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Well I thought I had better let all the blog watchers know that I am back home in Christchurch now. Work's not bad but holidaying is way better! :)

Till my next holiday, bye bye.

Bored in departure lounge

We are just about to called to hop on the flight from Frankfurt to Sydney. You can see from the pic that we have been delayed a little bit ;) They have only given me a boarding pass to Sydney so I am not sure what time my connecting flight over to Christchurch will be. With a delay of 18 or so hours at this stage I don't expect I will be back to Christchurch till Saturday ( as long as this plane works ok ).

Anyways, will see ya when I see ya :)

Almost coming home

There was a slight hitch in my plans to fly home to NZ tonight. When the 747 was spinning up the engines to take off there was a backfire of about 10 feet of flame which is apparently not normal. After engineers checked it out and we sat around on the plane for a while we heard that we were going to be staying the night again in Frankfurt. It's now 5:30am and I've just got into the hotel room so a quick post before getting a little sleep and trying again tomorrow. They haven't been able to confirm our next flight schedules but will try and post that if I get a chance.

The travel fun continues...

Last post for this holiday :)

The train ride to Frankfurt and my stay in the hostel last night were pretty uneventful. I'm feeling well rested for the trip ahead. I've just finished breakfast and will have a pretty quiet day mucking around in Frankfurt before catching my fairly late (11pm) plane back to NZ tonight.

It has been a really great trip and I want to thank all my European friends for their awesome hospitality! I've had so many primo 'tour guides', thanks so much :)

Also I'd like to thank all you folk back home that have been following along with the blog, it was always really nice to hear from you. It's also going to be really great to catch up with you all again very soon :)

Love to all,
Jonny

Round 2 Hamburg

Today I managed to get out to the waterskiing place again and had great fun on the wakeboard. I think my snowboard practice must have helped because I found it much easier on the wakeboard than the water skis which made for a fun day. I learnt a couple of things on it thanks to the helpful staff :) I was only there on my own so I don't have any further pics of the wakeboarding action. Also I've just finished my first drive on the Autobahn. Ingmar kindly let me drive his nice wagon from Hamburg to Itzehoe which included a fairly long stretch of unlimited highway. I was pretty nervous with that drive mainly due to the gear shift being on the other side but felt pretty used to it by the end of the trip. So, lots of excitement ;)

Having checked off all the things I wanted to do on this trip it's now time for some goodbyes, one train trip to Frankfurt, one last night in a backpackers and then a bit of a flight back to NZ. I'm pretty sure I will be able to update again before I take off, so until then, signing out :)

Hamburg water fun

The highlight of my couple of days in Hamburg this time round was the trip to the water skiing place yesterday. I'd never heard of this before but at this place you don't get towed around by a boat. As you can hopefully see from the pic there is a system of tows kind of like using a skiing rope tow. Because it was my first time with this kind of water sport they got us to use water skis as apparently it is easier on the skis than with a wakeboard. It was pretty tricky and it wasn't till about three quarters of the way through our 2 hour session that I was able to consistently go round the course and by that time my arms were pretty tired! I would really like to try out the wakeboard as well so hopefully I will get in one more trip to this place before I leave so that I can give that a go. I don't know if I'll actually have time as well but maybe a pottery show would be cool ;)

Bye bye :)

Retrospective of Stuttgart

Well I'm now in Hamburg after my overnight train from Stuttgart. So, as mentioned in my previous post here are a couple of pics from Stuttgart. The first one is just a building I happened to like the look of in Stuttgart main centre. I think it might be the old palace but I'm not exactly sure. The second photo is from my visit to Tübingen. Unfortunately this castle gate was being renovated and had covers over most of it. I liked the look of this corner turret which wasn't obscured by the covers, so here it is. Tübingen was really cool with a myriad of little streets to explore. It has some really interesting university history and traditions as well. The next photo is a view of the main square of a little place called Freudenstadt which was a neat little village that we stopped into on the way to a forest walk in the Schwarzwald (Black forest). A photo from a very nice waterfall that we visited on the forest walk is also pictured. The rest of that day included some delicious local specialties at some little restaurant that seemed like it was miles from anywhere. Before I jumped on the night train Marion and Helge took me to a beach bar that is on top of a big building in the city centre of Stuttgart. There is a pic of that bar and the big (overexposed) glowing ball is actually an illuminated rotating Mercedes Benz insignia that adorns the top of the main railway station. So that about covers the highlights of Stuttgart and area and although it was a flying visit it was well worth it.

Stuttgart and Tübingen

Well I arrived in Stuttgart yesterday at lunchtime and spent half the day exploring Stuttgart city. I caught up with Helge in the evening and he showed me around a fantastic little university town (Tübingen) as well. This is just a quick and little post to say where I'm at. I'm using my cell phone as my internet access for this so sorry no pics. I will be jumping on the train later this evening to go through to Hamburg tonight and I'm sure there'll be another update from there and hopefully some picture postings from here as well.

Bye for now :)

Last day in Munich

Today is my last full day in Munich before I head to Stuttgart. I went for a day trip to a little place called Langgries today. I have actually been there before on my previous winter trip to Europe. There is a snow field there and last time I went snowboarding but this time there wasn't quite as much snow ;) Instead I took the gondola up the mountainside and went for a walk around and enjoyed the alpine air. The top of the mountain was shrouded in misty cloud which looked quite cool but sort of messed with the photography. The first photo is the BOB (Bayerishe Oberlandbahn), which is the train that took me to the mountain area. The other photo is just a view from up on the mountain. It was quite weird remembering what the mountian was like covered in snow. I definitely have to say I prefer sliding round the mountain on a snowboard ;)

Looking forward, I will be going to Stuttgart on the train tomorrow and staying a night there with Marion and Helge. Then it will be a night train to Hamburg for the final days of my trip.

More from Munich

Hey, well it's been a couple of days since my last update so I've got a couple more pics than usual. The photos above are in chronological order and I will explain them in that order as well.

On Saturday we visited the Englischergarten which is certainly a beautiful garden. One random thing there that I had heard of before but didn't realise it could be seen in Munich was the 'river surfing'. The pic is a view from a bridge over the river where there were a whole bunch of guys dropping in and riding for between 30 secs to 3 minutes each - pretty cool to watch! On Saturday evening we had a bbq close to Mark and Andrea's place by the Isar river. The pic for that event shows the various other crews along the beach hanging around the fires. That shot was about a 15 sec exposure I think, so it really was pretty dark at that stage. On Sunday we had a drive of a bit over an hour to get to Chiemsee which is a nice lake in this area. Once again a very scenic location and there are a number of little islands within the lake that can be visited. They have various castles and churches on these little islands. We visited two of the islands Herreninsel and Fraueninsel. It was pretty hard to pick a photo to show this area but you can see the nice still water we cruised around on to get to these islands as well as an idea of how many sailing and pleasure craft cruise around this lake. After a delicious meal at a local fish restaurant we headed back to Munich. Today I went to visit a couple of tourist attractions within Munich. I popped into the Olympic stadium. Since I enjoyed looking around the Berlin one so much I thought I better have a look at the one in Munich as well. After that I visited Schloss Nymphenburg which had an immense and beatiful garden as well.

So that about covers it for the main attractions for the last couple of days. Hope everyone out there is going good. Signing off :)

Forest cycling in Munich

Yesterday the main activity was a solid cycle ride around some parts south of the main Munich metropolitan area. We followed the Isar river for some time and then came around in a loop through some other little villages. We stopped half way for some munchies and a 'radler' (shandy) at a beer garden. There is a pic from the beer garden as well as Mark posing on one of the trails that we headed down. The other shot is from the point where we came out of the forest area and started heading back to a village. It was a very pleasant cruise with very nice weather and it gave me a good look at some of the beautiful Bavarian countryside. Other things I've been up to here include attending a basketball practice and catching up with a couple of workmates who happen to be in Munich for a work trip at the moment (quite a crazy coincidence).

Signing off for now :)

Munchin' in München

Well the previous comment from Blaine leads nicely into the title for my Munich post! Unfortunately I don't have a pic to show the munchin' that I did last night. I had the fairly common beer-hall meal of a Schweinshaxe and KrautSalat ( Wiki of Schweinshaxe). It's a really good feed ;)

The pics today are just a couple that I took when walking through the city centre after arriving yesterday. One of them shows the towers of Frauernkirche with a statue in the middle of Marienplatz and the side of the Rathaus.

I'm intending to have a fairly relaxing time here and won't be rushing around to all the tourist spots, mainly since I have been to Munich before.

Petra, München/Bavaria says hello ;)

Prague sampler

Well after some stormy and rainy weather overnight here in Prague the weather cleared for the morning and we had a busy day cruising round the city of Prague to see as much of the amazing buildings and sights as we could.

The pics include a little snap of some soldiers at the Prague Palace finishing up their changing of the guard. Also an amazing church which I have forgotten the name of right now. Also is a view of the city from up the top of the 'Old Royal Palace'.

It's almost dinner time here so I've got to dash. Another train tomorrow to get to Munich where I will catch up with Mark and Andrea. That train trip is a bit longer than the last but still not too bad at 6 hours. Anyway, you'll hear from me in Munich next.

Thanks to all who are commenting, it's nice to have some feedback ;)

Bye for now.

Made it to Prague

Hey All,

Well I've made it to Prague after a relatively short train journey of 4 hours. The hostel is pretty nice and have just spent the 3 hours since getting here going for a swim in the pool and having a sauna. Also as you can tell from this post I have just been testing out the internet connection from the hostel.

So not much else to report and I thought I'd better drop in a photo and since I haven't taken any yet here in Prague the one above is from Vienna and is the city hall that is the background of the film festival that was on while I was there. I didn't actually wait around to see any of the films either but it looked like it would be fun... ooh and that reminds me I have a pic of all the chairs so I'll post that up there as well.

Ok that's it now :)

Vienna action

Well I've been hanging out in Vienna for a day or so now and I thought I would post a couple of pics. The garden and city view is from a palace called Schoenbrunn which has amazing grounds including a maze and a labyrinth with some fun activities to do in it. I was hanging with a couple of guys from the hostel for the day and their itinerary covered a lot of the sights that I wanted to see as well. The city is very beautiful with many impressive buildings. The other photo is of a statue at the front of the parliament building. We visited the Votiv Church, the city hall, Burg Theater, Hofburg Palace amongst others. We also spent some time cruising through an interesting market they hold on Saturdays here. Half of the market is basically a huge garage sale so there is some crazy stuff to be found in there. The rest is food and clothes and 'junk' for tourists.

I'm staying tonight here in Vienna which makes it three nights altogether here. I'm on a day train to Prague tomorrow. That leaves only a couple of nights in Prague before I get back to Germany and the final leg of my trip.

Last of Split

Hi all,

I've just got to Austria and am settled into the nice hostel here in Vienna. I'm really, really tired after catching the night train from Split and not sleeping much - d'oh! Just doing a bit of washing and chilling on the internet to catch up.

Above are some photos from the last of my time in Split. I went to Hvar for a beach day and thanks to 'Mr. Tripod' I was able to get a photo of me after the first of many refreshing swims in the beautiful warm clear water. The building stuff is actually part of the foundations of Diocletians palace which is the origin of the town of Split. Quite interesting history and I think it was built around 3 AD so it's even older than me ;) The moon photo was just a snap from when I was sitting round waiting for the night train.

Oh well that will do it for now. I haven't even taken any photos yet here in Vienna. It's going to be a quiet evening refreshing for a big day of sightseeing tomorrow.

Byeeeeee!

Travel update

I've booked my next destination. I will be taking the night train from Split to Zagreb where I will catch another train taking me to Vienna. I'm going to staying for two nights there. At this stage I know my general plan for most of the rest of the trip. After Vienna I will head to Prague for 2 or 3 days and then on to Munich. Munich will probably be about 5 or 6 days and then it's back up to Hamburg for a last visit before heading down to Frankfurt where I fly back to NZ. It's quite crazy getting to the stage of my trip where I'm starting to plan ahead till the end but there's still plenty more fun to be had :)

Once again I'm in an internet cafe so tricky to post photos from there. I should be able to drop some more pics from Vienna and I'll look to show a couple more from the Hvar island visit I had from here yesterday. I think I'm going to miss the beaches here, it's been really awesome!

Till next time :)

Split and visit to Bol

The first photo is of the main waterfront area in Split. The beach shot is where I stopped for a swim in Bol which is on the island Braĉ. The sunset is off the ferry that I took back to Split in the evening.

My time in Split has been pretty relaxed and I've just been enjoying the beautiful beaches and warm water. I had a lot of trouble trying to pick the photos to put up for this post but hopefully these ones give an idea of the scene.

With internet time more limited here I'm hoping the 'pictures are worth a thousand words'.

Bye for now :)

Going to Split ;)

Ok, well this is my last day in Zagreb for the moment. I'm going to head to a place closer to the beach called Split (pun in post title intended). I was looking at a number of places to visit but with everything heavily booked I ended up choosing Split although I'm sure there will be some nice stuff to see around there. I have booked 3 days in Split so will hopefully get some good weather during that time. Zagreb has been warm today but overcast and threatening rain. I didn't get up to much today as I spent most of the morning sleeping. I had a fairly late night out with some of the folk at the hostel last night. The scene wasn't great and we were told by the locals it was probably the rain that had kept everybody at home.

The photo of the grasshopper is from one of the rest stops on the way to Croatia. There were millions of these little guys jumping round in the grass and Gunnar caught one to model for me. The other photo is of some shiny monument outside a church close to the centre of Zagreb.

So, it's gonna be about 6 or 7 hours on the bus tomorrow and starting quite early so pretty quiet night for me.

Zagreb...weather not so flash

Well just a quick post to say I made it to Zagreb. I'm just chilling out in the hostel tonight and outside it is pouring with rain and the lightning is frequent. I didn't come to Croatia for this sort of weather but I hope if I get to one of the beach areas it will be a bit nicer.

The city was quite nice and had some cool looking churches/buildings but I'm in the 'seen one church, seen em all' sort of zone. So, really I'm in Croatia to see some beach places and just chill out for a bit. Being high season here it is quite tricky to book ahead so I'm also just deciding what to book out of what is available or whether to do the turn up and see what you can get trick.

I had a really interesting trip here seeing some Austrian and Slovenian landscapes from the autobahns. Thanks to Maike's family who were very hospitable as usual. We had a stopover in Austria for the night at one of the 'rest stops' that are common along the Autobahns and it had really nice facilities including a nice restaurant and was quite a difference from the 'rest stops' I know in NZ.

I'll try and get some pics for next post - both straight and non-fuzzy!

Catch ya'll later.

Leaving Hamburg

Tomorrow I will be joining Maike's parents on their trip to Croatia. They will be taking their campervan and I am lucky enough to be able to catch a ride with them and jump out when they get to Zagreb, where I will begin the next leg of my travels. I am going to visit a couple of Eastern European countries (hopefully Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary) and then Austria before coming back into Germany to complete some visits in the south and then back up to Hamburg for a last visit before flying home. So, that is quite a lot to do with less than a month left and I will see how I go and where I like and as always will continue to be flexible with the plans.

As per usual when going to a new scene I am unsure of internet connectivity so will update the blog as I get a chance.

Just a quick update today as I have some packing to get into before trying to get some good rest before the 2 day autobahn cruise to Croatia ;)

Bye bye.

Best photo ever

In reply to some of the comments on my previous post I have made a bit of an effort to improve the photography. What do you think of this one!!!! 10 out of 10 eh :)

No big updates today which is why I have time to muck around and do joke photos. The weather was primo again today and we went to the beach which once again is by the big river and not the sea but hey. Actually I do have an interesting photo that isn't your usual beach scene from NZ...I will post it below.

Hey from Hamburg

This a pic of our Sunday morning breakfast here in Hamburg. Sorry, the photo is a bit 'wonky'. This is on top of Maike and Daniel's apartment. The weather has been excellent since I have been back here and you can see a sample of the blue sky in the pic. We also had a really good bbq on the 'beach' beside the river Elbe.

At the moment I'm just hanging out here, doing some washing ;) and generally getting sorted for the next phase of travel. I'm quite interested to head over to Eastern Europe and I'm looking into some options for that.

Oh well that's about it for now. Will keep you all 'posted' :)

Busy in Berlin

Well it is my last day in Berlin and I've just said farewell to Robina, so now it is time for me to put up a post showing some of the cool things she has taken me round to see over the last couple of days.

I have posted pics above for four things. One is a night shot from the TV tower in Alexanderplatz that is the main feature of the Berlin skyline. We had some lucky timing as we managed to catch a fireworks display while up there; very spectacular. By the way the TV tower is about 40 or 60 metres higher than Auckland's SkyTower. The second shot is from up on top of the Dom Cathedral. The Dom is a very ornate (as usual with these European churches) and has a fantastic view of the city. With the improved weather here, many people are enjoying the sun on the big lawn in front of this landmark. The last is a bit of a joke shot as it is entirely black. Robina took me to a very interesting restaurant last night. In this restaurant the dining area is pitch black. We also chose the surprise menu so it was certainly a lot of fun guessing what we were eating. The waiters in this restaurant are all blind so they of course have the necessary skills to navigate the dining room to serve everybody. It was quite an amazing experience!
There is also a shot of the Berlin Olympic stadium. We had a very interesting tour through the complex.

Around the things I have photos for we have done a whole lot more as well. Amongst others we have visited the Brandenburg gate, Jewish war memorial, the zoo and a number of towers and other landmarks.

So, in summary, good times in Berlin!


Travel plans at the moment are that I'm going back to Hamburg tomorrow by bus and will spend a few days there chilling out and deciding where to visit next.

Hi to everyone checking up on my status. Catch ya later.

Last of Poland and start of Berlin

Ok, so you've seen a few pictures above as it has been a couple of days since my last post. I'll try to go through and explain a little about each.

So I had the last day in Poland in a place south of Krakow called Zacopane. It's a small town but was very touristy and busy as it provides a great viewpoint to see the Tatra mountain range and also has some world renowned ski jumping facilities. It was a really beatiful area and if you look closely at the mountain range profile you can see the silhouette of a famous knight (hint, he is lying down). That was an excellent last day and it was sad to say goodbye to Poland and my excellent tour guide Ania ;)

I had an 8 or so hour train ride yesterday to get to Berlin and met up with Robina there. Today was the first full day of sightseeing in Berlin and we first went to visit 'Checkpoint Charlie' to learn some of the recent history of Berlin. We next visited the biggest remaining part of the Berlin wall and you can see a photo above of me getting some action at the wall. In the afternoon we visited Charlottenburg Castle which although didn't strike me as fantastically impressive on the outside (in the scale of castles that is), the interior was truly amazing. However, no photos from that one as they're not allowed. Instead I have some photos from the grounds of the castle. They had a very beautiful garden and I've posted a photo of the 'craziest' flower I could find. Also above is a shot of the castle looking back at it over the gardens (and some body of water I can't remember the name of).

Berlin has been pretty cold and rainy which is a bit of a change from Krakow. I hope to see some better weather in the coming days here. Oh well, I think that is about it for now :)

More adventures in Krakow

Here's a picture from a crazy chapel cavern approx. 100m under the ground in a salt mine. Everything you can see is carved out of the salt and most stuff is made of salt like the chandeliers and stuff. Was a really far out place to visit and amazing to see the things you can carve out of salt.

Had a fun night out exploring a couple of bars in Krakow and the first time I've partied in this city. Once again a good bunch of people to meet and hang with from the hostel.

Today Ania had a good idea to hire some bikes and we had a lovely ride along the main river through Krakow which you can look up on the internet because I can't say it and can't be bothered getting out the character map to write the funny letter in it. As I write this I just thought I should post a pic of it so that will turn up above.


I'm going to be quite sad to say goodbye to Krakow/Poland on Monday morning but the good times will continue in Berlin as well I'm sure.

Auschwitz-Birkenau

The trip yesterday was not really about happy 'touristy' stuff. I went with Ania to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. There is a lot of disturbing stuff to see especially what happened to children there. It was also crazy to hear some more detail on the medical experiments they were performing on people (both dead and alive). So, definitely a worthwhile visit and of course any problems you have in your life tend to disappear when compared with daily life in the concentration camp. It's one of those places that gives a lot of perspective.

The previous day we visited the university campus in town and just general sightseeing of the Krakow centre. Ania has been a great 'tour-guide' and we still have some very interesting trips to go on (salt mine today - better get ready soon).

My general plan for the next little bit is to go to Berlin on Monday to catch up with Robina. I will spend a couple of days in Berlin and then head back to Hamburg to 're-group'.

Thinking of all you guys.