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Vienna, Austria

Vienna was a great stop as we came here to see two friends we made earlier on the trip. We stayed and spent most of our time with Viki, whom we met in Copenhagen on our first day after disembarking the boat that took us across the Atlantic. She was a great host, guide and we had a lot of fun seeing her again. On our first night in Vienna, we went to Porgy & Bess to see Sori. We met her in Norway and she invited us to go see her play there if we could.  The schedule worked out and we did make it. It was a great show were she was alone playing Janggu, a traditional Korean instrument. We really enjoy learning about the traditional music she played in her natal country. We also really like the city and the train journey towards Slovenia offered great scenery.

Train view in Austria
On the train
Small town in Austria
Main shopping street in the first district of Vienna
Inside view of Stephansdom
Sori and us
Hofburg Palace

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Floodings

As we were mentioning in the previous posts, and for the few of you that noticed all the streets on the pictures have been wet a lot in the past few cities, we saw quite a few places with way too much water. There are lots of cities in Europe that suffered from floods this spring. One of our train journey was 5 hours late and on another one we had to take the bus between two stations as the train wasn’t getting through.

Braunschweig, Germany
Dresden, Germany
Dresden, Germany
Dresden, Germany
Dresden, Germany
Dresden, Germany
Dresden, Germany
Dresden, Germany
Train to Ilmenau, Germany
Train to Ilmenau, Germany
Army to the rescue
Army
Budapest, Hungary
Budapest, Hungary
Restaurant entrance, Budapest, Hungary
Tram tracks, Budapest, Hungary
By the Chain Bridge, Budapest, Hungary
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Györ, Hungary

Györ is a small city in Hungary. We decided to make a small stop there as it is nice to also visit smaller places from a country and not just the capital city. Doing so gives us a better view of how the people live in that country. This city also has a lot of history and a very beautiful old part with a tower and old streets. We climbed the tower for a small fee that gave us a great view over the old part of downtown. For us, it was more of a view of the flooding but we will show the pictures from that and a few other flooded cities we visited in the next post.

 

 
 
 
 
 
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Budapest, Hungary

We took a night train from Dresden to Budapest. We first visited a friend that couchsurfed at our home in British Colombia last summer. He lives in Ilmenau, Germany, we stayed overnight and then took the train to Dresden for a connection with the night train. We arrived 10 minutes late in Dresden for the connection but we were lucky enough to see our train still on the next track when we arrived. The night train ended up leaving 2 hours late and got to Budapest 5 hours later than expected. We were in good company so the ride was fun. We met 2 girls from Amsterdam and a couple from close to London. This is them on the first picture and it also shows how “big” the room was. We did make it there so everything was good in the end. The apartment we reserved was a 2 min of walk from the station, but we walked for 20 min to get there as we didn’t take the proper map with us. We found the place and contacted our host, which came right away and showed us the apartment. We were living on the 4 th level of an old building that have 20 ft ceiling or so. It was a really nice place and we enjoyed having our own place that we didn’t share with anyone for 3 nights. The next day we visited downtown and really liked it there. We keep saying this about everywhere but it is really beautiful here. We spent the next two days exploring the city.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Dresden, Germany

Dresden is a small city in south-eastern Germany. It is officially in the east so the mentality is a little different already. We took a morning train from Berlin and saw lots of water in the fields and everywhere. We talked for an hour with a couple from Toronto that are going to Prague. They also said the subway in Prague was flooded. We didn’t expect so much water but the flooding seems worst than the bad one in 2002. The city still had quite a few nice spots that we liked. The hostel, Lollis Homestay, also had a really relaxed atmosphere, so we felt like home again.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Sachsenhausen, Germany

The Sachsenhausen was a concentration camp from 1933 to March 1950. We took the really interesting audio tour loaded with extra information. It is not the funniest place to visit, but you learn a lot. The history going with that is terrible. Most of the prisoners going in would never make it out. This place has been designed all along to be a concentration camp by architects. They built the whole site to be what it became.

 
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Berlin, Germany

Berlin is a big German city. It is a must see as it is full of history and everybody heard of it. We wanted to learn more about World War II and this stop helped, along with the next stop and the visit of Dover Underground tunnels in United Kingdom a few weeks ago. We walked a lot in Berlin, just like anywhere else so far, even if Berlin has a well developed public transit system. We saw the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, the Holocaust Memorial, the East Side Gallery and of course the Wall. The East Side Gallery is a big part of the wall which is covered with paintings from different artists. We were only one day in Berlin visiting all the sights but we could have easily spent more time there.

Fernsehturm
Brandenburger Tor
Reichstag 
Holocaust Memorial
The line
Painting from East Side Gallery
Nice restaurant
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Bruges, Belgium

Andrée-Anne was in Bruges 10 years ago and it is still one of her favorite town. Without it being planned, we stayed in the same small hostel from her last visit. It still looks the same so she recognised it right away as we walked in. Belgium being famous for beers, we tried a few different ones from the bar downstairs. We also enjoyed an happy hour at 1 Euro a beer, the cheapest one in a bar so far on our trip. We also went for mussels and fries as they are famous too, but they were deceiving as we were out of season. We really enjoyed walking in all the small streets surrounded with old buildings and canals. We also went up the Belfort, a tall tower on the main Markt Place containing the famous carillon. The view from that high was amazing even for a steep 18 Euro and 366 steps.

 

Belfort
Markt Place Restaurant
 

Beer Wall

Carrillon Drum
View from the top
Stairs to Belfort

Canal View
 
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Amsterdam, Netherlands

Amsterdam was an interesting stop. It is a place for people that like to party of course, but is also a very pretty city with all the canals full of house boats and old architecture. Red light district is also very famous with all its coffee shops and all the small alleys with girls waiting for clients behind glass doors. This city is also bike friendly. We’ve never seen that many bikes in the streets and parked everywhere. They have dedicated bike paths that are busier than the streets.

Train station
Train track
Canal
Old buildings
More bikes
Us

House boats
House boats

Canal
Big bike parking
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Lübeck, Germany

Lübeck was our first stop in Germany. We read about this small medieval town and decided it was worth a look. It was rebuilt after the old settlement burned down in 1128. It has a really nice architecture from the 12th century.