Heading East - August 2014

Two weeks free. The question is where to go?

I want to do a road trip with two friends. We already organized a car for two weeks. Now we only need a direction. Usually, when planning my travels in Europe, I focused on the countries that are located in the west or south of Germany. So this time we want to explore a part of the east.

Let’s start from the beginning.

J., S. and I started our trip on a sunny Saturday morning, driving to Nürnberg. The “39. Bardentreffen” took place and there were a lot of stages scattered in the city. After listening a while to the musicians we passed the house of Alfred Dürer and visited the castle of Nürnberg from where you have got a great view over the city. Going back to the city centre we decided to join a guided tour through the prisons under the old town hall. It lasted half an hour and we got to see a lot of instruments of torture. When we left the old town hall it started to rain. It was quite a storm and we didn’t have any umbrella with us, so we decided to end our tour through the city and we ran back to the car.

The rain was so strong, that we had to drive with 50 km/h on the highway.

Finally we arrived at my uncle’s place, where we spent the night and got some travel tips for Budapest.

The next morning we drove to Passau. The three rivers Danube, Inn and Ilz are joining each other in Passau. That is why the city is also called the city of three rivers. Each of the three rivers does have another colour. The Inn looks green, the Ilz black and the Danube blue. Usually you can see the three colours of the rivers. But because it was raining the day before, the Danube and the Inn looked brownish and only the Ilz seemed to be black. On the picture you can see the brown water of the Danube and the black one of the Ilz joining from the right.

We did a boat trip on the Danube and learned a lot about the city. In the 17th century was a huge fire in Passau, which burned down the whole city. After the fire two italian master builders built up the city again and gave the city its mediterranean appearance.

Because of the three rivers next to the city, there are very often floods. The last big one was in the year 2013. You can still see the marks while walking through the city.

Before moving on to Vienna we visited the old town and the St. Stephen’s cathedral. In the St. Stephan’s cathedral you can find one of the largest church pipe organs in the world.

On our way to Vienna it was raining, thunder and lightning. Nonetheless we decided to drive first to a campground. There it didn’t rain yet, so we decided not to go to a hostel but to stay there. The reason for that? Well, it was cheaper and we kind of like adventures. We have been really lucky, because we just finished putting up the tent when it started to rain.

The next day we explored the city. We started with a guided tour through the opera which was quite impressive. From there we went to the Naschmarkt because we heard that it’s Vienna’s most popular market. I have to say that I was a bit disappointed comparing to others markets I have already seen.

The opera

From the Naschmarkt we walked to the St. Stephen’s cathedral. On our way we passed the metro station Karlsplatz. There is an art project of the canadian artist Ken Lum installed. On several mirrors are written different headlines and under them you can see red growing numbers. The topics of the mirrors are funny like “enamoured people in Vienna” or “number of consumed Schnitzel since 1st January”. But there are also thought-provoking topics like “number of starving children in the world” or “the worldwide armament costs”. It is really interesting to see how fast the different numbers are growing.

After visiting the Stephan’s cathedral we felt hungry enough to have lunch in the restaurant Figlmüller. The Schnitzels from this restaurant are very famous because they are larger than the plates they are served on. Because the Schnitzels are that big they come alone without bread or any other side dish.

Feeling stronger we walked through the city to see all the famous buildings like the Austrian national library, the Hofburg and the town hall. From the town hall we took a tram to the Central Cemetery. We couldn’t imagine that a cemetery can be that huge. I mean, there are bus stations in the cemetery.

From the Central Cemetery we continued our sightseeing tour in search of the Hundertwasser House.

The day was drawing to a close, so we walked through the Prater, one of Vienna’s public parks, and decided to end the day at its amusement park with a cold beer and one round on a Ferris wheel.

The next evening we had to be in Budapest at a girl’s house we arranged couch surfing with. After putting down the tent we just started driving. Because our feet were tired from the day before, we just stopped in a small village called to Bad Deutsch Altenburg. We played some card games next to the Danube and relaxed in the sun. Although it was just our 4th day on the road, it seemed already like more than one week, because we had so many new impressions. Bratislava was on our way to Budapest, yet we decided to see the city. Who knows when we will have the chance to see the city again?

We entered the old city through the St. Michael’s Gate. Walking through the city we kept thinking on if we change some money or not. But all the prices were announced in Euro. Well, Slovakia has the Euro since 2009. Welcome in the present age.

In Bratislava you can see several statues like the one of the Schöne Náci, the one of a soldier or the one of Cumil, who is looking out of a manhole cover.

On the Hlavné námestie, the main square of Bratislava you can see the old town hall and the Maximilianfountain. Next to one of the windows of the old town hall is stuck a canon ball, which shall remind on the leaguer of the city by troops of Napoleon in the year 1809.

To have a nice view over the city, we walked up to the Castle of Bratislava. On our way we had a nice view on the UFO Bridge.

After we got some impressions about Bratislava we went on to Budapest. It was for all of us the first time that we did couch surfing and I am happy about that we made such a great experience.

The first time I was walking through Budapest was by night and I really fell in love with city with all its grandiose buildings. Only one thing clouded our mood – the fact that we were hungry and we had difficulties to find something to eat in the middle of the night.

We started the next day with a tour through the parliament to see among other things the crown jewels of Hungary. Afterwards we passed a memorial next to the Danube. There are many old shoes standing on the place where mainly jewish people have been shot in the year 1944/1945.

The next stop we made at the market hall, where we had traditional Hungarian food, like Gulaschsoup. We were a bit puzzled by some of the souvenirs that you could find in the market hall. Because we are all coming from the black forest it was mostly the cuckoo clock with the writing Budapest on it.

As we wanted to leave the market hall, it was raining like hell again. This time we had umbreallas with us, but we were not in mood to walk in the rain through the city. So we went back to our hosting family. The girl that accepted our request was home and she offered us to show us some pubs in Budapest. I was fascinated by one pub/club that was located in a house that should have been pulled down.  It was furnished only with pieces of furniture that they found on the bulky waste.

Around two o’clock we arrived back in the flat. The mum and the sister of the girl were still awake and the mum started to cook immediately something for us. So we had dinner in the middle of the night and chatted until three o’clock.

It was quite hard to wake up the next day but we planned had a long travel . From Budapest we went directly to visit I., a good old friend.

The first day in Cluj we spent relaxing and having Sushi - all you can eat - in a big shopping mall. On our way back home, probably you can guess already, it started raining buckets and we got soaked to the skin.  But lucky us, the rain stopped in the evening and we had time to explore the city centre. The festival colours just took place and we had the chance to see the traditional band Fanfare Transilvania.

After visiting so many cities, we wanted to escape and relax a bit in the nature. So I. took us to Maramures, a region in the north of Romania, next to the Ukrainian border, where his parents are living. The mum of I. cooked Sarmale for us, a traditional Romanian food and we put up our tent in their garden.

The next day we packed some stuff for having a BBQ and went on a hike. I think we exhausted a bit, walking up the steep hills in the midday sun. That’s probably why J. and S. got sunstroke at the end of the day, while I could escape with a bee sting. Nonetheless it was a really fun day on which we were rolling down the hills, climbing drying-racks and dancing like Indians around the fire.

J. did still feel sick the next day, so she stayed home, while I., S. and I went to visit the monastery in Barsana and the happy cemetery. On our way we stopped at a friend’s place where we had the chance to see a traditional Romanian room.

After more than one week on the road it was time to head back home. We said goodbye and left Maramures on Tuesday morning and drove the whole day until we arrived in Krakau where we just fell in our beds.

The first challenge on the next morning was to exchange the big polish banknotes in coins for the ticket machine to get a parking ticket. After visiting several shops and talking with our hands, because unfortunately not everyone did understand English, we finally managed and went to see the sights of Krakau. We visited the cloth hall, the market place, the museum in Schindlers factory, the jewish quarter, the castle of Krakau and the statue of the dragon. Tired of walking so much again, we made a break in a little coffee place called Massolit, which is really nice because it is also a book shop.

Walking back to the car, we stopped again at the market place. There were some traditional bands playing music.

Our plan was driving through the night, so that we would arrive the next morning in Dresden. We left Krakau at around nine o’clock. But again it started raining buckets and no one of us was concentrated enough to drive like that the whole night. So we stopped in the middle of nowhere on a polish parking spot and slept for more than four hours. It was quite scary because it was lightning all the time and I had the feeling there was always someone coming with a flashlight looking in the car.

In Dresden we went right away to the campground and slept for some more hours before we went to see the city. Dresden is a nice city and we really enjoyed walking around. The reason for that was probably also, that it was our last day. We spent the night freezing on the campground. Seemed like the summer in Germany was already over again and left early on the next morning.

 We wanted to stop somewhere on our way back home, but it was raining again. We were really not in mood to get completely wet again, so the only stop we made was at Mc Donald’s to have lunch.