Zagreb

Our stay in Zagreb was basically a gong show.

We were extremely cold.

The first person to blame was the weatherman. He royally messed up. Monday was supposed to be cold and rainy, so we stayed in town and wandered around the old town and went to a cemetery. Turns out the afternoon was really nice so we sat on a bench outside the cemetery and soaked in some rays and then went to a fountain and ate some strawberries we bought from this cute old lady.

I really wanted one of these!

Tuesday was supposed to be really warm and sunny, but it turned out to be freezing and raining, and that's the day we went to Plitvice National Park. Naturally, we trusted the weatherman and wore shorts and left our raincoats behind... on the two hour bus ride we met some guys from Edmonton, and we ended up spending they day with them. They came semi prepared with one jacket and two umbrellas, and thankfully they were nice enough to share with us! The park was really beautiful with tons and tons of waterfalls and massive lakes with the clearest water.

The second person to blame for the gong show experience is myself... Wednesday morning we get up SO early to get to the airport to catch our flight to Dubrovnik... only to realize once we got to the airport our flight was at 9 PM instead of 9 AM! Somehow in our itinerary we had scheduled absolutely nothing for this day except the flight. Problem is, we already saw everything we wanted to see in Zagreb and there's nowhere close enough for a day trip.... so Sarah and I are seeing if we can spend our 10 extra hours in this mall kind of by the airport. We'll see if we can survive the whole day here!

Cute cafe with The Amazing Maracon

There are other reasons why Zagreb was a gong show, but its really nobody's fault. For instance, we stumbles upon a random peaceful protest march so we joined in for fun. We had no idea what we were protesting, but it was pretty fun. We made friends with some Croatian people and we discussed the politics of our countries and they took us to this pirate restaurant with Mexican cuisine. I had no idea that shrimp fajitas were a thing, but they were extremely delicious.

St Mark's Church/square where we protested some stuff.

Croatia is very religious, there are Catholic things, nuns, and monks everywhere. We walked through this stone gate, which was one of the entrances to the medieval city. It was a very thick gate, almost a tunnel. Inside/underneath was a huge shrine to the Virgin Mary and you weren't allowed to talk in there. Apparently there is some local legend about some miracle that occurred there or something. It was very strange.

Plitvice National Park

We also went to the coolest and most unique museum ever - the museum of broken relationships. People have sent in random objects that were memories from a past relationship and a story to go along with it. It was very interesting and disturbing at times. You know when you see an ax on the wall the story beside it is going to be good...

Bled

Lake Bled

Slovenia was pretty much what I expected. While Bled is definitely a tourist area, it is still a small quiet town with lots of character. Thankfully lots of people here speak at least a little English, which is good because Slovenian, like Czech, is very complicated. We were in German speaking countries for enough time to pick up a few words here and there, but not a hope here!

Entrance to the castle

As far as things to do here, if you aren't an outdoors person, its not a great place to come. There is a very old (and in my opinion, quite anticlimactic) castle that has pretty decent views, even if you have to do a bit of rock climbing to get to the good spots! The main focus of Bled is Lake Bled, which is a decent size lake with a tiny island in the middle with a church on it. Its about a 5 km walk around the lake, which Sarah and I did in pouring rain. Actually a lot of the stuff we did in Bled was in pouring rain... We also hiked up to a lookout point which had an absolutely amazing view of the lake, but it was a very rough climb up because everything was basically pure mud.

I was thirsty

After the sun came out we went over to the gorge, which is a little way out of town. There is a long walk through a canyon-like area on boardwalks built into the side of the cliff and then you get to the huge waterfall, which was where we turned around to go back. It was really pretty and the water tasted delicious!!

Yep, we were freezing

One of the reasons we came to Bled was the plethora of outdoor activities. We decided to go white water rafting, which was extremely fun and now I want to take it up as a serious hobby. Even though it wasn't extremely warm, and the water was FREEZING (try 5-7 degrees Celsius), we still had a blast. We even jumped out of the raft once and went swimming. And then got dumped out by our very kind guide/instructor person.

So if you want to do go some cool stuff, and happen to be in eastern Europe, you should probably come here.

1 second exposure without a tripod. Pretty impressed with myself!

Salzburg

Mozart, Sound of Music, and Austrian Alps... how could I not love Salzburg? Even though it was freezing cold and rained basically the whole time, it still became our second favorite city so far (Prague still holds first place!).

Walking down from the Abby

Our first impression of Salzburg was not the best. After being at the concentration camp in Dachau, we boarded the train for Salzburg. We did see a spectacular rainbow, but it did not make up for the fact that our train took twice as long to get to Salzburg because of a little incident... In the middle of no where our train stopped for no apparent reason. A few minutes later, an ambulance comes, along with a helicopter a few minutes later. Sarah takes a walk to see what's going on, and there's a guy laying beside the tracks wrapped in foil heat blankets from the medics. We aren't sure why he was on the side of the tracks all dirty in the rain, but they took him over to the chopper and was going to load him, but then they turned the blades off, so we're assuming he died. So anyway, we eventually make it to Salzburg starving hungry as we didn't have any supper. Thankfully the grocery store in the train station was still open, so we grabbed some stuff to eat. Thinking it was only a 15 min or so walk from the train station to our hostel, we start walking, in pouring rain. Little do we know its actually an hour walk... By the time we arrived at our hostel we did not have the best attitudes to say the least.

Tricky picnic table...

When we woke up the next morning tho, things were much happier, as we were going on a Sound of Music tour on a bus and everything. It was a great time, we got to see a bunch of places where they filmed the movie, and we drove out to the lake district outside of Salzburg to the church where the Captain and Maria were married in the movie. Amazing church, amazing little towns, and amazing lakes! I could move there. It reminded me of Lake Louise and I got homesick for a moment.

After our lovely tour, we walked around Salzburg. We wandered in the Mirabell gardens, did some shopping, and went up to the fortress to look around, have expensive original Weiner Schnitzel at a fancy restaurant with an amazing view. We then stopped by the Abbey of Nonnburg where the real Maria Von Trapp was a postulate before going to the Von Trapp family. Sadly we couldn't look around because it was prayer time and a nun kicked us out.

Wednesday morning we brought our wardrobe staple and best $20 ever spent - our rain coats - to the Hellbrunn Palace. In the gardens here are 400 year old trick fountains that spray you unexpectedly. It was super fun, like an extremely classy water park. We also toured the palace and learned how to play this really old game called Owl. The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering in the cold.

Thursday, our last day in Salzburg, was pretty relaxing. In the morning, we went to St. Peter's cemetery, which was quite an odd cemetery compares to ones in North America. Many of the graves were quite recent, but there were also some from the 1700-1800's. I'm pretty sure you have to be rich and/or of a high social standing to be buried in there. We popped our heads into a few churches and saw some fountains before going back to the hostel to warm up. Before going to the marionette theatre that evening, we stopped at a grocery store to get some supper and stock up on cheap Red Bull - Salzburg is where the Red Bull headquarters are. The marionette theatre was absolutely fantastic. The show we saw was a German opera with a typical fairytale princess rescued by the prince storyline. It was crazy how realistic the puppets were.

Hellbrunn Palace in the rain

The things we did in Salzburg was what gave Salzburg second place on our list. If the weather was better it might have made first! My favorite things were the Hellbrunn Palace and the marionette show. Salzburg also has an undeniable charm that works magic regardless of weather!

Mirabell Gardens

Little town in the lake district

Interior cathedral dome

St Peter's Cemetery 

Munich

Famous Munich pretzels and
Sarah's face

What happens when you don't reserve seats on a fairly busy train is you get to sit on the floor in the corridor with your backpacks. We learned this the hard way - but thankfully we got seats after about an hour when some people got off. 

If you are a regular at the State Brewery,
you can get a locker for your beer
mug.

We arrived in Munich Saturday afternoon which turned out to be quite sunny despite the earlier threat of rain clouds. We arrived at H & J's to drop our bags off before heading back into town to see the sites.

B offered to show us around, and he gave us a whirlwind 2 hour tour of Munich city center, which was very good. He took us in a cathedral that had a real skeleton in a glass house decorated with precious stones and stuff. Brings a new meaning to skeletons in your closet... We also saw the state brewery, which was for sure one of the most lively and cheery places we've seen so far. Tons of people in traditional German clothes (because that's what you wear when you go drinking apparently!) sitting around tables and singing German drinking songs with massive mugs of beer.

Munich has really awesome street music as well. Not just a lonely guy playing a guitar or a homeless man banging on some stuff, but actual full out bands that hang around and play awesome music. It was really great! 

Munich, like Prague, has a famous clock. Munich's clock is super lame but the puppet show is really good compares to Prague's! It lasted a good 8 minutes. After that we were ready for dinner so we sat down and had really delicious, supposedly Irish, burgers while we people watched.

Sunday was an excellent day of relaxation. After meeting and a very large lunch, we basically played cards all afternoon while it rained. We really enjoyed being at H & J's and hanging out with their kids. It was kind of like being at home for a little bit! They are a very fun family to be around.

Crematorium at Dachau

Monday was quite depressing to be honest... we went to the concentration camp at Dachau - the first one ever built. It was absolutely mind boggling and emotionally traumatic. I can't even imagine how they squeezed 30,000 people into barracks designed for 6,000. Also seeing the crematorium was really creepy.

Did you know you can surf
on the river in Munich?

After those very sad couple hours, we made our way back to the city center to refresh ourselves with some window shopping. There wasn't much going on because everything was closed for the Pentecost holiday, so we grabbed our bags and headed off to Salzburg!

Vienna

Imagine walking around the corner and finding this.

Vienna has a lot of old people. We think Austria is a destination for retired people on river cruises, because everything seems to cater to that age group! There are lots of classical concerts, expensive cafes, and overpriced antique shops. 

That being said, Vienna was exactly as we imagined it to be. Very traditional with not a whole lot of character. The tourist district is very classy and expensive, and then you leave the tourist district and its still expensive, but kind of sketchy.

The good news is, Vienna has some gorgeous palaces with really nice gardens, so we did enjoy our time. We also thoroughly enjoyed sitting with our feet in nice fountains drinking yogurt. 

We spent a few hours in a market where they mostly sold fruit, vegetables, fish, dried fruit, and fudge. We did happen upon a bakery that sold macarons, so obviously we bought a couple. It was Sarah's first experience trying macarons, and I made sure that she thought they were delicious. I'm not sure of her real opinion though. Just kidding. They weren't the best ones I've had - Odessa made better ones. Edmonton's are still the best so far!

Our hostel here is really cool. It kind of feels like you are staying in a friend's apartment. The hostess here is really nice and told us of a lot of things to see and good places to eat. We also got free breakfast, which is a plus for sure!

Prague

Our general opinion of Prague was that it is a way cooler place to travel in than Berlin! Its extremely quaint, and has a very strong character to the city. It also wasn't destroyed as much in WW2 so there are a lot of gorgeous old buildings. Prague really took a hit during communism and it wasn't until after they regained independence that they gave their city a face lift and cleaned up the buildings and repainted everything. It looks absolutely picturesque.

One of my favorite things we did was just wander the streets and take pictures of buildings and deserted alleyways. We did quite a bit of that actually. When we first arrived, we did as we did in Berlin, which may become a tradition - we took a 3 hour free walking tour of the city. This worked out great in Berlin and in Prague, as you see all the main tourist sites in 3 hours without having to try to find them on your own and get lost (that was a common problem in Berlin, not so much here). You also learn a LOT of history, as well as cool random facts.

After the 3 hours of being a tourist, you can do other random museums or wander around and find random stuff. We went to the Museum of Communism, which was really interesting. Sarah and I have noted a gaping hole in our education. We literally have not learned anything about the Cold War and communism in eastern Europe. It's been really great to actually learn some stuff about that.

Interior of the only cubist cafe in the world

Food in Prague is amazing. I have thoroughly enjoyed almost everything I've had here. Restaurants are cheap here, which is really nice because we didn't have to have sandwiches every day. Unfortunately we didn't get to try any street food here, but it looked really good!

Little plaques on the sidewalk in
remembrance of those who died
in concentration camps.

Prague made us realize that North Americans in general do not do enough walking. Well, at least Sarah and I don't do enough walking! One day, we decided to wake up bright and early and walk up the Petrin Hill, which happens to be the highest hill in the city, and our legs definitely felt it! At the top of Petrin Hill is Prague's mini Eiffel Tower and a very nice park. We didn't climb it, but we did get a lot of picturesque views of the city! We then walked down the hill and wandered along Charles Bridge until we met the workers. We then climbed the hill again, just a bit farther north, and not as high to another park where we sat and had drinks. After this, we again walked down the hill to collect T, our Aussie friend we met at Hambuhren, from the metro station and bring him along to gospel meeting... which was up the hill again.

Charles Bridge is the second bridge

After gospel meeting we walked back down the hill and across the river to have supper and watch the astronomical clock. This is one of the most famous sights in Prague, and it's a very cool clock! The show that happens every hour was pretty lame, but its the oldest working astronomical clock in the world, making it 600 years old and 3/4 of the parts are original. That's pretty amazing. After the clock tolled, we sprinted up the tower to get pictures with the last remaining daylight (which was basically gone, unfortunately) and we almost took the elevator down after because we were so tired of walking!


Once again we decided to get up early to do another long day of walking, but this time to Prague Castle, which is equally famous. It's an absolutely massive complex, and it includes a full size Gothic cathedral, which was very gorgeous! After a busy few hours of walking, we went to a chocolate museum, and I decided that something confectionery will be my plan B if the architecture thing doesn't pan out!

View from the old town hall tower at night

Our last evening in Prague was an interesting and spontaneous one. After walking around the castle, wandering down the streets of Prague, and sitting by the river watching boats, we decided to head to some churches and find a classical concert to attend (basically all the churches have them in the evening, Prague being a big Mozart town and all) and found one at St. Salvator Church, a beautiful Romanesque basilica. After an hour of pipe organs, violins, and soprano vocalists, we sat outside at a cafe and had dinner while entertained by live jazz music. Since it was sunset by now, we decided to head back to the river and watch the sun set over the bridges, but it turned out that there was a live classical concert in the middle of the river, so there were tons of people lining the bridges! We stayed and watched most of that before heading back to the hostel to grab our stuff to catch our train to Vienna.

Prague Castle at night

Between Berlin and Prague, Sarah and I both agreed that we like Prague better. Prague has: charm, character, walkability, romance, original old buildings, and affordability. Berlin has: history, modern architecture, youth culture, and museums.

Berlin Part II / Hambuhren

Train view between Berlin and Prague

Saturday morning we had a few hours in Berlin before we took our first train to Hambuhren for the rest of the weekend. Sarah wasn't feeling the greatest so she had a nap on the couch at the hostel while I ventured to the south side of Berlin by myself to visit one of the top 1001 buildings to see in the world - the Jewish History Museum. Unfortunately, I had left my SD card in my laptop the night before, so my camera was completely useless, but I did get a few on my phone. You can Google image it and you'll see why its cool, for me at least. There are cuts out of the building to represent the violence in Jewish History.

Sarah doing paperwork

After this we made our way to the train station. We didn't really know how everything worked out as far as where we were to sit, as we only had our 2 month train pass, so we ended up having to move 2 times on the first train. We did however make it to Hambuhren without too much difficulty and was picked up at the station by one of the friends.

Of course it would be cold and rainy at convention, when we are backpacking... Everyone was wearing tights and winter coats and we're shivering in our sandals and cardigans! It was enjoyable regardless. We met a lot of cool people from Germany, Switzerland, and Holland which was really fun. We will hopefully meet up with our new Holland friends when we go there in July!

Being awesome with our
sleeping sheets.

At Hambuhren, there wasn't a whole lot of sleeping room, so they rented out the whole hostel in town and lots of people stayed there. It was very different, but it was also really nice because Sarah and I had our own room (probably the only time this whole trip besides our apartment in Paris!) and there was no worries about hot water for showers!

Hambuhren is a really cute village/town. There are lots of old barns and farm houses and cows and stuff. We basically only saw a tiny bit through the car window as we were driven from place to place, but we were charmed none the less!

Sunday afternoon we left Hambuhren to go back to Berlin so we could catch our train to Prague. We really learnt our lesson on time management in the train station there - Sarah and I were separated so one could watch for the train (it was late) and the other could get dinner for the road. Thank goodness for cell phones, or one of us would have for sure been left behind in Berlin!

Barn in Hambuhren

On our way to Prague we made friends with a guy in our train compartment, so that was cool. We also very much enjoyed our view of the country side - especially between Dresden and the Czech border. We were alone in our compartment during this time, which was good, because we were overexcited by the passing countryside and the castles and the sunset.

Berlin Part I

Berlin Cathedral after the rain

Wow, after 2 and a half days in Western Europe, I am ready to move here! Not actually, but Berlin is a crazy fun city, and its so gorgeous as well! What is really different is that Berlin, like most European cities, is very very old, but because so much of it was flattened in WW2 by bombs, literally the whole city is still under construction! They are trying to rebuild it exactly as it was before. A lot of the old historic buildings are partially, or completely rebuilt as they were originally. It's also really interesting, because some of the old buildings that weren't completely bombed out have small patches everywhere to fix the bullet holes. Its hard to imagine the chaos this place has seen.

Sarah at Neptune Fountain

Sarah and I have seen a LOT in the last 2 and a half days! Wednesday, my plane was delayed an hour and a half, and then it took us about 2 hours to figure out how to get to our hostel. It took us a bit to get the hang of the metro/bus system here... By the time we got settled in, it was later afternoon, so we decided to take a gander down to the Neptune Fountain. On the way to the fountain, we found this random church - St Marienkirche in fact, so we stopped in to look around. It was really pretty! And the orchestra was practicing, so the whole church was filled with amazing music. The acoustics were great.

Peeking through a cute iron widow at
St Marienkirche 

We took some photos and cooled off our feet before heading to Fassbender & Rausch Chocolatiers - a very expensive and fancy chocolate store where we browsed around and bought a few little chocolates. So delicious!

Since we were in a very expensive part of town we decided that would be a perfect place to have supper - mostly because we were tired and hungry, Sarah was jet lagged, AND she had absolutely horrid blisters. So we picked this cool organic healthy salad and wrap place. It was pretty delicious.

Part of the Berlin Wall with chunks missing
from people taking souvenirs

Thursday we woke up and had pastries and coffee/tea before heading on a walking tour in the rain. The walking tour was absolutely amazing. Our guide is doing his PhD in history here in Berlin, so he basically knew everything there is to know. Also his English accent was awesome. During the tour we saw: Pariser Platz (the famous square in Berlin where the Brandenburg Gate is, as well as a lot of embassies, and famous hotels, etc.), the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (really cool and heart-wrenching), the site of Hitler's former bunker (we stood over the place where he committed suicide actually, it was a strange feeling), Luftwaffe Headquarters (Laftwaffe is the Nazi air force, after the war, it was used as a communist government building, and now, since the Germans hate the building so much, it is now home to the tax agency), the very anti-climatic Berlin Wall, the former SS Headquarters, Checkpoint Charlie, Gendarmenmarkt (twin German and French cathedrals, etc), Bebelplatz (where one of the most famous opera houses in the world is currently under construction, St. Hedwig's Cathedral, Humbolt University where  over two dozen Nobel Peace Prize winners studied and where Einstein taught), the German Memorial to the Victims of War and Tyranny, and Museum Island.

Eating ice cream in the rain during our tour

Right when our tour ended, it stopped raining, so we walked through this little art market on a bridge and wanted to buy some really nice paintings, but instead we tried the famous German street food: currywurst. It was delicious! Much better than a regular hot dog. Since it was so nice we took the S-bahn out to the East Side Gallery (that was complicated) where an extremely long section of the Berlin Wall is still intact, with famous artist paintings on one side and cool graffiti on the other. After that we took the train back to the main center to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and went to the free underground museum there. It was very sobering, but I was quite sick of reading by the end of that one! They had stories of tons of families and how they died at concentration camps and stuff.

East Side Gallery

After all this, we were quite exhausted, so we came back to our lovely hostel and then went to this amazing little Italian cafe for supper and talked for ages.

Islamic Prayer Chamber or something
at Pergamon Museum

Friday. Museum day. It was actually a short day, but we saw a LOT. We did two huge museums on Museum Island - Pergamon Museum which is one of the most famous ones in Europe. This is where the Ishtar Gate is found - among other things. That was just the most exciting part for me! They had the coolest ancient Greek architectural reconstruction indoors, as well as Near East and Islamic artifact.

Ishtar Gate at Pergamon Museum

The second museum was Neues Museum, and it was a very beautiful building - the second oldest museum on the island. The interior was a mix between modern and original - they tried to save whatever was salvageable when the building got bombed in WW2, but a lot had to be replaced. This museum had a large amount of Roman and Egyptian artifacts. The best part of this museum (and the most famous) was the bust of Nefertiti. It was amazing to see it in real life!

Egyptian Stone Sarcophagi at Neues Museum

Because we weren't museumed out by this time, we decided to hit up the Palace of Tears, or the border crossing between East Berlin and West Berlin. It was really sad actually, there was a story about a couple who were engaged and got separated by the wall. Thankfully she was able to acquire a forged passport and crossed over to marry him.

Yummy dinner

Before going home, we paid 1 euro to go to the bathroom. It was a cool bathroom kind of, but Sarah was really not pleased to pay to pee.
After supper, we went back to the hostel and chilled for a bit before attempting sink laundry for the first time - we kind of made a mess, but we'll get better haha.

Tomorrow is a partial day in Berlin before we head to convention, but that will be another post.