler declared that Austria was to stick with Germany etc.
The palace is made up of quite a few different building styles as every time the wealth of the royals would increase, they felt it necessary to demonstrate thus increase in wealth by adding to the palace - and they used whichever building technique/style was most popular at the time. The far side of the palace contains the Spanish riding school (where they teach horses to dance) and the Vienna boys choir.
Then on to St Stephens Cathedral - the cathedral was built as a thank you to god after St Stephen was the victim of an assassination attempt when he was stabbed in the neck - however the collar on his shirt was so stiff that the knife was unable to pierce it and he was therefore saved. The material that the cathedral is made from gets really dirty really quickly - so it is almost constantly being cleaned.
Then on to the swarovski (Originated in Austria) where we had a quick tour and then had the opportunity to look around and buy. We were left in the mall for free time until we met up with the group again and headed to the Schnapps Museum. We had a tour with a hilarious tour guide - and then some tastings- note to self.... If I ever come across a schnapps drink called 'rocket fuel' don't do it. It burnt so badly and made me dry reach immediately. Our tour guide had recommended we all try this one as it was proven to get rid of the tickle in our throats from the 'contiki cough' which we now all have..... We all tried it - and it didn't get rid of the tickle. There were a couple of nice ones there - a strawberries and cream schnapps as well as creme caramel (same as butterscotch schnapps). They also had their own absinthe but I chose to stay away from that one.
Back on the bus and to schunnbruner palace- as we had all had enough culture for the moment we opted to go to the back garden of the palace where they had hedge mazes and other games - stayed there for around an hour then back on the bus and out to riglehoote for our viennese group dinner. We were served salad, chicken schnitzel then apple strudel and were provided with entertainment in between with singing dancing etc. Every time one of the group members participated they were given a schnapps shot out of a small glass bottle which they had to pick up with their teeth only - very messy.
We drove back to the hostel via the red light district which wad hilarious - I have never seen so many prositiutes in my life in such a variety of costumes/clothing - very entertaining. Went to the hostel bar for a while then off to bed.
We boarded the bus in the morning for Prague in the Czech Republic. We stopped off in the old town of czesky krumloff. Cute little town with quite a big castle surrounded by a mote with bears in it!!! We changed some euro to Czech crowns here - ate lunch then back on the bus to Prague.
We arrived in Prague at our hostel which was huge quadshare rooms with bathrooms again (we have been a bit spoilt in terms of having bathrooms at most of our places). We had dinner and got ready for our pub-crawl in Prague. We caught the tram and walked across one of the many bridges of the river to our pub starting point. This bridge was absolutely covered in spiders, hanging from everywhere!! They were hanging from power lines and traffic lights as well - was insane - and i definitely didnt cope well with this. Prague will forever be known to me as the city of spiders. The bridge also had padlocks locked on to it all over the place - just like the one in paris and florence where couples padlock their love to the bridge. We had paid 20euro to attend the pub crawl (as it was an organized one and had groups and people other than contiki on it) - the first pub we had unlimited free shots of absinthe, vodka then beer and wine. We were warned that absinthe was very strong and was 70% alcohol - we were provided with a pub crawl tshirt on entry - had an absinthe shot and immediately regretted it - this burnt even more than the rocket fuel shot at the schnapps museum!! Horrible stuff - we moved on to a couple more bars and ended up at a 5 storey club which was actually really good (and HOT) - stayed pretty late then home by taxi to shower and bed (after a poor effort trying to negotiate with the taxi driver re price).
Woke up and my hair was still wet from my shower which indicates the few hours since my shower :( so tired. We caught the tram into spider bridge again and Sara took us on a walking tour of the city beginning with a walk up to hradcany castle - view was beautiful over Prague - sara pointed out a big ugly tv tower - and she pointed out little black dots on the edges of the tower - the black dots are children climbing the tv tower - you can also find random statues of babies around the city which are all crawling towards the tv tower - this represents that tv is raising their children - quite interesting. We saw St vitus cathedral, the royal palace and St georges basilica. We walked down from the castle and along to Charles bridge - which has been destroyed 2 times before - the first time it was burnt down - the next time it was washed away by a flood - when the bridge was rebuilt, they mixed egg whites in with the mortar and they believe this is the reason the bridge is still standing. We walked on to the old town square with the tyne church and the astronomical clock (once the clock was constructed, the gauged out the eyes and cut off the fingers of the man who created it as they didn't want him to make another one for anyone else. This backfired however as the clock broke and they didnt have anyone who was able to fix it. It took 200 years to find someone to make the repairs.
We went on a cruise on the river for lunch which was a bit disappointing as the guide didn't really provide very much information - and the food wasn't that good either. A lot of the time was spent waiting for gates to open to let us go further down the river. Still nice to see the city from the water though.
We walked around the city after the cruise and it started to absolutely bucket with rain so we ran into a cafe and had apple strudel - after the rain kind of passed we walked a bit further then caught the tram back to the hostel for dinner and an early night. Overall I wasn't that impressed with Prague - the buildings are still all old and beautiful - and the river and bridges are amazing - I think we have been too spoilt on this trip with beautiful old location after beautiful old location - so maybe were not appreciating them quite as much as we were with the first places we went.
We woke up and boarded the bus to Munich, Germany - with a stop off at Dauhau Concentration Camp. Sara gave us a brief run down on the events that lead to the introduction of concentration camps and their operation and closure. (WWII/Hitler/Nazis etc) was such an interesting topic and she explained it absolutely perfectly for all of us - hit us all pretty hard - given that this all happened so recently really. Whilst i had planned to include some of the details from her presentation in this blog - just because it was in a way easy to understand - unfortunately I have forgotten some of the dates/details because it was a week ago that we visited and I didn't get all the info down - so need to speak to Sara again because don't want to stuff that up!! The concentration camp was so intense. The place had been destroyed - however an example of the barracks had been reconstructed which contained bunk beds and photos of the crowded conditions in the later years of operation of the camp. There was a huge museum detailing all events with pictures of some of the things that went on at the camp - really confronting. We walked down the aisle between where the 32 barracks would have stood, which is now lined with trees, and a cement block outlining the boundary of each of the barracks. Just outside of the double fence of the camp was the crematorium which was made up of about 7 adjoining rooms in the following order - room where the prisoners were advised they were going to be taken in for a shower, the next room along had hooks all along the walls with the individual prisoners numbers marked against them to hang their clothes so they were able to grab the correct clothes when they exited the showers- which of course wasn't the case - such effort was made to not create panic amongst the prisoners, the next room was the 'showers' or gas chamber - a completely dark room with a couple of small barred windows. The next room was a storage room for the bodies after they were gased and awaiting cremation - then the room with 6 furnaces - then another storage room at the end. The whole building was very eerie. The bus was a bit quieter after this stop - I think visiting a place like this is important for everyone - but it's definitely something you only need to see once. It has ignited my interest in the happenings a bit so hopefully will get time to go to the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam- but then again, there are ALOT of things to do in Amsterdam in just one day so will see how we go with that!!
We arrived at the hostel in Munich - (Munchen - city of monks) quadshare with bathroom. We got ready and headed to a Barvarian beer hall for dinner -a huge pork knuckle and litre steins of beer or radlers (beer and sprite) - as I'm not a beer drinker I went for the radler - which I still struggled to drink - so I tried... But I think it's official - I will never be a beer drinker. There was traditional German music being played during dinner and between each song we would all have to stand up and sing a German toasting song and wave our heavy steins in the air, cheers then drink. As you can imagine, some people get a little too excited with their toasts and use too much force leading to broken beer steins - if you happened to break yours - it was a 10 euro fine. There were German dancers and cow bells as entertainment after the meal - then back on the bus to our accom.
Got up in the morning - beautiful day - caught the bus into the city for a walking tour with Sara to see the main attractions including the old town hall ( currently being restored) the new town hall, the glockenspiel, the markets, peterskirche (church) and frauenskiche (church). Munich is good in that almost all of the major attractions are right in the centre of town - making it easy to see most things. We walked through the markets (where the tables were already packed with people drinking beer from litre steins and ewting bratwurst) on our way to meet for our optional excursion - Mikes Bikes- I havent ridden a bike for so long and the fact that there were so many ridiculously expensive cars parked everywhere and the sheer volume of pedestrians and other people on bikes didn't help. Plus the bikes were pretty big which wasn't good for short ones like me! we were taken to a few other attractions including hofbrauhaus which is an old royal beer hall then to residenz which is the old palace - then on to the english garden which was packed with naked people sunbaking!! So strange. There is a stream that runs through the middle of this park that people were swimming in. In the centre of the park is a large beer garden - this is where we had lunch - bratwurst and potato salad. The garden was exceptionally busy today as it was saturday. We returned the bikes then just did a bit of shopping along kaufingerstrasse - the shopping mall in Munich. Met the group and we went for Mexican for dinner and cocktails - then back to the hostel to bed.
Have to go on to another blog now as this one was too long!!! (part 2 is lauterbrunen Switzerland) xo
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