Tue, 30 Sep 2003

author Liz	location Interlaken, Schweiz
posted 20:13 CEST 06/10/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Deutschland/Deutschland 3 ( all photos )

Looking around München ( 20 photos )
(Continued from Österreich 2).
At about midday, we arrived in München (Munich). We had two nights' stay booked at a hostel, which was conveniently close to the station, so we went there first and checked in, but had to leave our bags in a storage room.
From the hostel, we stopped quickly at an internet café and then wandered up to the centre of town.
We didn't actually do a lot of sight-seeing as such, but just spent hours and hours walking around the city. We came to a big fountain and then wandered along a busy pedestrian shopping street until we came to Marienplatz, a square dominated by a huge neo-gothic building, the Neues Rathaus. We stood and just enjoyed the busy square for a while, before heading onwards.
From Marienplatz, we walked through lots of streets, some busy, some quiet. We saw market stalls, cafés and restaurants, with lots of people drinking beer. We walked over a bridge crossing the Isar River and went into a large and very beautiful park - Maximilian Anlagn. There were lots of green trees, with some of the leaves changing colour, and the sound of running water from the river. It was really relaxing and peaceful just strolling along.
We crossed back over the river and went into Englischer Garten, a huge park filled with woods, streams and wide open grassy areas. We kept walking past a large beer hall, and we sat on a patch of grass to eat some fruit and watch all the people and dogs walk by.
We came out of the park and made our way back through the city to the Internet café, where we got all our good news about having the van towed. From there, we went back to our hostel, found our beds (in a thirty bed dorm! but nice and clean, split up into groups of ten), and met the other newly-arrived Aussies around us.
Of course, everyone was in Munich for Oktoberfest, so after a while Tim and I went to see what it was all about. It was ten minutes walk from the hostel, which was very convenient and made it easy to get to.
The whole place was really cool - a bit like the Easter show, with lots of rides and stalls selling yummy food and soft toys. And there is beer! There about twelve beer 'tents', which are actually huge buildings that fit about ten thousand people in each one. Each tent comes from a particular beer company, so if you want a certain beer, you go to that tent. We walked into the showground, bought some delicious showgrounds covered in mustard, and just wandered around trying to soak everything in. The delicious smells of roasting nuts, sausage, chicken, popcorn were all around us. There were flashing lights and loud music, and crowds of people, then we wandered into one of the beer halls. I don't think I have ever seen so many noisy happy people all at once! Lots more yummy smells, so many people, and so much beer! We went into four or five different tents, just standing still or having a bit of a walk around. Each tent had a great band playing, and everyone was singing, drinking, clapping, cheering, eating, and standing on the tables. Everyone was having such a good time - I couldn't wait for the next day when were going to spend a whole day at Oktoberfest!
After a good look around, we decided to go back towards the hostel and get a bit more food there where it would be cheaper. Along the way, we stopped at a bar and had a small beer each (well, we had just seen so much of the stuff!!).
We grabbed a bit of food, and then went back to the hostel where I slept fairly well, but Tim was kept awake by lots of noisy, drunk people coming in.

author Liz	location Interlaken, Schweiz
posted 20:05 CEST 06/10/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Osterreich/Osterreich 2 ( all photos )

North into Deutschland ( 2 photos )
On Tuesday, we again had a lovely breakfast at the hostel, packed our bags and headed up to the train station.
Austrians are obviously much more efficent that Italians - the train arrived and left on time, and was even on the right platform.
The countryside was beautiful - huge forest-covered mountains, and little farms with cows and fruit-trees on the valley floor.
We crossed the border north into Deutschland.

author Liz	location Interlaken, Schweiz
posted 19:44 CEST 06/10/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Osterreich/Osterreich 2 ( all photos )

Innsbruck ( 40 photos )
On Monday morning, we had a delicious buffet breakfast at the hostel and then we headed out to explore Innsbruck.
We crossed the River Inn and went into the old part of town. The tall and narrow houses looked beautiful and we saw the Goldenes Dachl (Golden Roof), a beautiful little building with a roof made of 2657 gilded copper tiles, which would have glinted beautifully had the sun been shining, but still looked very nice as we wandered along.
We looked through a few touristy shops and wandered around a lot of the small streets before heading out towards Markthalle, a large indoor market with lots of fresh fruit, vegetables, bread and meats. We bought some fruit and a pastry snack to eat during the day. From there we walked a short distance to an internet cafe to check our e-mails and so on.
After that we decided to see some of Innsbruck's past Olympic sites. Innsbruck hosted the Winter Olympics in 1964 and 1976, and the city is certainly in a great position for winter sports, with lots of snow during the cold months and mountains all around it.
We could see the Bergisel Stadion from where we stood, but it was at the edge of the city and it took us quite a while to walk to it. The last bit we had to walk up to get to the bottom of the Stadion was very steep, but then we were there, and the bottom of Bergisel Stadion, and Olympic ski jump stadium.
I had no idea how steep these things were, but I guess if you want to launch yourself into the air, you have to be going pretty fast downhill first.
We caught a little cable car to the lookout tower at the top, and even just going up in that made me dizzy! In the tower, we caught the lift to the very top and walked out onto a viewing platform where we could look down the length of the ski jump out over Innsbruck and across to the huge mountains opposite. We could see the big central train station, the line of the river, and we guessed the spot where we were staying, and saw the graveyard at the bottom of the jump where people who missed must end up. A rainbow even came out over Innsbruck and it all looked very pretty.
We caught the cable car back down, getting out about half way down for a bit more of a look around at the very bottom, Tim sat down and I climbed up to the other side to see a good view of the whole ski jump, and the place where the Olympic flame had been lit.
From the ski jump, we made our way back down the hill and walked to the old stadium, which turned out to be run-down and closed. Along the way, we stopped at a bell-makers and looked in the shop at the many different bells of all different shapes and sizes.
We stopped to have a bit of lunch and just sat and relaxed for a while. By now it was about 3pm, and Tim and I decided to phone the Italian garage to see how Rosie was going. We had phoned our insurance company the week before to see how it was all going, and were assured we would get a call when everything was ready, or if there where any problems. So when we called the garage in Italy on mondy afternoon to see how it was all going, we had a huge shock - they hadn't even ordered the part yet, let alone started the job!!! They said some rubbish about waiting for authorization from our insurance company which is crazy because they got authorization the day we were in Padova and approved the go-ahead for the repair.
So we had just spent a week and a half travelling around and waiting for nothing. Seeing everything we have seen has been great, but we were both very frustrated and angry about this, as we were hoping to get the van back at the end of the week. Also, the garage was now going to increase their fee from 2500 euro to maybe 3000 euro, maybe more, as well as taking weeks or months to repair it.
To cut a long story short, we contacted our insurance company and we phoned our contact in the Netherlands, and we have now decided not to go ahead with the repair in Italy, but for a much cheaper price to have the van towed from northern Italy to the Netherlands. Once in the Netherlands, the van will have a whole re-conditioned engine put in for about a third of the cost of half a brand-new Volkswagen dealership engine.
So at the end of Monday afternoon, we were feeling lots of emotions that we shouldn't be feeling when we are on holidays. But at least now it is all sorted out, we are saving heaps, and we can continue the last bit of our travels by train. The only unfortunate side is that because we were expecting to get back to the van after two weeks, all of our warm clothes, shoes and so on are in the van while we are here getting colder and colder. But still, we are very happy.
After that we went back to the hostel, had sandwiches for dinner and went to bed early.

author Tim	location the 10:34 Innsbruck to München Inter-City train
posted 11:44 CEST 30/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Osterreich/Osterreich 2 ( all photos )

Into Innsbruck ( No photos )
(Continued from Italia)
At the border station Brenaro/Brenner, the train stopped for quite some time, with plenty of armed Austrian police wandering up and down the train. It turns out this was just routine, and also that the driver seems to get out and is replaced by an Austrian one. We had thought that maybe we would need to change trains, but this was not the case.
We travelled the remaining distance to Innsbruck in no time at all, arriving at the presently being upgraded Hauptbahnhof. Being a little more organised than usual, we had rung ahead from Italia to see if there were rooms available at one of the hostels on the other side of town (but still the closest in), Jugendherberge St Nikolaus.
Walking there, it became readily apparent that we were in another country - no vespas, taxis were Mercedes instead of FIATs, we crossed roads without fear of death, and everything was calm and serene. We were going to like Innsbruck, we could tell already.
We crossed the river Inn (since bridge in Deutsch is brücke, Innsbruck is named after the main bridge) at a small footbridge Inn Steg, finding our hostel/pub/restaurant combination just on the other side. It was a pleasant, lively place, filled to the brim with Aussies. Almost everyone was either going to or coming from Oktoberfest, thinking the same as us that this was quite a pleasant convenient place to stop over.
We were once again in separate dorms, which we don't really mind but all our stuff is packed into the one pack, which makes showering and finding clothes a little difficult. My dorm was the strangest yet I have seen. Picture a bunk bed, one up down. Got that? Now picture a double bunk bed, so that there is a double-sized bed on both the top and the bottom. Still with me? Well, this room was completely filled with a quintuple bunk bed - five up, five down. I was more than a little concered about finding myself sleeping next to a large blubbering drunk Aussie, but I needn't have worried. They cleverly fill up the positions with spaces in between, only filling the other ones when they are really full.

author Tim	location the 10:34 Innsbruck to München Inter-City train
posted 11:13 CEST 30/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Italia ( all photos )

Verona ( 16 photos )
We awoke to a darkness that foretold bad things to come. The power was out. Getting organised for the breakfast, we noted the reception was lit by a candle. After being totally impressed by the way that the kitchen was run with no power as if it made no difference, we chatted to the receptionist about the power outage. She said that she had been talking to someone about 300km away and they had no power either! Oh dear, not good for the electric rail system we had planned to travel on.
There were only three buses running into town that morning being a Sunday (at least they weren't electric too like some of the others around), and we got on one of these, rode for a while and alighted at our stop by the markets once again. Arriving at the train station, we observed that things weren't going well at all.
Trains were over three hours late, but we picked one supposedly going to Verona and went to sit on what we thought was the right platform. However, the station signs told otherwise. It turns out that the platform numbers go 1-8, but then there is a separate set of platforms numbered 1-3. Pointing and extremely basic Italian found the right platform eventually, and we wandered across the tracks (when in Rome... all the locals were doing this despite signs advising to the contrary) to the other set of platforms.
The train was there, but it took a walk to the front to speak with the driver to find out if it was the correct one. I asked when it was leaving, and he replied in broken English "One hour. Maybe?" This train by now was about four hours late, but it was the only one going our way, so we just sat there for a while. Eventually without warning it just started moving away from the platform, heading off north to Verona.
The journey was another pleasant one, as all in Italia have been - the seats are comfortable and it is a good way to travel for not much money at all.

Pulling into Verona, we checked our big pack into left luggage for a few hours, intending to have a brief look around the city and then get a train to Innsbruck in the evening.
The extremely helpful information office gave us a great map with a walk around the town, and we limped the twenty minutes or so into the centre.
It lived up to its billing as one of Italy's most beautiful towns, with ornate marble pavements everywhere, great cafés and a medium-sized Roman Arena smack-bang in the middle. We had quite a good walk around the town which was overall quite pleasant, but with no amazing highlights.
Following our budget theme, we didn't go into any sights, just looked, sat, walked and walked, past the many 1st century BC and AD bridges, theatres and probably the most famous place here, "Juliet's House". Yes, the city is famous for Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and we looked in the place where the heroine supposedly "lived", now with lover's graffiti over the walls under the famous balcony. All a bit blown out of proportion for a work of fiction really.
We'd had our fill, and decided to try and make it back for the 3pm train to Innsbruck. We made it with quite a bit of time to spare, but we needn't have bothered. Once again, the trains were in chaos, as we sat on platform six where it was supposed to leave from. Plenty of other trains came and went, but the Munich (or Monaco as the Italians inexplicably call it, much to our confusion) via Innsbruck train was not to be seen.
I limped yet again down to the station information office, waited in the queue and spoke to a guy who didn't speak English. I resported to my paintented One-Word-and-Hope technique, saying "Munich?" This did the trick, as he pointed to a piece of paper saying nothing but "17:00". This was the time of the next train we had first been going to catch - I gathered the 15:00 one was cancelled.
The joys of travelling! Luckily, the Italians seem to be prepared for the total lack of efficiency and organisation inherent in their systems, providing an excellent waiting room where we sat for an our or so, and could have even watched a movie in a small cinema there had we understood Italian.
Up to platform 7, our train finally arrived. We were powered across the landscape, further and further north as the darkness surrounded us. The train crossed into Österreich at the Brenner Pass, where it occurred to us that we had left Rosie and a sizeable proportion of our belongings in another country.

author Tim	location the 10:34 Innsbruck to München Inter-City train
posted 10:42 CEST 30/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Italia ( all photos )

Around Bologna ( 20 photos )
We got up and ate the included breakfast at the hostel - again a nice touch at this HI hostel.
Slowly limping and all the while cursing my near-useless knees, we walked over to the bus stop. Today the drivers seemed to be more happy, and a bus turned up soon after. At the far end of the ride, we found ourselves near some markets. We slowly had a look around at all the things available, pondering the fact that no matter where you are in the world, the same Chinese-made odds and ends can be purchased at the local markets. There was quite a lot of the market stalls on two sides of the road, and we spent a while just wandering around the place.
We had no set plans for the city, as none of the major attractions were free enough to warrant our attention. In the central square Piazza del Nettuno, we first had a look at the interesting fountain of Neptune. However, it wasn't long before a better sampling of Italian culture made itself known to us with some loud growly sounds - a judging event of the Italian Ferrari Owners Club.
All manner of old and new Ferraris were on display, with the owners' level of care varying from extreme to fanatical. Most were being pushed into place rather than driven, and all of them seemed to have arrived on a truck. Feather-dusters and plenty of polish were all being used to clean them up for judging. There must have been about fifty there, ranging from 1948 through to 2003.
Liz's enthusiasm for boys and their toys didn't quite match mine, so we set off to explore a bit more of the town. Bologna is apparently famous for lots of red buildings, but to be honest you wouldn't have really known it just from looking. Pretty for sure, and as Italian towns go it had a good vibe to it. We wandered fairly aimlessly, looking for places to sit, making some phone calls, ducking in and out of back alley-ways, getting lost and then finding ourselves again.
Not far up the road we found Piazza di Porta Ravegna, where there had originally been forty-two towers. In the great tradition of Italian buildings, they had all developed horrible leans. Now only two remain, and we took the photo which we wanted to get in Pisa but weren't allowed - Liz pushing one of the towers back up.
We bought a loaf of bread and found ourselves back in Piazza del Nettuno, sitting in the seats which had presumably been set up for people to watch the final judging of the cars on the podium with ramps in the middle of the square to eat it.
Liz sat for a while while I ran around taking some photos of the cars, keeping us both happy. After a trip to an internet café where we booked two nights in a hostel in München/Munich (very lucky to get them as it is Oktoberfest after all), we decided to go to the train station to find out about train tickets to there via Verona and Innsbruck to continue our trip. This turned out to be quite a task.
I went to the automatic ticket machine while Liz waited in the human queue, the result of which was that we could easily get trains to Verona, but for international travel we needed to go to ticket window 17. We waited in a queue for quite a while only to learn that it wasn't infact the queue for window 17 - that was a separate queue.
So, into the next queue, which was very very slow progress. There was one person running it, capable only of extreme slow progress, looking everything up in books. There was a British guy in front of us we got chatting to who was putting his car on a train to Belgium, but this took the best part of forty five minutes to explain and pay for.
We weren't expecting much when our turn came to explain our multi-part journey, but in the end a combination of English, Italian and what we had written on a piece of paper got the explanation across fairly quickly. It was organising the tickets which took an eternity. He had to look the fares up in books and then write out manual tickets. Fair enough, it must be quite difficult to book tickets across international borders, but I would have thought they could have organised a more efficient system after so many years of the trains running.
Once again in a chatty relaxed mood, we spent the evening in a cheap recommended restaurant Trattoria da Danio, where we ate a fixed price menu which was great value. Of course, we just had to try the Spaghetti Bolognaise in Bologna, which turned out to be quite different to what we had expected - far less tomato-ey, but very full of flavour.
We had intended to get a bus back to the other bus stop where the bus leaves for the hostel, but our knees and backs and everything else which is wearing out seemed to be much better after sitting down for a while. When we got back to where the bus left for the hostel, it turned out that we had missed it for the day, no more were running!
Instead we got on another bus which went about 1km away from the hostel, and through a combination of Liz's excellent directional memory and a hint from the bus driver, we found our way back after a twenty minute walk or so in the dark.
We just made it back before the 11pm lock-out, and slept soundly in our twin room.

author Liz	location Innsbruck, Tirol, Österreich
posted 20:42 CEST 29/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Italia ( all photos )

Into Bologna ( 10 photos )
On Friday morning we left the hostel (yay!) and after a quick stop at the internet café, we headed towards Duomo. As we had all our bags with us, we took it in turns to go inside and have a look around while the other waited outside with the bags.
Wow. It was enormous and it looked so enormous inside because it was fairly plainly decorated, and had little furniture and so on to clutter it. Just huge soaring marble columns and a ceiling that seemed a long way away.
I had a bit of a look around, and admired the frescoes and the size of the cathedral and I was almost about to walk out of the exit when I spotted the inside of the huge dome. It was beautiful - covered in brightly coloured frescoes.
Back outside, we shouldered our bags and made our way to the train station, where we tried to get tickets to Bologna. Due to a transport strike, there was a sign saying we could purchase tickets on the train, so we went to our platform and boarded a train from Florence to Bologna.
The journey took about an hour and a half and maybe due to the strike, no conductor turned up so in the end we got our journey for free!
In Bologna there was chaos due to the strike, and people were standing around everywhere. We got out of the station and sat outside in the gardens to eat some of our bread. From there, we walked five or ten minutes up the road where we could catch a bus that would take us to the hostel, 4km away. Unfortunately, the buses were also affected by the strike, so we ended up waiting at the bus stop for an hour and a half. Finally buses started turning up, but not the one we needed. Feeling frustrated, we got on one that went vaguely in our direction. A few stops later, we saw the bus we needed infront of us. So we rushed off our bus to catch it. Poor Tim - his knees gave out and he nearly fell down the bus step. We missed our bus, but another one came soon after and took us right to the hostel.
So we made it to the hostel where we got beds and got chatting to a bloke from Leichardt.
We had planned to go into the city for dinner, but due to Tim's sore knee, we decided to have food at the hostel and then we watched a movie.

author Tim	location Firenze, Tuscany, Italia
posted 12:00 CEST 26/09/2003	section Europe2002/Site News ( all photos )

Quick Updates ( 10 photos )
Just a quick news flash as we haven't quite got the website fully up to date.
We are in Florence/Firenze right now, have been for two nights and are now leaving on a train, heading to Bolognia.
Longer term plans include heading up to Munich/München for Oktoberfest, then down through Switzerland, all via train.
We have had no more news on the van, only "we will call you when we hear something". As such, we aren't going to hang around, just do things as we see fit, trying to holiday without our home.
Big thanks to the many people who replied interested in our plight of head-gasket problems, with suggestions. The big thing we have learnt since is that it is a new head, not just the gasket. As such, we are basically paying for an entire new engine. It comes with a two year warranty on parts and labour, but yes it is costing us a lot.

author Tim	location A late-running train between Bolognia and Verona, Italia
posted 11:22 CEST 28/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Italia ( all photos )

Firenze ( 18 photos )
After getting up, scrathing our itchy selves, a cup of tea for breakfast, and getting journals up to date for most of the morning, we set off to wander around the city and see if we could find some redeeming features.
First stop was the impressive sculpture collection on display in Piazza della Signoria at Loggia della Signoria. The most famous, of course is Michelangelo's David. Sure, it is only a copy of the original (housed behind expensive doors at nearby Galleria dell'Accademia), and it was surrounded by horrible scaffolding, but it was good enough for us. We're here to take in a smattering of things cheaply, not attempt to appreciate every last detail. The rest of the sculpture there was also great to look at, and we sat right inside the veranda where it was all housed, looking over the square through these priceless pieces of art.
At the risk of duplicating information easily found elsewhere (notably once again our friend Bill Bryson's writings), Italy doesn't do a particularly good job of maintaining its amazing array of history. The budget to do so is tiny, and the amount of important historical things we could easily have attacked with a knife or some such has bewildered us all over the country. Artifacts just "dissapear", and countless volumes of history could have been written from what has just been pulled apart or built over.
We mulled around for a while, not quite sure exactly what to do. After some research, we decided to wait in the hour-long queue to enter the Galleria degli Uffizi. It contains "some of the most recognisable Renaissance artworks", which sounded like a good way for us to reach our museum quota for a week or two.
After the first hour queue, made all the worse by listening to some Texans behind us read out every last detail of the museum from their guidebook they had bought in advance (what's wrong with just working it out when you get in there??), we got inside past the metal detector (a token effort at looking secure - they guy supposed to be watching the TV for offending items in the X-ray machine was infact reading the paper), paid our huge sum of cash (no discount for me, EU people under 26 magically have less money than everyone else in the world under 26 and hence are allowed discounts though) and joined another queue to be let in.
We stopped and paid yet more to get an audioguide, allowing us a self-paced tour around the place, looking at what we did and didn't want to. We elected to save a bit of money with one audiomachine and two sets of headphones. This had the curious side effect of making the person holding the audiomachine effectively leading the other around the museum like a little dog. As such, we took turns.
The collections that the museum houses were interesting enough to make us forget the hassle and cost involved in getting in, which is quite a lot of praise. A lot of the art (almost entirely paintings, with a little sculpture for good measure) was religeous in nature, but the audioguide was quite good in that the little man in the box told us all about how the art styles developed, as we were looking at the priceless works infront of us. It could have gotten too bogged down in details, but we found the pace excellent.
Apparently there is plenty more art not on public display owned by the gallery, including some that the budget hasn't yet been allocated for cleaning since a flood back in the 1950s. That's a shame, but we have to admit that there was plenty to keep us entertained for this visit.
Outside the gallery, we went back to our favourite supermarket for some things to make ourselves a picnic up on the hill to watch the sunset. This done, we picked the rest up at the hostel and walked again up the challenging hill, determined to get to the top before the sun dipped.
We had no problems with this, neither did the hundereds of tourist buses dropping their loads to walk around for five minutes before continuing. We had a more leisurely pace planned - some bread rolls, salami, tomato, cheese and of course the rest of the bottle of Chianti to get through, drunk out of plastic cups one of the drink-vendors gave me with a smile.
And so our second silly dinner of our trip proceeded (the first being, of course, at North Cape), cutting away at bread, sipping wine from plastic cups and watching the sun leave its last tendrils draped across Firenze as people walked past and stared. Off to hundered-euro dinners in five-star restaurants wearing cocktail dresses, they weren't going to have nearly as much fun as we did.
The tripod gave us some nice night-time shots along the river once the sun had faded, and we got a few more as we walked back down the hill, our silly picnic over.
Back to the hostel for what was to be our final flea-infested night, we slept much better as Liz took the other free top bunk rather than the dog-bed bottom one of the night before.

author Tim	location Platform 3 Ovest, Bolognia Train Station, Emilia-Romagna, Italia
posted 10:15 CEST 28/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Italia ( all photos )

Pisa, Into Firenze ( 36 photos )
Getting up, we had to shuffle back and forth a bit as we were in separate dorm rooms to have a shower and we share lots of toiletries. Liz jumped the queues for the girls showers by getting in the empty boys one (perhaps my room was so stinky because the boys don't shower here?).
All done and organised, we headed into town on the bus once again. Wandering back past the tower, we booked ourselves into the slightly later tower tour, forked over thirty euros for the entrance (AUD $60. Ouch.), and had some breakfast at a little café which for the closest one to the tower was suprisingly good and cheap.
Once our tour was ready to go, we joined in the queue, ready to work out how our tour guide was going to give us a guided tour, given that everyone in the group spoke different languages. They solve that problem quite easily. They don't say a word. Instead we were escorted by two armed guards up to the top of the tower and back down again. Ingeneous, and a wonderful way to take vast sums of cash of hapless tourists for very little in return.
The ascent was fun, sometimes the steps are very steep, and at other times it is almost like you are walking on the flat ground. We were suprised that it was far easier a climb than Basilica San Pietro's dome had been, reaching the top in no time at all despite having climbed over three hundered steps.
They appear to be doing quite a lot of restoration work on it - people were chisleing away with hammers at strategic places around the middle levels under the belfry. Yes, there are actually bells up there, although we couldn't really see them very well through the scaffolding. It is quite amusing to watch from the ground as a massive crane was in place moving pieces of scaffolding around, but it looks like it is holding the tower up!
At the top, we saw the high end of the crane, heightening the fact that we were infact a long way up in the air. No suprises then that the view was awesome, the weather was great and walking around the circle that is the top of the building is fun whether going uphill or down.
After a good look and a few photos, we had had our fill and descended the staircase, which only seemed like it took a minute or so. We walked back towards the bus stop, stopping only to grab a very cheap and even more tacky little leaning tower model thing. The lady smiled as she handed it over, knowing that no matter how crappy these things are, people like us are still going to shell out for them, keeping her in business.
We jumped quickly onto a train to Firenze (Florence). After another un-eventful ride, we found ourselves at Firenze Stazione di Santa Maria Novella, reading our guidebooks and attempting to work out where to dump our bags. After the completely un-helpful tourist office told us that they couldn't even answer our questions about where to find a hostel, we head off randomly to see what we could find.
Not even out of the station gates, we had been approached by plenty of people trying to get us hotel rooms. Out of our budget, one finally called over his mate who ran a hostel. Sure, we were a little un-sure about whether to go with him as he took us to a private hostel, but his story all matched up and he didn't ask for money, saying we could take a look at the room and then decide.
He lead us across to the other side of the city, passing the huge and impressive Duomo church in the middle, which we intended to explore at a later date. The hostel turned out to be conveniently located, other people were there as well, but we took all of our valuables with us when wandering anyway, locking up the bags tightly.
The guide helpfully pointed out lots of interesting sights on a map of the city, including importantly things we could do for free. After a stop at the post office, we investigated one of these first - the supermarket.
We grabbed a BBQ chook, some just-baked bread and milk and headed off to find somewhere to eat it all. We settled for a spot right on the bank of River Arno which divides the city in half, relaxing in the sun for a while. We intended to do quite a lot of what the Italians do best in Firenze - nothing at all.
Over to the south side of the river thanks to Ponte alle Grazie bridge, we walked east in search of a way up the hill to a look-out point that the hostel guy had recommended. Eventually discovering the zig-zagging sets of stairs which climbed at quite a rapid rate, we were exhausted as we made it to the top, Piazzale Michelangelo. It was a little disapointing to see so many tourist buses and of course their accompanying tourist garbage shops had made it it, but this was more than offset by the fantastic view north over the river, looking at the city with its protruding buildings (note the dominating dome of Duomo).
Having had our fill of the view, but intending to return again for a sunset, we walked back down the hill, in a very chatty mood. We stopped at another litle park to continue our planning conversation, and attempted to work out how to operate the water fountain to re-fill our by now almost empty water bottles.
We settled on a walk to the famous Ponte Vecchio, a bridge across the Arno which by law is filled with silver- and gold-smiths. Being so famous, we had to wind our way past the people, catching glimpses of price tags which were more than a little on the inflated side. Rowers on the river made a nice shot towards Ponte alle Grazie.
Happy just to wander a little through various squares, markets and winding back streets which make up the centre of town, we were however a little dissolusioned by the whole place. It is interesting to note a few different opinions we have heard of the city. Travel writer Bill Bryson has been here (at least) twice - once in the early seventies, and again in about 1990. His first visit he thought was amazing, just getting into museums, palaces, and generally gaping at the beauty of the place. My parent's recommendation to come here echoes this, infact it was their favourite Italian city, even including Venice, from their trip also during the seventies.
However, on Bill's second visit, he just couldn't warm to the place. Almost nobody was speaking Italian, no locals were to be found anywhere - just camera after camera, tacky junk following yet more tacky junk. From our perspective, the last thirteen years since Bill wrote of his visit have certainly not seen things improve. Sure, it is a pretty city, but it seems to have lost its soul.
Another trip to the supermarket found us suitably stocked on pasta, sauce and the local specialty wine Chianti (cheap and comes in huge bottles with cane/wicker around the bottom), and we headed back to prepare our staple dinner. We hadn't been in bed long when Liz thought she felt something crawling on her body. Our best thought on that, and the resulting marks that we both had is that the cute dog of the house, Key, had fleas. He also had a habit of sleeping on the dorm beds. Uncomfortable, yes, but things could have worked out much worse.

author Tim	location Firenze, Tuscany, Italia
posted 09:01 CEST 26/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Italia ( all photos )

Roma IV - Pantheon then Pisa ( 17 photos )
There were just a few things remaining for us to look at in Roma, then it was time to head onwards.
We had to get our bags out of our rooms, so saddling up the big pack, we walked a little way down the road to a place where we could store it for the day, a pokey little back room underneath a very dodgy internet café.
As you have to do with these places, I inquired whether we could plug our laptop in there. The answer we got back was a little confusing - yes, but only after 4pm when his boss was there to supervise.
Not too worried by that, we chose to push on to see our site for the morning - the Pantheon. This strange round building hidden in the wonderful way of ancient monuments tucked away in the middle of busy urban streets, we were suprised to find actually didn't have an entrance charge. In fact, there's not a lot to it at all. It's just one massive room, the top half of which is a large dome with a hole in the top. I read that you could fit a perfect sphere with a diameter of the height of the building inside.
The Christian church have chosen a different path, turning it into a religeos building by the addition of small chapels and frescoes around the sides, but it is amazing the way that your eyes almost skip over them. The focus of it all is surely looking ever upward at that hole. There is a couple of big signs in many languages saying "Yes, there is a big hole in the middle of the roof. Yes, rain does come in. No, it doesn't flood because there is a drainage system in the floor". I guess that answers those questions then.
We sat in the entrance veranda part on the bases of some of the massive marble columns, overlooking Piazza della Rotonda. Continuing our trick of picnicing our way around the world, we munched away and watched the drunks with dogs trade beer and chicken for their dogs to eat with each other. More entertaining than looking the other way, which would have let us see the people in period dress trying to sell horribly over-priced Opera tickets to hapless tourists.
Originally we had intended to see a couple more things around the place and then get going, but to be honest our legs were not interested. We managed to convince them to take us back to get our pack via a shop or two in Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore for a couple of last touristy goodies, a café for amazingly cheap amazingly good coffee (because it was not where tourists typically walk), and a couple more attempts at internet cafés.
When we returned to where our pack was, I noted that there was now two people on duty there, surely enough for me to be able to plug the laptop in. But no, the excuse had changed to "It is not possible!" Fine, we walked away to take our business elsewhere.
Finding the ticket office at Roma Termini proved a little challenging, but having learnt from our previous mistakes, we just assumed they spoke English, purchased two singles to Pisa Central and found our platform. We topped up our water bottles with more of that great free Roman water, grabbed an expensive copy of The Times from London and jumped on our train.
Sure, there was more to do in Roma, but there is just so much to do in Roma that there's no way we could have done it all anyway. Besides, now we have a reason to return, as throwing the coin over our shoulders into the fountain means we will. A great city which we are extremely glad to have made it to.

The country-side flew by in a blur as the train got itself moving, for what turned out to be a fairly un-eventful journey. For a while we were following the water, something we hadn't seen for a long time, but then we ducked inland for a bit of a wiggle through some hills before making it back to the coast on the way into Pisa.
The station information office told the story of what this place was all about - huge signs with maps everywhere saying "You are here. Here is the tower. Walk 15 minutes this way or else catch bus number 3". It really is a one-attraction town. Once inside the information office, the lady was happy to show us on a map where the youth hostel was - a bit out of town on the far side. Famous bus number three would get us there also.
After eventually de-cyphering where the bus went from, we stood for quite a while as every other numbered bus stopped then left. Finally bus 3 limped in, and we got on along with a few other backpackers, all obviously doing exactly the same thing we were. We struck up a conversation with one of them, a girl from Nottingham (England) called Katherine. Between the three of us we managed to work out where to get off for the hostel, although to be honest her Italian asking the bus driver was what did it in the end.
The hostel was a strange one - in an old church or maybe covent which had been fitted out quite well with little rooms everywhere, and some extra buildings on the back. Since it was the only place in town within our budget, and we had talked to a guy at the information office who had spent two hours wandering around every hotel in town with no success, we were a bit anxious about whether we would get a room there. It turns out that we were saved by the fact that the hostel only opened at 6pm, a little before we arrived and waited for a long while in the queue.
No problems getting beds, Liz in a big dorm with lots of other girls including Katherine, and me in a four-bed dorm with three other stinky blokes. Note that I did include myself in the stinky bit :)
After settling in a little, we went back out to the road to catch a bus, and luckily there were some Deutsch girls there who pointed out that we had to get the bus from the same side of the road we had been dropped off on - it does a big loop back to town.
So, we got off at the central square of town, and wandered towards probably the most over-marketed tourist attraction in the world. You couldn't miss it if you were deaf, dumb and blind - a really big leaning tower which admittedly leans lots more than we had expected. Just feel your way there past the fifty or so touristy shops in a row all selling exactly the same crap - leaning tower lighters, cups, mugs, statues, lights, t-shirts, you get the idea.
We were actually suprised by the surrounds of the area - there's quite a bit more to see besides the tower itself, including the huge neighboring cathedral, but our time and budget wasn't going to include them.
We grabbed some shots in the ailing light, before turning our attention to our stomachs. We stumbled across Katherine again (it's not a very big place), whos budget was in the very low range with ours. We found a back-street place with no cover charge and small but filling and good portions, washed down with a bottle of that great cheap Italian vino.
It was good to chat to someone else for a change (not just me saying that, Liz also!), especially since Katherine turned out to be a medical student. Liz and her traded horror stories in the way that only those used to doing hideous things to human bodies can, while I just enjoyed the atmosphere of our table on the street.
Eventually time to head home for the night, we managed to just miss a bus. Between the three of us, we picked out the road home and walked it, dodging vespas and cars with no intention of following the speed limit along the road to the hostel.
I resigned myself to falling into a slumber in the stinky room, while Liz and Katherine found people playing board games with no intention of sleeping and chatted awake for quite some time.
A huge lightning storm was right over the building, the first we had heard in a long time. It made me miss the storms you get in Sydney pretty much every night in summer, something we will enjoy seeing again very soon now.

author Tim	location Firenze, Tuscany, Italia
posted 21:56 CEST 25/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Italia ( all photos )

Roma III - Vatican Dome and Musems ( 53 photos )
Not to upset the trend too much, we jumped on bus number 64 on this morning, heading for our old friend the Vatican City. By now we dreaded getting on it for the packed, sweaty journey across the city. However, in the thrity degree heat it was preferable to an hour or more's walk.
Being a Monday, things were once again open a bit more for us to explore around - first on the list being the dome of San Petro Basilica. Once again we had to dress 'conservatively' to be allowed access, and once again we were approached by several people offering free tours. Very kind, but been there, done that.
This time, we had the quickest of looks around the impressive building on our way down through the crypt and out the other side to the queue for the trip up the dome. It is actually quite interesting - you can either pay four euro and walk the whole way, or pay five euro, get the lift part of the way, but still have over three hundered steps to walk! Call me strange, but on a hot day like this one was, my body really isn't going to understand the difference between three and four hundered steps, plus getting to skip the half an hour queue for the lift and save a euro each in the process was more of a bonus.
However, by the time we had walked up to where the lift ended, we had a nice rest, consoling ourselves that if we had have paid up for the lift we would still be standing down the bottom somewhere. This level was on top of the main part of the building, right behind the facade of the building itself. The statues comprising this impressive facade looked far more massive from this level, and it was a good shock for the system considering how small they look from the ground.
Jolting our bodies into action, we had more climbing to do. A hundered steps later, we were puffed, but had an amazing view down inside the dome at the tiny little people below, where we had been a couple of days earlier. It was amazing to be so close to the mosaics which had looked tiny from floor level, which now seemed to fill our entire view.
Two hundered steps later, we were pouring the water in and stopping for breathers whenever we could make it. Three hundered steps later and we were at the top. What a view.
Thanks to the local law, this was the highest you could get in the city, and as a result there was plenty to see. So many other people had made the trek also, but we were lucky to get a couple of good viewing spots, making the most for some photos and just to stand staring out at the great view. We tried to pick out the Colosseum, but the haze over the city made that only just not possible, despite it being a very bright clear day.
On the other (western) side, we had a great view over the Vatican Gardens, very impressive from this height, but something to save for next trip in terms of actually visiting.
Passing back down through the strange sloping staircase around the dome, we had a quick look in the touristy shops which somehow are permitted around the building. To be honest our main interest was to get inside out of the heat, but their products weren't any less tacky than that available at street-level. At the bottom we made a much-needed refill at the ornate fountain in the courtyard where our tour had ended a couple of days earlier.
Next stop on our wander around this part of town was a trip to the Vatican Museums, and their one main attraction, the Sistine Chapel. Famous for Michelangelo's paintings completely covering the walls and ceiling, we gladly paid the extortinate entry fee, comfortable that it was our only one for a few days and we had saved a lot by walking around. Probably lost a bit of weight too :)
You wouldn't want to be old and just wanting to see the Sistine Chapel, because right from the start, we would have guessed from the signs that it was just the next room. Instead, we were lead on a not un-pleasant two or so hour wander through the amazing collection of gifts and spoils that comprises the Vatican Museums. There were octagonal rooms, circular rooms, tapestry rooms, animal sculpture rooms, a great map room/corridor, and of course countless (seriously) rooms of truly amazing painting and sculpture, all religious in nature. There's no way it can be done justice here, and to be honest it was a case of museum overload by the end.
Which was a shame, because by the time we finally made it to the Sistine Chapel, turned off our cameras and lowered our voices as per the polite signs outside, the noise and brightness of camera flashes inside the chapel was really quite terrible. Add to this the shere volume of great art we had seen thus far and it was a shame that it didn't really look all that amazing to us.
Sure, it was all wonderfully done, but perhaps it was just knowing that the reason we couldn't use cameras was because the recent restoration work had been paid for by one of the American TV networks, which now owns the copyright, or perhaps it was the rukus and people very obviously dis-obeying the requests of what at the end of the day was supposed to be a chapel. In common with some of the previous frescoes we have seen (notably in Padova), it is a shame that the room is now used for something entirely not what the original artist had intended. Its success is its own un-doing.
Once again we found ourselves in our favourite fountain courtyard, before heading out to the colenades for yet another cheap meal of bread and vegemite sitting in the shade and contemplating what a great city Roma is.
We wandered back towards the hostel across the bridge, getting the bus as by now our legs had all but written us letters of demand for rest. Seriously, in all our walking we had done, this day had really slaughtered us in terms of heat and vertical distance covered.
Cooking up another pasta and sauce storm even though we really couldn't find the energy to do so, we originally intended to go for a wander to a couple more places but instead found ourselves collapsing in a new room as our one from the previous nights was booked out. The other occupants eventually went to bed, not really their fault but we had had enough rather early.

author Liz	location Firenze, Tuscany, Italia
posted 21:32 CEST 25/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Italia ( all photos )

Roma II - Roman Forum, Palatine Hill, Colosseum ( 61 photos )
On Sunday morning, we got up and had breakfast at the hostel, and caught the bus to the Vatican City. The sight of the Vatican City was just as amazing as it had been the day before, but on Sunday we went there for just one thing: to see the Pope! On Sunday mornings, he comes to his study window and looks down on the crowds below and blesses them. On this particular Sunday, however, he didn't appear and we have since found out that he is ill.
But anyway, we spent a very pleasant fourty-five minutes sitting at the side of one of the colonades and gazing up towards the Pope's study room window and looking out at the beautiful square and St. Peter's Basilica.
After a while, we walked out of the Vatican City and started walking towards Piazza Venezia. Along the way, we looked at several Rome tourist books and guids, but didn't end up buying anything.
At Piazza Venezia, we went along the right-hand side of the square and then up some stairs at the side of the huge monument. We crossed the hill and walked down a short way, before getting a marvellous view over the Roman Forum. We took some photos and bought a guide to Rome complete with very interesting pages showing what old ruins like the Colosseum and the Roman Forum look like today and what they probably looked like when newly built and all in one piece. It also has lots of interesting information about each site.
Then we walked down into the Roman Forum, and along its length for the second time. We actually planned to go back a third time and have a really good look at the whole thing, but we ran out of time and probably were too exhausted anyway. So here, I will take a short detour, and go on all about the Roman Forum...
The Roman Forum was the commercial, religeous, political and legal centre of the city in ancient times but until the last two hundered years or so, it had actually become pasture land. So it was pretty amazing to see the huge amount of marble columns, paving, arches and carvings that remain today.
The whole thing is in a valley between the capital Capitoline and Paletine hills and both times we walked through, we went from the Capitoline end to the Paletine end, where we got great views of the Colosseum.
On the left as we walked into the forum was a huge arch - the Tempio di Antonino e Faustina built in 141 BC, and on the right-hand side were the remains of the Basilica Aemilia, built in 179 BC, but then had most of its marble taken away during the Reneissance. From there, we walked down going first to the right hand side, and then to the left, gazing at everything we saw. Here and there lay chunks of marble with beautiful but worn carvings, or a column of coloured, but dull and unpolished marble.
Everywhere were remains of buildings, sections of columns, or ancient paved roads. It feels like you are walking through and abandoned city, which I guess in a way you are. It is quite amazing to imagine ancient Romans living here, walking along the same paths, and looking up at the same impressive buildings - undoubtedly more impressive in ancient times! The Basilica of Maxentius would have been breathtaking to see when it was full of bronze and marble, and it still looks very huge today.
Of course there is more to the whole place than I have mentioned - the two books I am looking at give conflicting names and dates, and because we just enjoued wandering through we didn't really note down names of any of the buildings. I would highly recommend a tour through the Roman Forum.
So, to go back to Sunday, after we had enjoyed the very impressive view of the forum, we again walked along it, seeing new things everywhere we turned. As we came out the opposite end, with old marble columns towering on our left, we again had that great view of the colosseum. But instead of going into the Colosseum just yet, we turned away and headed right, where we got tickets to Palatine Hill.
Palatine Hill overlooks the Roman Forum, the Colosseum and a lot more of Rome too. It was where wealthy Romans built their homes and it is believed to be the site of the founding of Rome - a square furrow ploughed into the ground by Romulus in 754BC or 753BC.
After getting our tickets and before we started climbing up the hill, we sat in the shade drinking lots of cool fresh fountain water and eating some food. It was another incredibly hot day, and we were both feeling sticky and worn out, but the rest did us good.
We made our way to the top of Palatine Hill and then spent an hour or so wandering among heaps of ruins. We saw the Domus Augustana, and internal court with a large motif and fountain - obviously no fountain anymore, and the palace of Domitian, or the House of Augustus (as in the Emperor), the best bit of which was the 'stadium' or hippodrome. We also saw the Domus Flavia, an elliptical fountian, which although is very old, still looks in pretty good condition. And apart from all that, lots of old ruins, arches, carvings and baths.
It was better than I had expected, and most of it was very well preserved.
We even saw the Circus Maximus from the top of the hill, although at the time, we didn't even realise it! It stands beneath Palatine Hill and was once the site of chariot races, up until the 5th century-AD. It was, and probably still is, the biggest building ever built for entertainment purposes (accommodating 300 000 spectators!). Today, all that remains is a sunken oval ditch, but it gives quite an idea of the size that the circus used to be.
So, after lots of nice views out over Rome, and lots more looking around, we crossed to the other side of the hill and began descending. About halfway down, we had another great spot to look down on the Roman Forum, and even better was a view through overhanging trees of the Colosseum. Continuing downwards, we popped out into the Roman Forum and walked out the last section until we were outside the Colosseum.
We decided that we were hungry, so we went in search of a late lunch and found a small and fairly cheap restaurant about five minutes walk from the Colosseum. The food was ok, but the service was really slow and unorganised. At least it gave us a good chance to rest out tired legs and aching feet while we waited for food and drinks. We finally managed to get everything we had ordered, and pay the bill, and then we headed back to the Colosseum.
The tickets we had bought to go up Palatine Hill also gave us entry to the Colosseum, but with the added bonus that we didn't have to wait in a huge long queue at the Colosseum to get our tickets. So we walked straight past the hordes of waiting people and into the cool and dark of the Colosseum.
This place is simply amazing. What stands today is massive, and a lot of it has been pinched and pilfered over the years, so long ago, it was even bigger. I was also expecting it to be quite round, but inside as you look down into the stage area, it is very oval shaped. We could see down into the areas where they used to send lions and so on from their cages, along a ramp and up into the arena., and there was also a section with a 'false floor' to show how it would have looked when the Colosseum was in use. The only seating section that remains is a few meters across and about five or six rows up, but it still gives you an idea of what the seating would have been like all around the Colosseum.
Overall, it was just so fantastic to see such an amazing building and to imagine lions and bears popping up onto the stage floor from the chambers below. We walked all around the upper level, stopping and staring and trying to take everything in at once. We also went along the ground level bit, where you can go about halfway around before exiting. It would have been nice to stay and wander around for days, looking in all the little sections and it would be even better if we could go down into the underground chambers, but, we were worn out and had seen a lot.
From the Colosseum, we walked back to our hostel, going the same way as we had the day before. We cooked pasta for dinner and were happy to have a nice long rest.
After dinner and when it was dark, we ventured out again and caught a bus back up to the Vatican City. We had decided to get some night time photos of St Peter's and the Colonnades, but just as we had set the tripod up, and Tim had taken his first shot, a police car drove up and they told us no tripods were allowed in the Vatican City! We were quite suprised, as we hardly looked like professional photographers, and we weren't doing any harm. So we packed up the tripod and went and sat at the edge of a section of the colonnades. Here, we were sneaky, and used my little tripod to take as many photos as we wanted!
From there, we caught the bus back towards Piazza Venezia, but got off before there and walked along a few back streets until we found ourselves in a beautiful little square. We sat and had some beer and enjoyed relaxing in such a nice setting.
Our last mission at the end of a very long and full day, was to walk to the Tivoli Fountain and take some photos there. It looked very pretty all lit up, so we took some photos and then packed up and dragged our tired bodies back to the hostel where we collapsed into our bunks. What a long but very exciting day!

author Tim	location Roma, Italia
posted 09:08 CEST 22/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Italia ( all photos )

Roma I - San Pietro, Overview ( 83 photos )
A couple of days earlier, teetering on the edge of calling the rest of the trip off, two main things emerged that we didn't want to go home not having seen. One was Paris, but top of the list was Roma (Rome). We are amazingly glad we made it here.
The night before stumbling off the train and trapsing around for a hostel could really have been in any city, with the possible exception of the cars and scooters parked literally anywhere they would fit, but there was of course a lot more to be seen.
Still the only ones in our room, we went downstairs for some breakfast, which we were suprised to find out was included in the price. It was nothing amazing, but we weren't complaining.
Since there is so much to see in this city, we had picked a particular chunk to explore for the day - the Vatican City. On the opposite side of the city from where we were staying, we boarded bus 64, worked out how to validate our tickets (lucky as we were inspected twice) and got off at the other side ready to have a look around.
Not quite knowing exactly where the bus went, we got off a couple of stops early and walked up some back streets. After a peek through some buildings, we rounded the corner and there it was. Saint Peter's Basilica - the largest church in the world, the largest basilica in the world, and (by law) the highest building in Roma.
Just as impressive is the Piazza San Pietro in front of the basilica, created as a space where Christians of the world could gather, and surrounded by four rows of colonades, focusing on the central obelisk "borrowed" from ancient Egypt.
You could say we were stunned. After so many streets which looked like Just Another City, here we were, technically in another country (Vatican City is the only country in the world with a stable population), staring at the centre of the Christian world.
We didn't have to stand around for long looking like tourists until we were approched by a guy asking if we spoke English. More than a little defensive, we answered yes, only to be invited on a free tour, no obligation. It turns out this is very common here, they attempt to sell you (low pressure sales) further tours with their company.
We wandered over to join our small tour group, lead by a kiwi girl about our age who had been in Roma for two years - it's quite easy to see how she fell in love with the place and is happily spending so much time here.
After passing the clothing police (they strictly inforce no shorts, no shoulders and no short skirts, leaving both of us in jeans in the thirty degree heat, and Liz having to wear a jumper), we were lead inside, and our jaws dropped once again. The tour guide was right - there is no way that your eyes can understand just how huge this place is, they just sort of give up and allow you think it is smaller.
Walking over hundereds of mosiacs, admiring the marble carvings (one especially where one of the hardest types of red marble had been made to look as soft as cloth), past Michelangelo's Pietá (one of his first pieces of sculpture, from when nobody knew who he was), and just around and around this huge place we walked.
One of the most interesting facts I thought was that this huge bronze altar piece, over twenty-nine metres high and truly massive up close, would fit inside the tiny little bit sticking out from the top of the dome with enough room left over for a small truck to drive around.
As we wandered, my eyes were constantly tricked as they looked up at the dome - things didn't move by at the right speed for the size my brain thought it was. Truly a huge huge place. We walked down into the crypt, where the tombs of many people of significance in the religious world were. Most notably of course was that of Saint Peter himself. His bones were only re-discovered relatively recently, and are now inside a NASA-designed casing just to the side of the obvious place in his rather elaborate tomb.
From the crypt, we exited to the courtyard area where the sell for the paid tour of the Sistine Chapel began. We decided the asking price was a little high for our budgets, instead tipping the girl for her work. We went back inside for another look around to get some more photos of the place and admire specific works up close. You can photograph everything inside, because it is all stone - even the parts which look like paintings have infact been replaced with mosaics - a detail you only notice when you get up close.
With early closing times on Saturdays, we decided to leave the Sistine Chapel, a walk up the dome, and the Vatican Museums for other days. There was no real rush, we wanted to enjoy this city.
So, we elected to explore a bit more of the north-west shore of the Tiber River, heading first towards Castel Sant'Angelo. This place had a turbulent history, starting out first as The Mausoleum of Hadrian, a monumental tomb for Hadrian and his successors from 130AD. By the fifth century however, its usefulness as a defensive structure was noted, and it was converted into a bastion. Five hundered years later and it was a fortress, complete with turrets and an imposing look more than enough to scare any invaders coming from the north.
Across the Ponte Margherita bridge, we entered Piazza del Popolo. The again plundered central tower and fountain were impressive, but no match for the view you got from standing there and looking south at the three roads around/between two identical buildings. You could see for a long way in all the directions, and we chose the left path, leading us down Via del Babuino towards another famous Roman monument we couldn't dare miss, the Spanish Steps.
The French should be seething about this one, as the only real Spanish involvement is the fact that their embassy is nearby - the money came from Paris, and the church at the top is French also!
The funky boat-shaped Barcaccia fountain at the bottom was great to splash our faces with, but by now we had become addicted to the Roman spring water which flows all over the city to drink all day long in the heat, and none was to be found near here.
Wandering south through plenty more piazzas, past horrifically expensive shopping streets lined with Gucci, Armani, et al., we made it ticked off another famous monument at Fontana di Trevi. This is a very ornate fountain, rather attractive if you can find it through the tourists. We indulged in the famous tradition of throwing a (very small) coin over our shoulders, said to mean we will one day return to Roma.
Further we wandered down to Piazza Venezia. This square is totally dominated by the central Monumento Vittorio Emanuele II, an over-blown huge building complete with chariots on top, all to comemorate Italian unification. We sat there for a while on the grass, eating more of our half-loaf of bakery bread with peanut butter (much cheaper than the four euros one vendor tried to charge us for a hot dog, although his price dropped rapidly as we turned and walked away) and watching the poor horses which run carts through the city on such a hot day.
We had a few more things in mind for our overview day of Roma, mostly in the direction of the Colosseum. There were plenty of on-going excavation works, trying to decypher the mess the Romans have created with their still-current policy of building new things right over the ruins of old things.
Stumbling across the Roman Forum, which is the centre of the old Roman world complete with temples and political buildings galore, we had a bit of an overview before ear-marking it for another day. We walked out the bottom end, and there it was, the sight which graces a million picture postcards world-wide, the Colosseum.
Seeing it this way, after so much other history during the day, it was actually quite hard to appreciate that this was actually it. There is a busy enough street running most of the way around it, and the ever-present tacky expensive tourist garbage sellers. Sure it was great to look at, but we would only come to appreciate it fully when we got inside in the coming days.
After a walk around its outskirts, we picked a road up the hill behind and followed our rather useful map back towards the hostel, another reasonable walk after a day of plenty of others.
We passed under the train station, stopping in a supermarket there for some pasta sauce, odds and ends and a bottle of ridiculously cheap Italian wine. This was all thrown together for a cheap satisfying dinner (I think if you want to sell pasta sauce in Italy, the standard is going to have to be pretty high), before we met some new room mates (Chris and Marie from Melbourne) and flaked out, exhaused after our Roman overview.

author Tim	location Roma, Italia
posted 20:08 CEST 21/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Italia ( all photos )

Getting on With Things ( No photos )
Well, chin up and all that, we have moved on from our set-back.
We set ourselves a target of about 2pm to wander around the industrial area of Padova in search of a better quote. We used Babelfish to get a translation of our problem into Italian, in the hope of showing that to some garages.
After a couple of failures (including one guy who just pretended we didn't exist when he found out we didn't speak Italian), we stumbled across a Fiat dealer who initially gave us a heart-leaping quote of much lower than we had expected, in his rather good English. However, he rang through to the Volkswagen place where the first quote was done, and found out just why the quote was so high. In our translation, we had been told that the head gasket was cracked, however it turns out that it is the whole head itself. Much more expensive, and more in line with our intitial quote.
Second opinion in hand, we resigned ourselves to paying the money and continuing with our travels. It is still a better option than either filing off the identification numbers and dumping it or getting it towed back to the Netherlands.
So, we finally got that translation through to the VW guys and they gave us a rather long estimate of about two weeks for the repair. We were pretty much prepared for that, said ok and caught the bus back into town.
After collecting our bags from the hotel, we looked like real backpackers once again and entered the train station. After waiting in the queue for a while, we arrived at a window and asked the standard polite "parlo inglais?" (do you speak English). After being answered no and then showed to another teller who also replied no, we tried to point at our guide book indicating the type of ticket we wanted. "No" once again came the answer.
We were stumped. How to get a ticket without being able to ask for one? Next option was the automated machine, which at least was in English, but couldn't give us the type of ticket we wanted either. Next to the tourist information office for some advice on our conundrum, but that was closed in the great Italian tradition of the three-and-a-half hour lunchbreak.
Nothing else for it but to get back in line, wait ten minutes again and do what we think is quite rude and assume that the tellers speak English. Suprise, suprise, it worked. I think they get defensive and decide it is best not to say they speak English if they only speak a little. We didn't want to trade Shakespeare with them, we just wanted to buy a ticket! Giving up also on the type of ticket we wanted, we settled for two singles to Roma Termini.
Lugging our bags to the platform, we boarded the late-running train, south bound and finally out of Padova.
It pushed on for an hour and a half before we had to change at Bolognia. Here we grabbed some quick snacks and worked out how to validate our tickets (had got told off for not doing that on the first leg), before boarding another regional train, this time to Roma.
We got quite a shock when, after a ten minute pause at Florence station, the train headed off in the opposite direction! Adding to our confusion was the fact that everyone else in our compartment of six had gotten off! We thought the teller had forgotten to tell us about a change, but after a hurried run through the train to the nearby dining car, it was explained that all was normal.
And arrive in Roma it eventually did, albeit 45 minutes late. The ride had been a fun trip through Italy's country-side, passing through quite a few more tunnels than we had expected, each time making our ears pop with the pressure and the speed.
From the station, we wandered along to the highly-rated Fawlty Towers (!) hostel/hotel, not far at all away. However, after lugging our bags up into the place, cramping into the tiny lift with one poor other Canadian guy and our huge pack (lift only designed for three people and that is quite a squeeze), and dragging ourselves into reception, we found out that it was very very full. No beds the following night either.
No matter, as the helpful Canadian guy Andrew offered to take us to where he was staying, another hostel place. Back down the lift, walked about five blocks then up the lift again (I'm not quite sure why, but Roman hotels and hostels all seem to be built vertically, all inter-mixed across several floors, so that in the space you would normally expect to have one hotel there is actually six), only to find that was full too.
We'd had enough lugging around by now, so Liz and the luggage were left to rest in the foyer of that place while I went out in search of a bed for the night. Luckily I didn't have to look too far, a few streets away I found the Stargate Hostel, and the guy promised me he would hold some beds. Back to get Liz, load up with the packs, back to the hostel and it was well and truly time to relax. We checked in, paid the reasonable sum (for central Rome, anyway) and were the only two people in a dorm room of six. Once again, it was five floors up, with a lift which only holds three people and is exceptionally slow.
We had originally planned to cook to get on the money saving boat as soon as possible, but we didn't have the energy. Instead, a short walk down the street we found a restaurant with tables on the street with suprisingly cheap prices - perhaps we were just used to the Venezian prices. We didn't expect much from the food but it was fantastic.
We enjoyed a beer or two and got chatting to a Norwegian guy sitting next to us, who is travelling all over the place, had only had one day in Rome and was leaving the next day. It was interesting to be able to put memories to the places he was talking about from his home, and also for him to hear that we still regard Norway as the most gorgeous place we have seen.

author Tim	location Padova, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italia
posted 17:54 CEST 18/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Italia ( all photos )

REALLY BAD NEWS (we're safe though) ( No photos )
Well, we were sailing along quite well on this holiday, and now one of the worst things that could have happened to us has just happened. Rosie's problem is a blown head gasket.
The insurance we have are helpful, but don't provide cover for the entire 2500 euro cost (= AUD $5000) which we have been quoted for repair. We are currently waiting to hear back from them to see if there is any movement on this very high price we have been quoted.
We have been in touch with the person we bought the van off in Netherlands, and she is helping quite a bit also, however would be of most help if the van was back there. She believes, as we do, that the quote we have been given is excessively high.
We have spent the best part of the day trying to work out just how we are going to spend the remainder of our holiday. We certainly don't have that sort of money just to throw around the place, the end result of which is that we will definitely be cutting our travels short.
Our options include towing it back to Netherlands (even more expensive than fixing the problem), travelling the last few countries by train/plane/backpack/hire car, or even flying home now. This last one isn't quite as bad as it might sound - we have seen a huge amount of the continent, but there are still a few things we want to see, most notably Paris, Spain and Rome.
If we can get a cheaper quote, we are leaning towards adding the costs to our mounting pile of debt to deal with later, and doing a "blitz" trip for a month or so of just the main things we want to see.
We would then either go back to England for the remaining month and stay with friends to keep the costs down, or move our flights forward if it won't cost us too much.

So, a "bad thing" has finally happened, but nothing is stolen, neither of us is hurt, and we remain mostly optimistic about what we are going to do.
Now we are going for a wander back to the internet café to get out of the hotel room and clear our minds a bit.

author Tim	location Padova, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italia
posted 11:11 CEST 17/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Italia ( all photos )

Marking Time in Padova ( 2 photos )
Not much was done after a late hotel breakfast. We have made good use of the TV with its English movie channel, and had a bit of a random wander around the city here and there.
We had lunch of pizza in Piazza Del Santo, in the shadow of Basilica di Sant'Antonio where the tomb of St. Anthony attracts plenty of visitors for the blessing of the Saint's powers to find lost things. Dispite not knowing exactly where Rosie was, we were comfortable in the fact that the insurance company was handling it, and elected not to visit and pay the hefty entry fees.
One of the tourist offices pointed us to Internet Point, an internet café where we were actually able to plug the laptop in, sending emails and getting the website up to date! We read news of the world and chatted to a few people, which was good fun to give us something to do.
We bought some things to read from the train station, and got a call saying that Rosie's diagnosis wouldn't arrive until at least the morning. As such, we checked ourselves back into the same hotel and spent the night watching yet more TV and not doing too much at all.

author Tim	location Padova, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italia
posted 10:36 CEST 17/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Italia ( all photos )

Padova, and more Rosie problems :( ( 3 photos )
We got up early to use an alternate means of travel to explore a new city, Padova (Padua), about 30km west of Venezia. The bus we had used to get to and from the caravan park helpfully keeps going all the way to Padova, so we jumped on that heading the opposite way, and had a slow old journey. The trade-off was that we didn't have to worry about parking or anything.
The main attraction of the city is the Capella degli Scrovegni, a chapel housing frescoes Giotto painted between 1303 and 1305. Unfortunately, the bus station had no information on where this was, so we wandered randomly in what turned out to be totally the wrong direction, asked a local University girl how to get back to the centre of town, and walked back past the bus station into town. How about signs for people getting off the bus with directions to the city's major tourist drawcard!!
Anyway, we found the place, paid our entrance fees and had to wait in a queue to get in. The environment inside is so controlled to prevent degredation of the frescoes that you have to sit in a climate-controlled anti-chamber for fifteen minutes for the air to stabilise before you are allowed in, and then only in groups of twenty-five.
It was worth all that rigmorole to see. Places like this I find interesting not at all from the religious perspective (the paintings document the life of Christ and Mary) but due to the technical abilities of the artist, so long ago. The three-dimensional aspect of the work on a two-dimensional surface was I thought the most striking detail, along with the grotesque rendering of hell on the massive end wall.
Overall it was amazing to see this place, but a little dis-heartening to think that the building is now a historical treasure, never used for its original intended purpose as a place of worship. I wonder how Giotto would have felt about that.
We were running late by the time we had been through there, so hot-footed it back to the bus, sat on it again for quite some time and checked out of the caravan park. Our drive was then back through Padova (not needing to stop and look around).
It was as we were driving through the city traffic in Padova that another van pulled along side us, the drive shouting "Fuma, Fuma!!" and pointing to the rear of Rosie. After a split-second just dismissing him as yet another crazy Italian driver, it occured to both of us that the smells we had just put down to city pollution were getting much stronger. A quick look in the rear-view mirror (engine in the back, remember) made it obvious that Rosie was doing her best Thomas the Tank Engine impression, billowing out vast quantities of steam and/or smoke.
We pulled over safely into what was luckily a loading zone on the side of the road, albeit right near a pedestrian crossing. As quick as we could manage, engine was off, battery disconnected and I was moving things around to get access to the engine bay while Liz got out our fire extinguisher - we were well prepared at least.
The white stuff gradually cleared, then we called our insurance to explain that yes, once again, we needed their help. Hours passed in the coffee shop which luckily was right next to us as we waited for a call or assistance. At some stage we attempted some do it yourself diagnosis, noting that the water resivoir was totally empty. Following the pipe, the next one (equivalent of a radiator in this vehicle, I think) was also completely empty.
After waiting for it to cool, we filled both up with some water, only to see it all run out the bottom of the engine bay onto the road! So, there was our major problem. Nothing we could do except wait for a tow.
One did eventually turn up, a nice enough Italian guy who didn't speak any English. As he was attempting to speak Italian to me to work out whether the van was drivable up onto the back of his truck or not, he struck upon an idea. "Finito?", he asked, pointing at the van. "Si", I replied. We pushed her along a few times until she was on the lift at the rear of his truck, then we were away.
Liz and I sat up in the cabin of his truck, getting a tour of Padova's outer areas as he took us first to the arranged Volkswagen mechanic, which it turned out only worked on newer, smaller and possibly far less problematic Volkwagens, not big, old error-prone ones like us. Maybe they were just scared of a challenge!
So, we were towed in the direction of another one, getting stuck in major traffic on the way out of town. He made some calls in rapid Italian, the gist of which we worked out meant that all the garages were closed by now (it was quite late), so what did we want to do? Here the Caravan Club insurance excelled themselves, having an Italian-speaking operator John on hand to help out. He translated for us, the result of which was that our driver was taking Rosie to be locked up somewhere for the night, and us to Padova train station to sort out some accommodation for the night.
We packed a few things into some bags to do us while we were away from the van (it is becoming a more regular occurrance than we had wished for, but staying in a posh hotel every now and then is a nice break). We got to the tourist information just as it was closing for the night and grabbed a city map and a list of hotels. Picking a few in our price-range, we headed off in search of them.
Down the main drag Corso del Popolo, we stumbled upon Hotel Corso pretty much as the first one along the road. We headed in, found their rooms were available and priced right for the insurance to cover it. The room turned out to be just fine, overlooking the river and town walls. The main draw-back is that it is very noisy, but that's the problem with being central I guess.
Wandering into the city for a Lonely Planet recommended dinner at Trattoria al Pero, we ate in style the Italian way, which is a first course of pasta then a main course of meat. They usually add in a few more courses, but our stomachs were full just as our budget was too.
Back to the hotel, we reflected on our broken bus yet again, but at least in a city with transport to the world and insurance sorting everything out for us.

As a couple of asides, some guy jumped off the bell tower to his death in the middle of San Marco Piazza in Venezia the day after we were there as the clock struck midday. Also, late at night in the caravan park there we felt Rosie shake for a while. I thought it was Liz rolling around and she thought it was me. We both agreed it was neither of us, and we read in the Herald Tribune (English-language paper you can get around the place if you are willing to pay through the teeth) yesterday that it was indeed a magnitude-five earthquake, centred further south from here in Bolognia. Nobody hurt, but interesting all the same. We survived an earthquake!

author Tim	location Padova, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italia
posted 11:15 CEST 16/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Italia ( all photos )

Around Venezia ( 44 photos )
We got an early start, back on the bus, into Venezia for what was going to turn out to be one of the top three days of our entire trip (the other two being ANZAC Day and North Cape). The weather had turned fantastic, providing blue sky, warmth and much better photo opportunities than the previous day.
Almost the entire day was spent just wandering, sometimes with a general goal in mind, other times just aimlessly. All the time, admiring the little things which combine to make this city different. The uniformity of the round concave doorbells on all the dense houses, the washing lines strung across the streets shared by neighbours, the music in the background, the Carnivale masks everywhere, street cafés and of course the ever-present water.
We met with a couple from Manly, exchanging cameras for photos on the waterfront. They were staying in a hotel where the management had little care for the fact that they had been kept awake all night by rats - a problem we at least don't have to face with Rosie! Also, the fact that they only had about two weeks left for their Europe trip due to work rammed home the fact that we should view our over two months still remaining as quite a long time, even though it doesn't seem so!
It was fantastic to be in a city where you had to walk everywhere, except for long distances (although we walked those too) which could be covered by boat. No cars, no vespas (the scooters which the Italians invented and weild relentlessly at pedestrians in all other cities here), and suprisingly no hawkers.
We stumbled across an Internet café somewhere, where we paid a rather large amount of money to just check our emails. We may not be able to plug the laptop in anywhere in this country, as the government requires even users of the normal computers in the internet cafés to have their identity logged - we had to give my student card over to be photocopied! Talk about paranoia.
After going back through San Marco Piazza once again, getting some photos in the far better light, we pushed further and further east, to the ends of the island that only the brave tourists seem to tackle. It was suprisingly just how quickly the crowds thin out, replaced by far cheaper places to eat and locals going about their business. This was infinitely preferable to the thousands of shops selling almost identical combinations of tourist junk and over-priced ice cream.
We got to the park at the end of the island, and decided that all our money saved by walking everywhere and cooking ourselves had earned us a bit of a splurge, we found a great little café frequented by locals. The friendly people running the place took our order as we sat in the sunshine and just enjoyed being off our feet, which were starting to hurt considerably. The fantastic food was about half the price we would have paid in the touristy sections, and as a bonus I think we saw about four other touristy-looking people wander past the entire time we were there. Nice and quiet relaxing there for an hour or so.
Saying goodbye to the serenity, we pushed back west through areas we hadn't seen, back-tracking a lot to try and get around. We hadn't got a decent map and didn't really care - everywhere you look there were people really worried about which street they were on and where they were going. Not the city to do that in. Just learn which rough direction the bus station is in and enjoy being very very lost.
At one stage, we found a little old man who appeared to be going somewhere interesting. Not having any more firm plans, we elected to follow him around White Rabbit style. He led us through some amazing back streets, at each intersection pausing and looking each way before deciding which way he wanted to go. Perhaps he was just as lost as us, we didn't care. It was another way to see places which even our random decisions probably wouldn't have taken us to.
Somehow we lost him, but he had gotten us back near one of the main drags, where we got a gelati to cool down on such a hot day. Next rough area to explore ws the north-shore, past Campo SS Giovanni e Paolo, an old church and square, parts of which are now the current hospital under restoration, as so much of the city is. We paused somewhere for a tripod shot.
Great view from the north prompted a stop for coffee to recharge our weary legs. Again away from the tourism a little, the prices were very cheap, considering we sat down at the outside tables (prices vary here depending on where you drink).
By now my knees and both our feet were giving us grief, so we considered Venezia thoroughly explored and headed back to the caravan park. It was a city we really didn't want to leave, and we felt that you could make a holiday just on its own. If only these places were a day trip away from Sydney...
A light dinner was cooked before we collapsed very weary from all our wandering.

author Tim	location Padova, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italia
posted 10:47 CEST 16/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Italia ( all photos )

Into Venezia ( 30 photos )
Leaving the caravan park, we drove south towards Venezia (Venice), following the slow roads all the way. This means no motorways, leaving us free to watch the scenery roll by - the best here being the flat plains we were driving on looking south contrasting beautifully with the huge ridge of Dolomites mountains to the north.
We once again had to play the "find the caravan park in a big city game", following signs which are good for a while then suddenly the road deviates down into one lane going in the wrong direction and they sort of forget to sign post it. Lots of turning around eventually led us over the bridge to Venezia, which we knew was very very wrong - there are no cars allowed, let alone caravan parks on the island.
A bit more turning around later, and guessing a bit when the signs were forgotten or just completely wrong, we found our way to Camping Serenissima, on the mainland and about 12km to the west. It was quite a nice spot, run by friendly people and quiet enough for a big city camping place.
After setting up, we caught the bus into Venezia from outside the camping place, about a half an hour ride. It was funny to re-trace our steps, finding out where we had turned wrongly earlier in the day, and then to go once again across the 4km bridge to the island, this time intentionally. The weather was not the best, raining intermittently and overcast all day long.
Even from the carpark at the bus terminal, it just looked kind of like any other big city. It wasn't until we walked a little way further and we saw our first canal! That is of course really what sets this city apart from others, so a trip up the Canal Grande was of course in order.
There are a few ways to travel on the water, ranging from the reasonably-priced packed like a cattle-truck ferries through private gondolas (very expensive) and then water taxi (even more expensive). Needless to say, we took the former option. The signage for the public ferries was pretty terrible until you looked long and hard, which resulted in us going on a ferry the wrong way to start with. As it turns out, this was a blessing in disguise. Since we had gone one stop back before the main tourist jumping-on point, our return ferry was almost completely empty, leaving us to take the best seats in the house right up the front.
I'm not sure just how much detail to go into about Venezia. The city is so totally amazing, but pretty much everything we did is what most other people would do, except perhaps the huge amount of walking and heading out to the remotest non-tourist-infested areas we could find.
We had a great ride up the canal, past the leaning old buildings, getting glimpses of bridges, alleyways and all things Venetian. It was a great way to get a feel for the city before intensive exploration.
Getting off the boat at San Zaccaria, we wandered through markets on the waters edge and watched the gondolas drift by. We were both amazed when we saw our first tiny alleyway, unaware just how many we would see following.
We found our way to San Marco Piazza. Wow. There's something about the place which just works so well - the huge old buildings surrounding three sides, the amazing Basilica on the fourth and the bell tower soaring high in one corner. I'm not really sure just how to describe the place. Of all the areas of Venezia, this is truly one you just have to experience for yourself.
From there we started what was a most satisfying way to discover Venezia - just pick a direction, wander for a long time (three or four hours in this case), over bridges, through alleyways, into squares which just pop out here and there, find dead-ends and try to work out how to keep going in your chosen direction. It's just a Choose Your Own Adventure book, where you try to get to some goal, get stuck going the wrong way and have to back-track, and eventually forget your goal anyway. The maze that this city is is probably even more compelling than the fact that its primary means of transport is on the water.
Eventually we wanted to get back to the van to cook some dinner, as Venezia is widely regarded as the most expensive city in Italy, one of Europe's more expensive countries. This in itself was an effort as we actually needed to get back to a certain place! There are signs, but they are approximations at best. An hour or so of being able to see when we got out to the water where we wanted to go but then having to work out how to get there later, we found the bus station and jumped on a waiting bus for the return journey.
The rain was teeming down as we tried to peer out the window for the sign 412 (representing 412km from the start of the road somewhere) which we knew meant we were nearly at our stop. This proved quite difficult, but eventually I caught a glance of it, jumped up and ran through the bendy bus to stab at the button. We didn't even have time to get our umbrellas out, dashing through the pouring rain for cover. Umbrellas out, we got back to the van and cooked up dinner, before sleeping to do it all again the next day.

author Tim	location Gemona del Friuli, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italia
posted 09:45 CEST 13/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Italia ( all photos )

Descent into Italia ( 4 photos )
(Continued from Österreich 1 (Austria)).
We pulled in at the border to attempt to get some stamps in our passports. It was amazing how quickly things changed - there were huge Cinzano signs, those bottles of wine with cane around the bottom all for sale, and accents were completely different.
After taking a photo or two next to the border sign to prove we made it, we went in search of the stamps. The official border post was closed and looked like it had been since about 1972, so the next move was to approach one of the shop keepers.
Despite my primary-school Italian, I couldn't work out what to say! My brain was producing a strange muddle of English, German, Italian and gobbledy gook, so in the end I resported to the universal "stamping the passport" hand-action. She pointed and said "restaurant", so we followed that. Joking that only the Italians could make a restaurant the dispenser of official border crossing stamps, we were soon suprised to see that what we actually got was more a stamp advertising the restaurant, in our official passports! Still, it had the name of the mountain pass if nothing else. We will have to drop in at a police station later on.
Shaking of the hitchikers wanting a ride (luckily the wrong way), Liz started her expert piloting of Rosie down the precarious pass. The first-gear, almost completely stopping hairpin bends as the sun was shining and Italian language radio came into range was truly a great way to enter the country. Forget motorways, this is how it should be done.
Progress in terms of straight-line distance was very slow, but we didn't care, just looking down and around the valley. After we eventually made it down, small villages came and went, with completely different architecture to the Austrian ones only an hour or so earlier.
The game to play rapidly became "spot the Fiat", as the Italian national car overtook at all angles in all conditions, but suprisingly not much worse than the rest of Europe so far (and notably Czech).
We drove further south, with the rough plan that we would make it to Venezia (Venice) the following day. We opted not to use the motorways for now (you pay a toll for each journey you make on them in Italia), instead taking the very scenic back roads towards a little nowhere town called Gemona del Friuli. The tight streets coupled with little cars, old wandering Italian people, great looking restaurants and sunshine all made us feel very happy we had made it to a place we had long wanted to visit.
We pulled into Camping Ai Pioppi, were glad that the reception guy spoke a little English, and pulled up to enjoy the sunshine - a very welcome change after the non-stop rain in Österreich.
Enjoying having use of the gas, we cooked up some pasta (what else?) and enjoyed the evening sun before it disappeared and the night-time cold came to remind us that the alps were just behind us.

author Tim	location Gemona del Friuli, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Italia
posted 09:15 CEST 13/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Osterreich/Osterreich 1 ( all photos )

Into the Alps ( 12 photos )
On the road for what turned out to be a mostly driving, exploring day, we headed back to the motorway the across east towards a couple of mountain roads which we had heard were very spectacular.
We wanted to go up and/or down the Großglocknerstraße, one of the highest mountain roads in the area and supposedly full of spectacular scenery. I picked a different road to take us up north of there so we could drive back down it, heading generally to Italy. However, after winding our way up towards one of the towns on the road (Mallnitz, which was a beautiful little town in its own right nestled into the mountains under snowy peaks), it became apparent that the only way forward was to put Rosie on a train which ran through a tunnel under the mountain!
I'm not quite sure why it couldn't have just been a road tunnel like so many others around the place, but we decided the cost was a bit high and the wait was going to be too long.
So, aborting our first attempt to cross the Alps, we retreated south, then pushed further west, intending to go this time up Großglocknerstraße. It was a great climb up to the start of the pass, through yet more villages nestled around the place, one of which had a huge chicken advertising "Backhenfest", starting the next day. What a shame we wouldn't be around to see that.
Pushing Rosie higher and higher (to about 1500m if I remember correctly), we eventually came to the toll gate for the start of the pass proper. The van infront of us had to reverse out, we were not sure why. However, we had to do the same after asking the little man there if we required snow chains. "Ja" came the simple answer, couple with a bit of laughter at all the stupid tourists around today. A look at the sign up the road with tyres complete with chains should have also given it away!
So, figuring we had plenty of time for mountain passes complete with snow if really wanted to do that, we aborted Alps Crossing Attempt Number Two, grabbed some photos, and decided that the cold and rain were all bit depressing. What better way to cure that than to head south to Italy!
There are plenty of different passes from Österreich into Italy, so we chose the closest one, Plöcken Pass/Monte Croce Carnico (in Deutsch and Italiano respectively). To get across you have to cross two separate mountain ranges, both a part of the Dolomites. Singing the 1980s theme from Commonweath Bank's children's bank accounts, we drove out of our last "major" Deutsch-speaking town Oberdrauburg due south, heading for another country.
The interesting thing about Europe is that if we had have pushed about fifty kilometres east instead of south, we would have ended up in Slovenia, speaking yet another language, with different cultures, customs and food. But I don't have visas for there - perhaps next time.
We wound our way up the first ridge of mountains over Gailsbergsattel Pass (982m), then back down the other side into the road and tiny towns built between the two ranges. Still beyond us were the imposing peaks of the second range, jutting like huge sharp teeth into the sky. Slowly we chugged up more mountains, overtaken at speed by fast German-made cars, and increasingly Italian-registered Fiats.
I was reminded of the movie Italian Job by all the fantastic scenery - and interestingly, in a manner reminiscent of driving into and out of Wales, the weather looked far far better on the other side!
Coming out of one of the strange half-open tunnels which are so common here (perhaps just to keep snow off while still giving you a view?), we dodged a couple of sheep who had found their way in, and then we saw the huge EU-compliant "Italia" sign!
There were zero formalities as we pushed across into Italia.

author Tim	location Camping Weisses, Schiefling-am-See, Karnten, Österreich
posted 08:59 CEST 12/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Osterreich/Osterreich 1 ( all photos )

Graz, Pushing West ( 29 photos )
Waking in the mist and fog of the forested caravan park, we ended up driving over to the amenities block to do our washing up as the rain was so heavy. We paid the guy - the downside to knowing a little German is that people assume you know a lot and can understand it rapidly. It is certainly a good exercise in learning how people who can't speak your language must find it difficult to get by.
We headed south through the mountains, the wind and rain un-ceasing. There were some great views despite this, as we wound our way first up and then down one of the three mountain ranges which run from east-to-west across Österreich.
We stopped for some morning tea in a little bus stop perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking a valley. We could see our road wind all the way down and then off into the distance.
However pretty this way of travelling is, it is quite slow, so eventually we re-joined the motorway and followed it into Graz. This is one of the towns which are interesting here and there around the place, but which we don't really have days and days to explore. We set ourselves the general task of exploring the World Heritage listed old town and finding the one place Lonely Planet mentioned which tickled our fancy.
We parked in the town (surrounded by plenty of roadworks) next to a tramline, paid a reasonable parking fee and then walked into the old town across the river Mur. Plenty of narrow streets fired out in all directions from the central Rathaus square, and we followed some of these, Murgasse then Hofgasse as the worked their way up hill. There were refreshingly few touristy shops, which for once was not what we wanted - we are yet to procure a fridge magnet from Österreich and will leave for Italy soon!
At the top of the hill, we found the city had approved, as many have, a weird modern art installation. In this case, a carpark had huge mirrors on walls all in it which we wandered in and around. This had the rather un-nerving effect of making the group of fifty Japanese tourists look more like five hundered, all taking their own photos in the mirrors. We did the same, however, but then hastilly headed off further up the road to our main target. In the Burg complex there is a double-winding staircase which plays tricks with your mind. We had it all to ourselves for a while, running around and generally being confused. However, we heard the Japanese tourist group approaching, covering the only way out. Even if there was only fifty of them, we still needed to get out somehow!
After that battle, we picked another random street to head back down into town. There were quite a lot of buildings and parks of interest, but not really enough to compete with Wien, a city far more worthy of your time.
We wandered up towards the entrances to Schlossberg, the castle on the hill. It is famous as the symbol of Graz for having the hour and minute hands reversed on its clock. You can get up there either by the attractive stairway, funicular railway or lift straight through the rock. We chose none of these options, all castled out recently and needing to get back before our parking ran out.
After a quick photocopying session to claim our insurance from the work on the van (which seems to have worked wonders, as it happens), we tried about four exits from the town before we found one with a signpost to the motorway, or indeed a signpost at all. Some towns really need to send their civil engineers on a tourism course - when you travel all over the place, good signs are important!
Eventually on the A2 motorway, the views were pretty amazing when we weren't in the tunnels along past Klagenfurt, through the outskirts of Villach then Velden to eventually find our selected caravan park (Camping Weisses) on the south side of the Wörther See. This pretty piece of the world is far enough from the motorway to be reasonably quiet, and is quite pretty with an accompanying high price tag (seems to be a very popular tourist destination).
As we drove in there was plenty of mist coming off the See - the weather is changing here fairly rapidly.
There's plenty of snow on the mountain tops around the place now, and it is quite cold overnight and in the mornings. It's only about two weeks out of summer!

author Tim	location St. Sebastian, Steiermark, Österreich
posted 10:07 CEST 11/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Osterreich/Osterreich 1 ( all photos )

Wien Again, Wachau, South up the Mountains ( 22 photos )
Remembering this time to take my camera, we set into town once again for a bit more of wander. Our time was limited as we had to leave the caravan park.
First was a walk around the north-section of the Ring, starting at Schottenring U-Bahn and walking anti-clockwise past various attractive buildings. This took in Schottentor, then down the most interesting Western section. All the way the incessant rain didn't leave us, but the city still looked passable.
We walked past the University, then the Rathaus and its accompanying leafy Rathasplatz. On from there to the huge Parliament buildnig with statues and flags waving proudly. Perhaps the most pretty part was suprisingly the Museum of Fine Arts and its grounds with sculptured rounded trees, known as Maria Theresien Platz.
We walked around the grounds of the Hofburg before re-tracing some our steps from the previous day for photographs. We had hoped the weather would be a bit better but no matter - some of the best parts were undercover, while others a bit of juggling the umbrella, guidebooks and camera gave the desired results. Yes, we look totally like tourists wherever we go.
Back through Michaelerplatz, into Stephensplatz and then it was time to get back. Wien is a city we could have spent a month in, but that is not to be this trip. There's so much more to see, and you seem to have to have quite a lot of money to spend to do the big things such as Vienna Boys Choir or classical music performances.
Getting on the road, we found our way back out of the city, heading around the A21 and then along the A1. Despite the horrible weather, we decided to detour up one of the most popular sections of the Danube in the Wachau valley between Melk and Krems. We have plans to get back to some sections of Österreich at a later date (notably Saltzburg), but this would be a bit far and the weather most probably would not be much better anyway.
The drive was nice if not amazingly spectacular (it's going to be tough to match Norway's fjords), and at the end after a little asking around, we found our Holy Grail - a Campingaz 907 cylinder!! For so long we have eaten out, cooked barbeques in silly places, but generally spent too much money, and now we could be self-sufficient again! The excitement was such that Liz was actually jumping up and down in the van when I returned triumphant. We didn't even care that it cost significantly more than it really should have.
Back down the otherside, we were on a much smaller road, all lined with vineards, grape vines and fruit trees everywhere. The tiny villages were all along the banks of the river, bringing the 100km/h traffic down to 30km/h through tiny little gaps in the houses we just fit through.
Not being one to be boring, I picked us a path well and truly off the motorways through to our next target - Graz. Of course this meant much slower going, but we really didn't mind. We heard on the weather report (BBC World Service gets through here and there) that there was going to be snow above 1700 metres, and although we didn't get quite that high, we certainly burrowed through clouds as we wound up and up along the backroads of the 25, 28, 20 and then no number at all roads.
This journey didn't get us far at all towards Graz, but we didn't care - the scenery was amazing with lots of little villages with their old buildings and spires all surrounded by mist and fog. We got thoroughly stared at in a place called St. Anthony - perhaps the locals thought we were lost as they surely don't get much passing trade. Most people are sane and boring and take the motorways.
Probably the best stop was at a village called Puchenstuben, perched atop a ridge, overlooking the misty valley. Magical.
We ended up stopping for the night north of Mariazella at Camping Erlaufsee, in St. Sebastian. The place is surrounded by forest, quite a way even off our un-beaten track we were following. After a fight with the gas fittings (the regulator valve screw fitting was giving me grief), we had a working stove once again!
Dinner followed swiftly, strangely happy to cook boring pasta and sauce which went down well after the long day. I'm sure the novely will wear off pretty quickly.

author Tim	location St. Sebastian, Steiermark, Österreich
posted 09:19 CEST 11/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Osterreich/Osterreich 1 ( all photos )

Into Wien ( No photos )
(Continued from Ceska Republika (Czech Republic)).
Across no-mans land from Ceska, we slowed and stopped at the next border post, Drasenhofen, this one belonging to Österreich. We were expecting more grief about my Shengen visa status (I'm still all legal, my passport just doesn't quite look that way), but the guy on the desk was more interested in Liz.
We had to find first then produce her driver's licence (an example of which he had obviously never seen before), then the green card (rego papers) for the van. There were no problems in the end, and perhaps it was good that he had all this to distract him from me.
In the end, we waved Ceska goodbye, and stopped at the first service station. Similarly to Ceska and a lot of European countries, Österreich requires you to buy a vignette (windscreen sticker) if you want to use the motorways. So, we removed our Ceska one for safe-keeping and attached instead a shiny new one. It was quite strange to be back in a country where only 2km north I couldn't understand a word that was going on, but now we could communicate, even on a basic level.
The rain started hounding down, accompanied dramatically by wind as we pushed due south to Wien (Vienna), the capital city. In terms of our luck recently, finding Camping Neue Donau on the east side of town was a walk in the park - only about three wrong turns! Since our caravan club guide book is written mostly by elderly British caravaners who we can imagine probably bicker between themselves over whether they turned left or right to get there, we are not totally suprised when the directions end us up in totally the wrong place. So, Wien was a pleasant suprise.
The guy on the desk put us near two vans full of about eight kiwis - perhaps he thought "they're from your hemisphere, you put up with them". They had all sorts of kiwi slogans and icons painted all over their vans - I suspect their chances of selling the vans when they are finished travelling are somewhat reduced now.
We wasted little time getting organised and getting down to the bus stop for a bus to the U-bahn (underground train) into town. However, we missed the bus by ten seconds or so and had a half an hour wait. We used this time to read up and get ourselves oriented in the city. When the bus did arrive, the guy on-board wouldn't sell us a ticket. Wien has moved to the same system as the vast majority of European cities we have encountered - you need tickets before you get on, and they typically last for 24 hours.
Luckily, he just waved us past and we bought our tickets at the other end. The wait for the U-Bahn at Kaisermühlen (Vienna International Centre). This got us to Karlsplatz near the south of the centre, from where we walked down to Naschmarkt. This is an arrangement of little shops and markets in the middle of a wide street, from where we got what we intended to be a snack until we cooked dinner later, but turned out to be huge meals.
It was about here that I worked out I hadn't brought my camera in with me. First time I have forgotten that for a while, but no real matter as we had planned to come in again the next morning and could get some snaps then.
We wandered up Kärntner Straße into the centre of town at Stephansplatz, dominated by Stephansdom (St. Stephen's Cathedral). Not a vast open square like many others, this was instead surrounded by plenty of shops build tall and seeming to overhang. The whole time the rain was just annoying enough for us to need umbrellas, but not drenching.
From there we wandered out to Michaelerplatz, which fronts onto the Kaiserappartements and the famous Spanish Riding School. The latter Mum had suggested was worth a visit, however the one-month wait for tickets coupled with the huge sums of money they demanded meant this wasn't going to happen for us this trip.
We walked past some excavations of old buildings which existed here hundereds of years ago through the archways and found ourselves in Heldenplatz. This is surrounded by the massive Hofburg (Imperial Palace), which is so big it plays funny games with your eyes as you walk past it.
Onto Burgring and Opernring, two of the roads which combine to form a ring around the city (well, not quite a ring, but the Danau/Danube river fills the remaining part). We had heard about the famous Viennese coffee houses, and Lonely Planet recommended Café Sperl as one of the most un-spoilt. We whole-heartedly agree. The place had an amazing charm, complete with centuries old upholstered bench chairs, billiard tables and of course fantastic coffee. We were a little taken aback at the small size of our supposed großer (large) coffees, but this was a case of quality over quantity any day. The waitress even humoured our horrible attempts at Deutsch, and brought us a great mineral water which dissapeared rather quickly - it was hot in there.
Next was a trip back into the heart of the city to have a look at the interesting-sounding Haus Der Musik (Das Klangmuseum). This turned out to be a wonderful way to while away a few hours, with everything from the city's famous sons Mozart, Beethoven, Schönberg, etc. through to an interesting (for me anyway) network of computers which automatically made real-time compositions over the Internet. There were rooms where you could push buttons to mix together human voices in strange ways, explorations of the nature of sound, and plenty of ways to do very strange things with sounds.
Done there, it was time to think about "home" and dinner, so we re-traced our steps to the caravan park via the Stephensplatz U-Bahn station. This time a bus was only a couple of minutes wait away, returning us to the caravan park to cook in the kitchen there. It was strange to eat in the van again after so long.

author Tim	location St. Sebastian, Steiermark, Österreich
posted 09:02 CEST 11/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Ceska Republika ( all photos )

South out of Ceska ( No photos )
After packing up and working out how to pay the old dear running the site of our night's accommodation, we set off around the south-west side of Brno.
We stopped to grab some cheap Ceska fuel and breakfast for ourselves, before heading the 50km or so south to the border with Österreich (Austria).
Unlike the border crossing into Ceska, this one was split in two. We first drove up to the Ceska side of the border, convincing them to let us out. Once again we had no problems as our paperwork was all in order. Also, it is generally easier for countries to let you out rather than in.
Stamps entered in our passports (Liz got her first in her British passport - the downside to the freedom it gives), I got out and tried to work out how to get a stamp for entering Österreich. After giving me another Ceska stamp, one of the Ceska guys told me that the Österreich border crossing was another kilometre further down the road!
So, we drove along in no-mans land, not quite sure what country we were technically in. No matter, as around the corner we saw the next border post. Getting through that was our first experience in Österreich (Austria).

author Tim	location Ostrovacice, Moravia, Ceská Republika
posted 09:31 CEST 09/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Ceska Republika ( all photos )

Telc ( 13 photos )
Not wanting to brave a breakfast at the camp site, we tried to use the bathrooms we had used the night before, only to find someone had put bricks infront of the doors! I guess it was easier than trying to explain it to us in English.
So, we pushed into the town of Telc. Another World Heritage place, however this one was much more deserving in our humble opinions. Parking on the outskirts, we walked across a bridge and into the huge open square that the town is built around.
There are a few churches here and there with nice steeples, and the famous Château, but we were content just to sit and have breakfast at one of the restaurants overlooking the square. This was a good thing, as Monday appears to be the one day of the week that every single one of the tourist attractions is closed.
After walking around pretty much every one of the bakeries, cafés and restaurants in town looking for something to eat, we came to the conclusion that the Czech people just aren't that interested in breakfast.
We eventually settled on an restaurant with an outside terrace, and some interesting almost breakfasty things. Liz got an omlete with asparagus and I had toast with cheese and honey - both interesting, but near enough to breakfast that our bodies didn't complain too much.
After a further wander around the beautiful town and checking our emails in the tourist office, we went back to the van and set off in the direction of Brno. Czech is really two separate parts - Bohemia on the west and Moravia on the east. Praha (Prague) is the capital of Bohemia and Brno is the capital of Moravia.
Things started out badly when the motorway exit from which our directions to caravan parks started was closed. So, we got off at the next one and tried to wind our way back. An hour or so later, we found one of the sites listed, in the outlying village of Ostrovacice. It was a driveway into a house with closed gates. However, there was a sign pointing in and a button to press, which I of course did.
We were about to turn away when a dog came running to the gate, followed much more slowly by a woman in her eighties. After gesturing at the huge red van about two metres away, she got the idea, opened the gates and let us in. We drove through what was basically her backyard into a huge field which was yet more of her backyard. I suspect she found herself with this great big house and all this space and decided to let campers use it. Good idea, I say. She has rabbits, dogs, and was even spotted herding chickens, right before she shook one of the plum trees to get all of its fruit off.
She doesn't speak English or German, but we were able to find out where the toilets and electricity were, and how to get into Brno via bus. We elected not to do this, as we had other cities to see, and there appears to be nothing much special there.
So, we read up on our next challenge (Austria), before walking to the next village and spending the night there eating our last cheap dinner. Being our last night in Czech, I was determined to try an item which has been on the menus every single place we have been. It is listed under the "Warm Drinks" section, and named Grog. I kid you not. So, it was ordered, and Liz captured on film the moment of my first taste, closely followed by complete and utter disgust at the stuff. At least I can say that I have tried the "real" Grog. Won't be doing that again in a hurry.

author Tim	location Ostrovacice, Moravia, Ceská Republika
posted 09:09 CEST 09/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Ceska Republika ( all photos )

Kutna Hora ( 9 photos )
Making the best of the available wireless internet connection, after breakfast at the caravan park we spent the morning getting up to date with various things, even into the early afternoon.
Eventually it was time to give up this luxury and get on the road. The weather was great as we drove ourselves out of Prague. This city was hard enough to get in to, but getting out was not much better. We stumbled along, following the signs for the road we wanted to be on, but as is so common, they just sort of disappeared, leaving us driving along tram tracks, dodging pedestrians and Skodas as we randomly choose roads which might lead us in roughly the right direction.
This finally paid off, as we joined the E59/D1/E50/E65 (couldn't just call it one thing) heading south-east towards Brno. However, this wasn't quite what we wanted, so we deviated a little north towards Kutna Hora.
This was yet another World Heritage town, but after a bit of a drive through, we were less than impressed. The tourist office was well closed and pretty derelict. Compared to other such towns we have seen, this barely rated a mention.
We pushed a little out of town in search of the other attraction this place has to offer - Sedlec Ossuary. Seeming as it is such an attraction, I have no idea why it was almost impossible to find. We drove back and forth a few times, eventually stopping at a large church which had a map on the front of how to get to the ossuary. It seems lots of people do exactly the same thing.
Eventually we found our way there, parked the van and walked in and paid. The history of this place is interesting - some sacred dirt scattered in the church grounds lead to people far and wide wanting to be buried there. This lead to massive overcrowding and hence piles of human remains everywhere. Not wanting this to go to waste, people used the bones as decoration - we saw chandileers, altars, countless decorative strings and four massive pyramids all built out of bones and skulls. Macabre, sure, but not nearly as bad as we were bracing ourselves for. In fact, it was a little underwhelming, perhaps because we have been to lots of places outlining Nazi history recently.
From there, we pushed south for a couple of hours along crazy roads dodging insane drivers, in the direction of Telc. We elected not to go into the town itself, instead heading out again to a quiet campsite in the middle of nowhere. It was very strange, seeming to have no working toilet block and very few patrons. The old Czech reception man told us to drive in and pick a spot, all in German (plenty of the older generation speak that here, rather than English) - he was quite nice and perhaps a little suprised to see anyone turn up at all.
After driving past locals haphazardly parked on the driveway (no tourists expected, I guess), we parked then walked back up to have a dinner at their restaurant. We pointed and gestured for the benefit of the young Czech-only speaking girl, and eventually Liz got a meal which was just average, while my specialty of the house (three meats in four spices) was great.
We slept soundly in the near-total silence - very uncommon for us.

author Liz	location Padova, Friuli-Venezia Giulia
posted 11:19 CEST 17/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Ceska Republika ( all photos )

Prague ( 44 photos )
We had breakfast at the caravan park and then walked down the hill to the little bus stop. From here we caught a bus and then a tram, and found ourselves in central Prague.
Around the corner from where we got off the tram were the municipal house and the Powder Gate, both very beautiful buildings.
We could already see that the city was packed with other tourists - Prague is now one of the most popular destinations in Europe - I can't imagine how busy it would have been at the height of summer.
From the Powder Gate, we walked down a wide street filled with Saturday morning shoppers. We found the tourist information, but it proved to be of little use, so we wandered on. We turned right, had a look in one or two touristy shops and then found ourselves in Staromestké námesti, the old town square. It was a beautiful sunny day and the spot was gorgeous. We just stood and looked all around us, trying to take it all in. One one side was the old town hall with its high tower and a fifteenth century astronomical clock below the tower. Across the square is Týn church (1365), an amazing gothic building with twin steeples soaring across the square. All around the rest of the square are beautiful old buildings and the whole place makes you want to be able to see in all directions at once.
We sat at one of the outdoor cafés and treated ourselves to a couple of small but expensive beers - you pay for the view at more than five times the cost of beer just outside the square. So we stayed for ages drinking in the sights, listening to a great little jazz band nearby, and watching the thousands of tourists enjoying the square just like us.
At 1pm we joined a huge crowd infront of the Astronomical Clock and watched its little wooden people marching in and out of the clock as it rang out. Then we went inside the building, paid a small fee and began winding our way up through the tower and out to the top where we had 360 degree views of Prague. The square looked even better from this height and if it weren't for the number of tourists up there I would have happily stood up there for a few hours.
But we had lots more to see, so we made our way down and out and walked into the Jewish Quarter. Like everywhere else in this beautiful city, there were so many amazing old buildings. We found ourselves stopping every few steps to look down a small passage way or up at an old building. We kept going like this until we found ourselves at the Vltava river that runs through the city. Across the river from us and up on the hill was a giant metronome ticking back and forth. We have no idea what it was all about - maybe some wacky piece of art?
We walked along the river-side and then across a bridge and up the road until we came to the old castle steps. It was another hot day and a steep climb, but the view from the top was pretty cool. We could see the tower we had climbed up earlier.
A bit further up hill we were rewarded with the breathtaking sight of St Vitus Cathedral. It is a breathtaking building (building started in 1344) and after walking around one side, we went into the cathedral which if possible was even better. It is a huge cathedral and today contains the crown jewels which we had seen a replica of at Karlstejn castle the day before.
Back outside, we walked through the courtyard with St Vitus Cathedral on one side and Prague castle on the other. In the next courtyard was the Basilica of St George, the oldest building in this little section (1142).
Back down the old castle steps, we spent an hour or so just wandering around the streets of Prague, going through the occasional small square or busy tourist spot.
At Malá Strana we sat in a park for a bit before getting on the funicular railway where there are old castle walls and lots of parkland. We walked halfway back down the hill to get great views out over Prague and then caught the train back down to the bottom.
We made our way back towards the river and walked along the edge, looking across to Karluv Most (Charles Bridge) and the opposite bank. As we walked, we realised we were getting quite hungry and our feet were tired, so it was nice to stumble across a pub/restaurant. We sat in their walled courtyard and enjoyed Pilsener beers and shared a huge serving of pork ribs complete with mustard and pickle all served up on a huge wooden platter. After all that and another beer (it was Prague, after all!) we decided we still had more to see so off we went.
A bit further along the river we came to Karluv Most built in 1357 and complete with thirty statues from the 18th century. It is now a pedestrian bridge, and is lined on each side by people selling tourist knick-knacks and lots of artwork. The view looking up and down the river was so nice - the sun was going down and there were some really good buskers on the bridge. It all made for a great atmosphere.
Back on the other side of the river we were in serious tourist land - shop after shop packed full of anything a tourist could ever want or need (and a lot more besides) and full of lots of tourists, us included. It was actually quite a lot of fun just wandering along a looking in the shops. Before we knew it we were back in the old town square.
We were still keen to see a bit more so we went up another little street and just kept wandering. Eventually when it was quite dark, and we were quite worn out, we found a tram stop, caught our tram and then our bus, and took ourselves back to the caravan park.
It seems like we did heaps, but I think I could have happily looked around Prague for a week, or even just enjoyed the atmosphere in the bars and cafés, but at least we got to see most things.

author Liz	location Trio Camp, Praha, Ceská Republika
posted 13:15 CEST 07/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Ceska Republika ( all photos )

Karlstejn and around Prague several times ( 11 photos )
On Friday morning, we were happy to be able to use the camping ground's gas stoves to heat up some water and then we enjoyed lots of tea and coffee while we could. Our spot by the lake was beautiful in the morning sunshine, with mist drifting over the top of the water.
From Pilsen we drove north-east on the motorway and got stuck in traffic for a while where there had been a bad accident between a few trucks, but we left the motorway soon after. We drove along a very windy little road, complete with big mirrors on the bends to tell you how many crazy drivers were coming at you from the other direction.
We stopped at Karlstejn. A boring little town, until you spotted its highlight - a 14th century castle standing at the very top of a high, forest covered hill.
We had to park right at the bottom of the hill, where we couldn't even see the castle, and from there walk to the top where the castle was. The walk up was actually quite fun - it was a narrow little cobblestone street, and either side most of the way up were lots of little shops selling lots of little tourist goodies. We hurried past them all as we decided to look at the shops on the way down.
The last part of the path up to the castle was very steep. It was a hot day and cobblestones are pretty, but they start to hurt your feet after a while! But we made it to the top just in time for a tour around the castle in English.
The tour was interesting with all the history of the castle, but not much of the inside of the castle is how it was in the 14th century. The whole place used to be full of frescos but none remain and there is only one piece of original furniture. However, the view from the castle looking all the way down the mountain was beautiful, and the outside of the castle was pretty spectacular.
By this stage, we were both very hungry so we stopped at one of the little restaurants on the way back down. For an insanely cheap price (less than $10), we both had big bowls of fresh home-made chicken soup, Pilsener goulash with bread dumplings, delicious apple pie, tea, coffee and half a litre of beer each. And all the food was just so good.
Feeling completely satisfied, we spent an hour or so looking all the little shops. Czech has a 0.0% blood alcohol limit, so after our beers it was good excuse to spend lots of time shopping. Most of the shops had Bohemian crystal and lots of it. Tim found himself a very nice crystal whisky decanter, and we got a few other small things before slowly heading back to the van.
Our afternoon was then spent driving the last short distance to Praha (Prague). We got stuck in a huge traffic jam, and then spent a long time trying to find our chosen caravan park before giving up in frustration, and going to one we had spotted a bit further out of the city (Triocamp). It has turned out to be a very nice little place, and as an added bonus they have a wireless internet connection here so we have been making very good use of that.
We had a nice dinner at the caravan park and shared a very good bottle of local wine, and spent the evening chatting away.

author Liz	location Trio Camp, Praha, Ceská Republika
posted 12:49 CEST 07/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Ceska Republika ( all photos )

Litomerice, Terazín, Plzen ( 10 photos )
On Thursday we drove into town and spent an hour looking around the town square and a few of the narrow cobblestone streets of Litomerice. There were lots of old buildings, old cars and so on. We had coffee and some biscuits which we thought were shortbread, but which turned out to have sherbet in side. Nice, but a bit weird for breakfast. We found a little town market, where I got a backpack and a few other things.
The thing about the Czech republic is that just about everything is dirt cheap. Food, drink, souviners, even petrol, so all this cheap stuff is very nice after paying lots of money for our airline tickets the other day.
From Litomerice, we drove about two or three kilometres to Terazín. The whole village was turned into a ghetto for jews and other "undesirables" before and during World War II. It was run by the Nazis and conditions in the place were appalling. People had just over 1m of living space, hardly any food, hygene was terrible, I could go on and on about how awful the place was, and it was often the last stop-off point before the people were sent to Auschwitz and murdered. Not many people survived - even most of the children at Terazín ended up in the gas chambers. It was all very sad and depressing, but it was a really well set out display, and it was very interesting to learn about the history of Terazín.
We hit the road and spent an hour or two driving through lots of farmland, winding our way through village after village.
Driving in Czech takes a bit of getting used to - the roads are narrow, bendy and often bumpy, but the drivers here (especially the crazy Skoda drivers) don't really obey speed limits, overtaking zones or for that matter most other road rules. Most cars are full of dents and rust, and we even saw a Skoda that caught fire while it was just driving along the other day. At least with all these mad drivers we are having fun dodging them as they play games of chicken trying to overtake each other.
In the afternoon we came to the outskirts of Plzen (Pilsen), the original brewing place of Pilsener beer. We easily found our caravan park (Autocamp Ostende Plzen) on the outskirts of town, found a nice little spot by the lake and then headed into town. We had a ten minute walk and then a tram ride before we came to the central square, complete with huge towering church. We walked around the town for an hour or so. It is not the most exciting of places, but we still had fun exploring, before finding a busy little pub and enjoying two very big and very frothy pilsener beers.
Dinner was next, at a pizza place with delicious food and more beer. Feeling nice and full, we wandered before a bit more of the town before catching the tram and making our way back to the caravan park for the night.

author Liz	location Trio Camp, Praha, Ceská Republika
posted 12:46 CEST 07/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Ceska Republika ( all photos )

Into Czech ( 1 photo )
(Continued from Deutschland 2)
The countryside has been very different - lots more hills and mountains around the place, so it hasn't been quite as flat as most of the parts of Germany that we have been through.
The most startling thing as we drove through the first part of Czech was seeing prostitutes all standing by the side of the road! And there are a lot, all wearing not much and mostly near a hotel or shack. We supposed that with the many truck drivers going through, they must get a fair bit of business!
Our first big town we drove through was Teplice, and we immediately saw lots of ramshackle old buildings, all falling apart. There were lots of nice buildings too, but it was like they just hadn't bothered pulling down the old, unused buildings. We didn't stop there, but drove on to Litomerice where we pulled in to a tiny little caravan park next to a river.
Our first converstation with a Czech person went well - he was quite drunk but spoke some English. We paid for our camping spot and spent the evening at the caravan eating nice food and drinking nice frothy big Czech beers.

author Liz	location Trio Camp, Praha, Ceská Republika
posted 12:30 CEST 07/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Deutschland/Deutschland 2 ( all photos )

Towards the Czech Border ( No photos )
On Wednesday morning, after a bit of catching up with journals and another breakfast at the hotel, we got ourselves packed up and moving fairly early.
On previous days in Berlin, we had done our best to find Internet cafés where we could plug the laptop in, but all to no avail. So on wednesday we went to a Starbucks where we paid a high price to get a very good and fast wireless internet connection. We had an hour and we certainly used it well. The main thing we did was book our airline tickets to get us back to Sydney. We now have tickets from Amsterdam to London and then on the 24th of November we fly out of London Heathrow and arrive in Sydney on the 26th of November, going via Singapore.
I'm glad we booked the tickets, but also a little sad because it will mean the end of travelling for a while.
Anyway, after the internet stuff was done, we caught a train back to the mechanics and picked Rosie up. They have replaced the fuel filter, and no wonder it needed replacing - it was chock full of dirt. Hopefully that will mean our problems are all fixed for a while. We have done a fair bit of driving since Berlin, and we have had no shaking and stalling trouble since (touch wood).
So, we drove south out of Berlin following the same path we had taken to Dresden a week before. In Dresden we got quite lost and spent a long while looking for the road we wanted. There are huge amounts of busy road work going on in the old East Germany - it seems the Soviets didn't keep the roads in top condition, and everywhere we have been around Eastern Germany has been full of frantic roadwork. This often means roadsigns are missing, and routes have changed to what is on our maps. It certainly makes driving interesting!
After driving right through central Desden, we kept going south towards our border crossing into Czech. Again, we were stuck in traffic jam after traffic jam because there are roadworks everywhere. But, after driving through some beautiful forest areas (Germany has lots of forest and lots of farmland), we made it to our German/Czech border crossing at Zinnwald.
The Czech registered car infront of us took a very long time to passport control, so we were expecting them to keep us for ages, but we actually went through very quickly. I guess because Tim had all his paperwork sorted out, and I was fine with my British passport.
And so we drove into the Ceská Republika (Czech Republic).

author Tim	location Hotel Remter, Berlin, Deutschland
posted 08:22 CEST 03/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Deutschland/Deutschland 2 ( all photos )

The End of Berlin ( 26 photos )
After a nice buffet breakfast in the hotel, we got ourselves organised and went out for a wander.
We were looking for an Internet café and found plenty, but none who would let us plug in. Very strange indeed for such a large city. We found a Starbucks with wireless but they wanted 7 euros to get online. Ouch. Perhaps we will have more luck in Czech.
Mid afternoon a call came in about Rosie which we decyphered to mean that they had driven her around for a long time and eventually replaced a fuel pump, filter or both. It was ready to collect, but we had already told the hotel we would stay another night, intending to head off early in the morning.
We eventually decided to go check out the Spanish / Portugese restaurant just across the road from the hotel for an early dinner, which turned out to be a good move. I had Paella for the first time ever while Liz enjoyed her trout. We both enjoyed that someone else was paying :)
After dinner, we decided that a visit to Berlin's top tourist attraction was most probably worth it - the re-constructed glass dome on top of the Reichstag building. A bus and a walk got us there, via a huge travelling circle of painted ceraming teddy bears, one from each of 132 countries around the world.
We queued for a long time outside the Reichstag, but apparently less than average. After the metal detector and a big lift, we were up the top and there it was! The original dome was destroyed long ago, and this re-design is proving quite popular. We could see down into the parliament (only one "house" in Deutschland), but there was nothing going on there this late at night - everyone seemed to be a floor or two up, just below us, at a rather swanky looking ball. They may have been having nice food and drink, but they were in the fishbowl and we were looking in!
We wandered up the spiral ramp to the top of the dome, but the central part was closed for renovation, so we had to come down the same way. The views were great, but it's funny how some architectural things just work and others don't. This one did, and the dome itself stole the show.
After returning to the bottom of the dome, we spent half an hour or so wandering around in a circle, viewing the history of the building which is very interestingly displayed all around.
We'd had our fill, so we walked out, looking for a coffee shop. We hadn't gone far when we heard a voice say "are you guys from Australia?" Perhaps the huge aussie flag on my backpack gave it away, but there we were, talking to Jacqui from Aus. After whittling it down, it turns out that she is from Carss Park, Carwar Ave, right opposite the bowling club. Grew up about 200 metres away from me and here we are, meeting for the first time on the other side of the world! Also, her best friend is Pandora Zahar, who lives two doors up from our old house in Erang Street.
We chatted for a while over a coffee on Unter Den Linden, said "It's a small world" a few times, then agreed to try and meet up through Pandora at some stage in a year or two.

author Tim	location Hotel Remter, Berlin, Deutschland
posted 10:06 CEST 02/09/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Deutschland/Deutschland 2 ( all photos )

Rosie Goes to Meet Her Maker ( No photos )
No, not that sort of maker - she's been taken to a proper Volkswagen dealer and mechanic at the expense of our Travel Insurance.
After speaking to the Melbourne couple, we decided to get ourselves organised while we were still in an interesting city (the capital of the country Volkswagens come from, no less), just in case the repairs take a few days.
First on the agenda was getting into town, back to the Czech embassy and finding out whether my Visa was ready again. Infact, it was, so I handed over a reasonable sum of cash for my one-entry thirty-day Visa. Liz pays nothing for her much greater freedom (on a British passport), the trade-off being that she doesn't get a pretty little sticker thing in her passport.
We then rang the insurance company to set some wheels in motion, before heading back to the caravan park to drive rosie a couple of suburbs in to the VW dealer at Zehlendorf, Auto Mann. Luckily there was someone there who spoke English, and poked and prodded at her as if he had worked on these old things since he could walk. We'll call back soon to find out what the situation is.
So, this left us without somewhere to stay for the night, and yet again our insurance has proved it was worth the expense. Since the British pound is so strong at the moment, when we are given a fixed number of pounds for hotel and dinner, that means plenty of Euros. We elected to find our own hotel, which we pay for and then claim back.
A room-finding service (hey, why not? We're not paying for it) at Berlin-Zooligischer Garten station pointed us to a very central hotel, quoting a price which he expected us to balk at. "No worries" we said, for it was still quite a way under our allowance. We tottered off to dump our stuff at the Hotel Remter, about thirty seconds off the main drag in this part of town in Marburger Straße. The place is nice, quite old but spotless and with good service.
We dumped our things, before heading off to an Internet Café where we had no chance of plugging the laptop in, instead just checking our emails (we will reply soon!) and doing a bit of research into some flights from Amsterdam to London.
Next, we needed to look more into flights so went in search of an STA Travel office. Eventually finding it, we waited for quite a while before being told that they can only book Air New Zealand from London to Sydney (but anything from Hamburg to Sydney), which is fine, but there are very limited seats available. Prices aren't bad, but we are going to look around a bit more first.
Now it was dinner time, and with someone else still paying, we ate in style at the very nice Joe's Mirtshaus Zum Löwen, a branch of the big Löwenbrau chain (there's one in The Rocks in Sydney called Löwenbrau Keller). A couple of nice steaks washed down with a couple of great beers and it was time to head back to the hotel.
We originally planned to head back out for coffee, but the lure of big beds we didn't have to fold out, mind-numbing TV and hot showers put rest to that plan.

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