The last leg

The last leg of our journey saw us basically keep moving for a bit less than two days.  We went from Berlin to Copenhagen, where we spent the night, then took a train to Stockholm where we caught the tunnel banana, ok itsTunnelbana in Swedish, to the ferry terminal and then took a ferry to Helsinki.

The train ride from Berlin to Copenhagen had an interesting little surprise for us, the train went on a ferry, yes the ferry had tracks for the train.  Basically the train pulled up on the ferry, we all hopped off, then when the crossing was nearing completion we hopped back on the train and it continued on.  This was something that Craig wondered about earlier on in the trip and he had to wonder no more.

Copenhagen is a pretty city and we wished we had of organised more time here.  We spent about fourteen hours there so it was basically enough time to go to the mermaid statue, see the palace, sleep and get on the train to Stockholm.  We were lucky enough to see the changing of the guard at the palace.

These were everywhere in Copenhagen

Changing of the guard

The Royal Palace

The next day was the day we caught the train to the ferry, except for the two hours of waiting for the ferry we kept moving for about twenty four hours.

Getting ready to board

Catching the ferry was another new thing for Craig and something Leena had done often in her youth.  We did all the usual things like buy tax free stuff, eat and drink more than we should and watched a midnight cabaret.  It was raining when we left so we couldn't stand out on deck for long and look at the scenery go by, although Craig did manage to have a good look.  We had a bit of a surreal moment when we docked at Mariehamn (island called Åland is an autonomic area belonging to Finland), we were sitting waiting for the midnight show and when we looked out the window we could see another ship, it was very close, it wasn't until Craig got up for a better look that we realised  that we had docked and the other ship was leaving.  The rest of the voyage went as expected and we arrived safe and sound at Helsinki. 

Well that's it for our tripping around, we have a little time in Helsinki to gather our thoughts before making the long trek back down under.

A trip through the east side

After leaving Salzburg we headed for Prague.  We needed to take three different trains for this journey.  This went fairly uneventfully but along the way we discovered Czech back packers are about a order of magnitude louder than Italian backpackers, luckily this time they weren't on the same train.

Prague wasn't in our Lonely Planet so we bought an electronic copy, this proved to be not as good as the paper version, wasn't as accessible.  We spent a day exploring the city although very beautiful, it felt like the beauty was only skin deep, that is to say if you went inside some of those buildings they wouldn't look so good from the inside.

Astronomical clock

The Czech food we had on offer would not definitely not get the heart tick, it seemed as though they were trying to achieve the opposite in fact.  A baked potato for instance seemed to be kind of a flat deep fried cake made of shredded potato.  Craig resisted the urge to have the lard dumplings and cabbage for dinner on the last night.  On the topic of food beer seemed to be fairly cheap here about 31-40 Czech Crowns, 1 Euro is 25ish Crowns, we'll let you do the math on this one.

From Prague we headed for Berlin, Craig was pleasantly surprised by Berlin and Leena had been looking forward to going there since the start of the trip.  Berlin is an interesting place, with funky red and green pedestrian crossing men (Ampelmann), art installations scattered around the city, battle scarred monuments, cobble stones indicating where the wall once stood and other monuments that seem to warn Germans against attempting world domination or a planned economy again.

Ampelmann

Russian WW2 war memorial 

Brandenburg Gate 

Berlin is really a mash up of Imperialist, Nazi, Socialist and capitalist, this shows in the buildings streets, memorials and statues that are scattered around the city.  There is a kitch feel to the entire city.  The city seems to embrace its interesting past.  An example of this is the DDR museum.  This is a small museum that details life in East Germany, we spent about 4 hours just looking at all the different things, from the food they ate to the cars they drove to examples of the working conditions.

Trabant engine disected

World Clock

The highlight of our trip to Berlin would have had to be the Trabant ride, with this company http://cms.trabi-safari.de/opencms/opencms/trabi-safari/en/_main/home/index.html, you can read more about the Trabant here, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant.  We got driven around by a friendly guide who was more than happy to answer any questions, it felt like we were being driven around by a friendly local rather than a guide.  For instance he told us the the first gay film was shown in the DDR on the night the wall came down.  When the people went into the cinema the wall was up, by they time they came out (no pun intended) they wall was down.

East Side Gallery

The Trabant we had our tour in

This was Leena's third visit to Berlin, her first was when it was split in two (June 1989), her second was just after reunification (July 1992).  Last time she was there the sky in Potsdamer Platz was full of cranes.  This time she found lots of new buildings.  Leena remembered how Western citizens driving from West Germany had to wait in line for hours to get through the customs and border control.  The forest outside Berlin ie. in DDR was dead due to acid rainfall.  Looking the forest from the train window after 22 years the forest seemed to have healed itself as trees are now green and the forest floor full of flora.

Standing at Check Point Charlie was an interesting experience for Craig.  This was a place for him that appeared on the news as a child, but now it looks very different, with new buildings and walls full of information about what happened there.  This made Craig wonder what was going through the leaders of the DDR heads when the built the wall to keep its citizens in.

Checkpoint Charlie

Not far from Check Point Charlie is the former head quarters of the Gestapo and the SS at different stages.  This is vacant lot with just the foundations remaining, with walls of information of what when on there.  Craig found this a very uncomfortable place to be, the same way he felt in Port Arthur in Tasmania, the place wrecks of bad vibes from all the misery that emanated from there, it felt fitting that the place was left as a vacant lot.

Remains of Berlin wall

Craig and Leena had planned to hire bikes and explore the city with them, but as with any time one of them so much as muttered the 'b' word on this trip the heavens opened and it started to rain.  So far we have carried the helmets around for only one ride in Salzburg and that was in the rain.

Berlin was the first place that we wanted to buy souvenirs from.  The kitch feel to the city came through loud and strong in the souvenirs, which made them of interest to us, not the same crank the handle and spit out "I Love <Insert City Here>" T-Shirts, mugs and other crap that we've come across in our travels.  Somehow a model Trabant is more attractive than a pressed tin Eiffel Tower or blown glass from Venice.

Lets keep this short and sweet

We're having trouble finding differences in the different cities we are visiting, they are starting to look the same.  All have churches, squares and train stations.  Over the last few days we have visited Munich and Salzburg.

In Munich we stayed in a place that had the largest collection of posters pertaining to Munich, in our room there was a poster from the 1972 Summer Olympics.  We wondered around the city, ate and drank in various beer gardens.  Outside one beer garden was the remains of a cow that was cooked whole, this disturbed Leena somewhat.  Also of note were the large number of people drinking beer and wearing lederhosen.  Below is a picture of Craig having a little lunch time tipple.

Craig having a beer at the Hofbrauhaus

Now onto Salzburg.  Here we decided to rent bikes and the weather decided to rain, we did manage to ride around for about an hour though.  In our journey we did come across this house, some of you might recognise it.

Leena at Leopoldskron castle

Then in the evening we went to a chamber music concert because we happened to be here during the Salzburg Music Festival.  They played three pieces from Mozart, Erwin Schulhoff and Erich Wolfgang Korngold.  Leena was really impressed with the performance of the violinist Janine Jansen.  The audience seemed to agree because they gave them a standing ovation. 

Then for a change of pace we decided to go on an organised tour.  We went to the Eagle's Nest, a house built by Martin Bormann for Hitler's 50th birthday, atop Mt Kehlstein.  This is an interesting place to go as to get to it you have to catch a bus to an elevator, which was at the end of a hundred metre tunnel, then the elevator up to the house itself.  Now Hitler was claustrophobic and suffered from vertigo, so  to make it easier for him they made the elevator out of shiny brass to make it appear more roomy.  But when you get to the house from the terrace there is a drop down, so the place would have been like a torture chamber for Hitler and he only went there about twelve times.  Below are some pictures we took.