Europe

OK, so now we’ve arrived in Ireland and basically finished the full-on backpacking part of our journey, but I’ll fill you in on what we have been up to in Europe (briefly).

Pre Uganda

Amsterdam We have now been in and out of Amsterdam a few times, by bus and plane, and we spent about 5 days there at different times. I didn’t really like it in winter because it was freezing and got dark at four o’clock…. But I can see how it would be lovely in summer or spring. The highlight was definitely Ann Frank’s house, no questions asked. It was strange to see the place that so much has been written about.

BerlinWe got an overnight bus to Berlin which at the time felt gruelling, but Ugandan buses were in a different league altogether (the benefit of hindsight I suppose). We stayed in a really nice hostel and met a few people, plus did a mammoth amount of walking and looking at museums. We also did a walking tour that was very interesting.
Probably the ‘best’ thing we did was go to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp half an hour outside Berlin. It was certainly the thing that will stick in my mind the most. It was especially good because it was the middle of winter and there were not many tourists, and although the air was cold it was a brilliantly sunny day. It was actually quite a beautiful place despite the appalling history.

Post Uganda

Hamburg

The biggest highlight for me was the smell of our clean clothes after the Laundromat… wonderful! The dock area was quite nice and various old buildings, churches etc.

Dusseldorf

Our first sight of the Rhine – it was a lot bigger and faster flowing than I was expecting, definitely puts the snowy to shame. There were lots of parties going on along the river banks, the German equivalent of beach parties I suppose.

Cologne Cologne is dominated by Germanys largest cathedral smack bang in the middle of the city. It was very impressive. Mostly just spent our time wandering around looking at various sites. (Sorry to be so vague about the last few places…. It feels like a very long time ago now)

Bonn I went on a pilgrimage to Beethoven’s birthplace on my own because Jemma was sick. It was really cool – but I did feel like the biggest fool taking photos of myself outside it (we have this ingenious gadget for taking photos of ourselves – it’s just a long stick that attaches to the camera like a tripod does)

Bruges We ended up here quite by accident, as Brussels was too expensive. Neither of us had heard of it or knew how to pronounce it, but it turned out to be the most beautiful city in my opinion (even beating Prague). Having said this, it was at it’s best on the Thursday night we first got there, before all the hoards of tourists arrived. Apparently there had just been a movie released (In Bruges, with Colin Farrel) which we knew nothing about having lived under a rock called Africa for the previous 2 months J Actually, I found this movie hilariously funny. I’m not sure if it was a combination of the Irish humour and the fact that we’d just been to Bruges, or if we were starved of movies. I’ll be interested to hear some Australian opinions. Lets just say, it was NOT what I was expecting.

Flanders Part of our visit to Bruges included a day trip to Flanders fields. I probably don’t need to say that this was an amazing experience. I know pretty much nothing about the First World War, and so the snippets of info we were given were very sobering. I did not know that farmers still fin tons and tons (literally) of metal in their fields each year from unexploded shells and every year at least one or two farmers actually die when they plough over unexploded shells. Unbelievable.
Blegium is also not compensated for help in removing all the debris and they have many years work of work lined up in dismantling bombs stockpiled in a nearby forest.

Nice We spent about 40 stressful minutes in Paris sprinting through train stations To catch our overnight train to Nice (which we made by less than a minute), and then about 4 days relaxing! The beach was weird, as in rocky (!) but the water was soooo blue. It was also strange to be sitting on a beach with zillions of people sunbathing but practically no one swimming. Like the good Australians we are we got in. Yes, the water was freezing, but not that bad!
While in Nice we went on a day trip to Monaco, Canne and other surrounding parts of the French Riviera. The wealth of Monaco was fairly disgusting, as was the tourists’ fascination with it (I suppose we can’t talk, we were on a bus tour of all these areas too…). For anyone who is a petrol head, we drove around the Monte-Carlo Grand Prix circuit. I got a very strange feeling as we went through the tunnel and realised that I had been on this road before…. Thanks to our cousins’ playstation!
I’m sure there is a name for the phenomenon that happens when you go to the cinema and watch a movie simply because it is the next one on, not because you particularly want to see it…. This happened to us with the Rolling Stones movie. It was on and it was in English, so we saw it, and I enjoyed it immensely. It might have been because we hadn’t seen a movie in months, but it really was enjoyable!

Basel This lovely little City is in Switzerland very close to the border of France and Germany. We had been sampling a fair bit of chocolate in various places and I have to report that the best stuff is Swiss. We also caught our first bit of Australian news for a while – Australia culling 200 kangaroos made it to the front page and pensioners stripping off in fed square made it to page 3.

Basel also had the best set of church stairs we have seen. As you can imagine, we have seen quite a few... but these were the most cramped, steepest by far. Fantastic.

Heidelberg Heidelberg is a really cool old city, the highlight certainly being the castle on the hill. It was mostly a ruin, but very very old. I love the (generally old) people who look after castles and run the tours – they are so enthusiastic about their jobs…. So entertaining.

Spardorf

The village of Spardorf is where Jemma lived for 10 weeks on exchange with Coti and her family. I really like her family and we had a fantastic week with them. The last night of the Erlangen beer festival was on our first night there – it’s the biggest festival after Oktoberfest in Munich, and accordingly was mad. We also went for a day trip to Nuremberg, walked in procession through the streets for Corpus Christi, cooked dinner for the family one night and went to Coti’s 4-way joint 18th party on our last night. It was great to stay in one place and with a family for a week, and everyone was so nice and welcoming.

Prague

Our last full-on backpacking city was Prague. We caught up with Louie from Uganda and his mate John, which was great…. Checked out the castle, went to an opera, lots of walking, got lost a couple of times… The streets in Prague are not straight, and they all converge on themselves and go around in circles. Plus they all have funny names. So it was quite difficult to navigate. That’s my excuse anyway. I quite enjoyed the changing of the guard at the castle; I don't know how they could be so serious.

I must say that both of us had almost had enough of sight seeing by the end of Prague, and were ready to see some familiar people in Ireland. So far everything has been wonderful, and it’s great to see all our family again! Thanks all for wading through the tirade of information!