Continental Europe - May, June2013

After we had finished our Dales Way walk in May, Nancy and I stayed with my mother for a few days and then headed to Germany where we had scheduled to pick up my new car from the Audi factory – a Q5 – very nice.  We flew from Manchester to Munich where we were whisked off by an Audi chauffeur to Ingolstadt, 50 miles north of Munich and the location of the Audi factory.

The European Purchase option for an Audi is quite a nice deal.  You get 5% off the sticker price of the car and of course you get to order it exactly as you want – nothing extra and nothing left off.   You get picked up from Munich airport and put up in a hotel in Ingolstadt and then delivered to the factory the next day.

At the AUDI Factory with the new car

We had a great time at the Audi factory – we were given free access to the bar and restaurant, a factory tour and a visit to the Audi museum.   The factory tour was quite amazing – such a clean place, such a quiet place, and it was amazing how much was done by robots – very impressive indeed.  Of course at the end of the day we got to drive away in this wonderful new vehicle.

Augsberg

Mid afternoon, we headed off to Augsberg, our resting place for the night.  We didn’t know where to stay, but somehow we found a nice little hotel near the center of town.  f course, the hotel was down a very narrow street and the basement parking was an even narrower subterranean entrance.  Not the place to take your new car on its first day out.  Still, we escaped unscathed.

The next day we headed out of Augsberg, itself a pretty town, to a couple of even prettier towns on the so-called RomantischeStrasse.  The first town was Dinkelsbuehl – very picturesque, very cute, but quite touristy.  The perfectly preserved buildings in the town center (some dating back to the 15^th century) were just a little bit too perfect well manicured.  As is usually the case, the large number of tourists wandering around did not add to our appreciation of the place.

Dinkelsbuehl

We moved on to one of the other towns on the Romantic Road - Rothenburg ob der Tauber.  This again was another perfectly preserved town laden with tourists.  We walked around, grabbed a bite to eat and decided we had seen enough of the Romantische Strasse.   We decided to head south (we had been heading north today) and make for the Bavarian Alps and Berchtesgarden (Hitler’s summer retreat).

As we drove southeast, the rain started and by the time we reached Berchtesgarden it was pouring down.  It was dark when we rolled into town and we were not in the mood for being selective in our lodging so we found a room in the quite adequate but unexceptional Hotel Grunberger.

The next morning we had thought we would go up to Hitler’s retreat, Kehlsteinhaus above Berchtesgarden (nicknamed the Eagle’s Nest and built as a 50^th birthday present for the man).  Alas this was not to be, the weather was not good (rain and snow at higher altitudes) and the road to the top of the mountain was closed.  We settled instead for a visit to the museum.  It was an interesting museum dealing with the rise of Hitler, his association with the Obersaltzburg area and the Second World War.  It has to be a difficult subject for the Germans to address, but I felt they did a good job here in Berchtesgarden.

In the afternoon we continued southeast and crossed into Austria and made our way to Salzburg.  We splurged on a room at the Hotel Bristol, one of the nicer hotels in town.  It was still raining pretty heavily and the Danube looked like it was in flood.  The old part of town is quite nice (it’s a UNESCO World Heritage site) but on this wet day it was hard to fully appreciate.   You would think that on a wet day like this the tourists would be few and far between.  That was not the case; they were all there with their umbrellas, which made it all the worse.

Danube at Salzburg

The next morning, it was damp but not so heavy rain.   We walked up to the fortress on top of the hill overlooking the town – the Hohensalzburg Fortress - quite impressive with nice views of the city.   In between rain showers we again wandered around the old part of town.

In the afternoon, we left Salzburg for the Czech Republic.   We were not sure where we would end up but we knew we ultimately wanted to get to Prague.  We sped east on the autobahn past Traun and Linz to tbe border with the CR.  The weather started getting worse as we drove north into the CR.  The rain was pouring down.   We stopped in Ceske Budejovice, the birthplace of Budweiser beer, but were unable to find a hotel that looked appealing so we headed further north.   We finally stopped in Tabor, a nice little town, the birthplace of the Hussites, and we found a nice little hotel in the main town square, the Hotel Nautilus.   I liked Tabor very much - at least the old town part where we were staying.  It was a shame about the weather however, but we were getting used to that.

Tabor

The next morning we continued on towards Prague.  Another damp day but things started to clear as we got into Prague.  We resolved to find a hotel on the outskirts of the old city where we would park the car and take the tram into town.   That plan did not work very well and soon we found ourselves in the middle of the old town and however hard we tried to get out we kept getting deeper and deeper into narrower and narrower streets. Since the Vitava River, a tributary of the Danube that flows through the city, was approaching flood stage we were concerned about the old town flooding so we finally extricated ourselves from the downtown area and found a place on the east side of the river between the Castle and the Loreta.  That was a good move, the area by the castle is quieter and less traveled by tourists - our hotel, the Domus Henrici was small, tasteful and great value.

Prague

Whilst we were seeing Prague in imperfect conditions - it was grey, it was wet, flood barriers were being erected, the Charles Bridge was closed for most of the time - nevertheless it is a wonderful city.  Everywhere you look in the old city there is something wonderful to behold, whether it is an elaborate astronomical clock on the old town hall, a cathedral, an elegant old hotel, a plaque to commemorate a notable resident like Kafka, Einstein, Chopin, or just some simple adornment on a building.   The place is magnificent.  Yes it is full of tourists, perhaps not so many in these wet times, but that is the price you pay in such a wonderful city.

The Astronomical Clock, Prague

We walked a lot, we rode the excellent tram system, we dined reasonably well (however food would not be high on my list for reasons to return), we went to a classical music concert in an incredible hall.   It is an impressive city and we had a great time.

We stayed an extra day longer than we anticipated and then headed out of town to the west en route for Berlin.   On the way we stopped in Pilzen for lunch and then got sidetracked into the Pilsener Urqueil brewery.   Since we were at the source of the pilsener brewing method it was only right that we do the brewery tour.  Well worth it, particularly the underground tunnels where they cold-fermented the beer in the old days.

Pilsener Urqueil Brewery, Pilzen

From Pilzen we went further west to Marienbad.   Marienbad is a strange place.  Basically a park in the middle of town surrounded by lots of very large, very ornate, Victorian era hotels.  It came to prominence in the late 1800’s early 1900’s as a spa resort where the rich would take the waters and various other treatments.  It is still clinging to this client base, though these days they are not so rich and some of the hotels show only a glimmer of their past grandeur.   Since it caters to residents who stay for a week or more and take the waters, it was not that easy to find a hotel for the night.   It’s just not something they do.  We did eventually get a room at the Danube Health Spa Resort Centralni Lazne.  A nice enough place but the residents all looked infirm in some way and we may have brought the average age down, which is hard for us to do these days.  This hotel was also remarkable in that it had the longest check-in procedure one could ever experience.  I don’t know what the lady was doing, but she was messing about with some ridiculous bureaucratic process for 20 minutes.

Marienbad

Breakfast the next morning was weird - the food was bad, the clientele didn’t look happy, there was something just too strange about the place.  We did however want to make the best of our stay so we donned our dressing gowns and slippers and padded the halls like the rest of the guests.   We went to the swimming pool and spa area, everyone else was going to various treatment rooms where all manner of baths, irrigations and potions were deployed.  The swimming bath, indoor, was one of the most ornate pools I had been in.  There were pictures of Edward VI on the walls of the hotel - I wonder if he swam in this same pool - it was certainly from that era, with elaborate tiling, stained glass roof, brass rails around the pool.

Swimming Pool, Marienbad

We then walked around the park and took the waters.   There was a pavilion with 5 or 6 different spring water outlets - one was sulphurous, one was metallic, all tasted nasty.  I guess you figure out which water is best for you condition and you sip away from these elaborate porcelain tea pot vessels.  We took the cheap option and shared a plastic cup (which you had to pay for). As the water tastes so bad they sell these wafer biscuits that you can munch on to make the whole process a little more agreeable.   Like giant sugary communion wafers.

After Marienbad we headed for Berlin arriving there in the mid-afternoon.  Here we were in another major city with the new car.  A car is not exactly what you need in a big city.  In some respects we would be better off without it.  However, we were lucky enough to find a nice hotel in the Mitte district, the Hotel Honig, with parking not too far away.   That evening we walked the local streets and found a nice Italian place to eat.  This neighbourhood looked very hip and trendy - a nice place to live I would imagine.

The Reichstag

The next day we did a bit of a walking tour of the more significant sites - Unter den Linden, the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag.   Outside the new parliament building there was something going off and we stood and observed a military band lining up and a motorcade coming down the street, then Angela Merkel herself came out to greet who we later found out to be the Turkish President.  All at a distance of course, behind a fence, but you could tell it was Angela.

A brief visit in the afternoon to the Bauhaus museum and some more wandering around. I was getting a cold (which lasted for the next 3 months....) and wasn't feeling good.

Berlin Cathedral

The next morning we visited a nearby section of the Berlin Wall. They have preserved it in various places around town and there appears to be a brass rail embedded into the pavement along it's path through the city. The other interesting thing embedded into the pavement are these small brass plates commemorating Jews that once lived in the adjacent housing and were presumably sent to the concentration camps.  

One of the last remnants of the Wall

Plaques memorializing Jewish homes in Berlin

We then went to the Checkpoint Charlie area and toured the museum there. It is a bit cheesy and touristy but quite interesting.

Checkpoint Charlie

We then drove out of town to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. It is the nearest camp to Berlin and was used as some sort of model for the other camps. Quite disturbing really. The camp is situated in a neighborhood where people carry on apparently normal lives - shops, schools, businesses, children playing in the parks and then this place where terrible things took place. Again rather tastefully preserved and displayed if anything like that can be tasteful.

Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp

The next day we drove to Amsterdam. This would be the last stop on our trip and again another place where you don't need a car. Amsterdam is even worse for parking. After we found a hotel (a nice place with a room overlooking a canal) we sent our car to a Car Hotel. Someone comes along and drives your car out of town to a parking lot somewhere and then you call up the next day and they deliver it back to you. Kind of long distance valet parking. Not cheap either.

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is a nice city to wander around in and lots of interesting stuff going on in the canals and lots of interesting and varied bicycles with all manner of attachments going by. We managed an early morning visit to the recently restored Van Gogh Museum (before the lines got outrageously long) and then I left to deliver the car to the port from where it would be shipped back to the USA.

A Van Gogh favorite

Amsterdam Canal

The next morning we got a cab to the airport and flew back to Heathrow.