Travelog

This diary tracks our progress along the Silk Roads, with episodes appearing in date order, most recent first.  You can get to earlier entries by turning pages at the bottom of the screen.

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Category: Travelog

That's were we were yesterday.  We left Antje's as planned, followed almost immediately I shut her flat door by the realisation I didn't have my handbag.  Thanks to Antje and her neighbour-with-a-key, it got sorted very quickly, but not until we had missed our train, with just the 3 changes to Praha. 

So we ended up leaving for Praha at 11.45am and taking the very trodden route though Regensburg to Schwandorf to Furth im Wald on the Czech border.  So far so good(-ish).  We were especially excited to go on the double decker train, which was ace. 

We got on our next train, and approx 3 minutes across the border our Czech train (one carriage, approx 30 feet long, retro Soviet styling, high formica quotient) seemed to break down at a tiny station and were transferred to a bus.  We have now seen all the small villages and railway stations between theGerman border and Plzn (Czech language not strong on consonants, but good on beer - it's pronounced 'Pilsning') and it took about 5 hours. 

The countryside is really pretty, with loads of blackthorn, apple, pear and cherry trees overflowing with blossom, and kingcups everywhere.  Every village has a large village pond and picturesquely dilapidated old architecture.  We were eventually unceremoniously chucked of the bus with everyone else at another station in the middle of nowhere, and just followed the crowd to another train, which also stopped at all the tiny stations to Plzn.  Our packbacks are heavy, but at least we have got into the habit of always having water and a bit of food on us, so apart from the uncertainty at times that we were heading in even vaguely the right direction, we were enjoying ourselves immensely.

We eventually got into Praha at 8.45pm and were met by our first Praha host, Petra, who again speaks brilliant English, Czech, Spanish and Portugese, and who's housemate had gone away for the weekend, and offered us his room.  We fell into bed somewhat lighter than yesterday! I feel much better for being more physically active though.

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Yesterday we took a train out to the Bavarian Alps on what was a splendidly hot and sunny day, to visit one of Mad King Ludwig's more eccentric building projects: Castle Neuschwanstein.  It was fantastic but utterly, utterly bonkers.  I can't describe it with any justice other to say visit the above link, and imagine what would happen if a very insane yet rich Bavarian King decided to build a fantasy palace on top of an alp.  Oh, and I should add that he had an obsession with Wagnerian operas into the bargain.

We walked up to a nearby bridge over a waterfall and you can see some resultant piccys in the gallery.  A magnificent day was had by all and today we are taking it easy, cycling into town to tour around a bit before heading off to Prague tomorrow. 

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Saturday was our last full day in France, and one of the best. A friend of mum and dad's took us for a walk on his land, through the forest and up to a magnificent once-inhabited cave where we could still see cave paintings of bison made 5-7 thousand years ago. It was one of those caves made by a river so was pretty wide and high, and went back a long way, about 10 minutes walk.

Sunday saw us at Toulouse station saying goodbye to the folks, who have been excellent company and help thoughout our stay, and also therefore goodbye to the last remaining familiar people and places. Setting off on our 24 hour coach journey would take me into the first part of the adventure where everything was new: to Munich via eastern france and accross southern Germany to Bavaria.

And this is how it came to be that we were sat in a sunny beer garden on Monday afternoon with a stein in one hand and pretzel in the other, being regailed by an Oompah band playing 'My Way' - a surreal experience on very little sleep I can tell you! We were taken there by our lovely Hospitality Club host Antje who is great company, able to show us beautiful things here and steer us clear of the main tourist traps. Munich itself seems like a great place, very open and full of splendid parks, adn the folk here like to live outdoors much more than in England. We see huge numbers of cyclists and walkers, and the beer garden was packed with families enjoying the sun and each others company. In fact beer gardens may well be Andy Heaven: an endless supply of frothy beer, vast arrays of grilled meat products, and a silly band to help it all go down. Life is still good!


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Hi All

Goodness, we´re actually travelling.  Really going from one place to another place thats different.  What´s more, I´m enjoying it.  The coach ride from Toulouse to Munich was long, but I like looking at countryside, reading and thinking.  I occasionally spoke to Andy too, but he was to traumatised by the thought that he'd left his parents and was on the way to somewhere completely unfamiliar to do much more than wibble gently on the other side of the coach.  I think having been to Munic a few times I was much more sanguine about the prospect, and was busy enjoying the trees and wild flowers.  There were palms, mimosa and sheets of palest mauve thyme flowers near Montpellier and fields of poppies in the Rhone Valley and dark close pines with beech trees in their most delicate spring finery in the Black Forest.

There was only one bit of excitement on the journey when the super efficient driver left the woman sat behind us at the service station.  We didn´t have the German to explain to the driver what had happened so had to go though another passenger, so it was a while before the coach got back to pick her up, and she gave them a right earful for forgetting her.

It was quite weird being dropped by the coach in a suburb in the for north of Munich right by the new stadium where the first match of the world cup is apparently going to be played - it look like a giant silver tyre from the outside.  The Polizei checked our passports before we got off the bus, even though we could have got off at Stuttgart quite freely, and we decended to the opening bars of `That´s Amore´.  We then didn´t have a clue where we were and what we should do so we phoned our HC host Antje as instucted and she was lovely and told us what to do and met us at her local station in the south of Munich.

Which is how Andy and I ended up sitting in ein Biergarten by the river with a picnic and listening to and oompah band play My Way.

Today we went into the centre of Munich, to the Marienplatz and saw the Glochenspiel, Marienkirche, the Michaelskirche and the superb shopping and bierkellers.  I even found the same strange strawberry yoghurt chocolate bars that I had 20 years ago.

It makes such a difference having a local guide to help us decide what to do and where to go, and Antje has been superb (and left handed with good taste in music) with fluent English - it really puts me to shame, but my German is improving rapidly.

Auf weidersehen.

Ellen

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We're currently having a hard time in la Belle France.  It's been awful!  All that sunshine and good food.  We even had lunch at the veggie restaurant in Cahors today.  Pottering around with the folks is indeed blissful and we're making the most of it before we set off from Toulouse to Munich on Sunday - a 24 hour coach trip, arrgh!  The hospitality club has proved great as we now have accomodation lined up in both Munich and Prague, and in Prague we've also got tickets to see New Model Army playing - woo-hoo!  There's loads of wild flowers out now including some magnificent orchids that we've not seen before - very beautiful.