Salzburg

After a week in Vienna we spent 3 ½ days in Salzburg. We had originally planned on going straight to Munich, but I did want to see Salzburg and I’m so glad we went there.
We stayed at the YoYo hostel, which was really good. They served up some pretty cheap dinners, and the breakfasts were great value too!

We went to the salt caves and the ice caves one day.

They used to mine salt in the old days and it was one of Salzburg’s main income streams.
The walk to the Ice caves was very steep and its very cold in the caves but it was sooo worth it. There are naturally formed ice structures that change every year. The tour in the caves lasted about 2 hours and we were freezing by the time we got out.






We had one day with not much to do so we decided to visit Hangar 9, which was an exhibition space right next to the airport. There was an origami exhibit that we thought we may as well see as we had nothing else to do. It turned out to be fantastic. Some of the origami was amazing and a lot of skill was used to create the pieces. There was also a whole bunch of planes from a stunt flyers group to add some zing to the exhibit.
On our last day in Salzburg we walked up the hill and you can see some great views from there.

Austria- No Kangaroos here

Vienna


As we caught such an early flight from Munster-Osnabrook we arrived in Vienna nice and early at 8 in the morning.
We stayed at a hostel right near Westbahnhof, which was very convenient, as we could never remember the name of the hostel, just how to get there from the train station.
As we were spending a while in Vienna we got “Vienna cards” which were really good value as we got discounts to a lot of attractions.
We did lots of walking around the main city district. The Dom there is a huge gothic type with mosaics on the roof, that don’t seem to match the style of the rest of the building.



We went to the royal crypt, which was pretty cool. We also went to a clock museum, which had some really nice clocks, and we saw some Roman ruins that were in the middle to town. While we were out walking it started to pour down with rain so we hastily took shelter in a doorway, which turned out to have some really cool carving on it that we would not have seen if it hadn’t rained so hard. We ended up waiting about ½ an hour for the rain to let up enough for us to dash the 50 meters to the nearest underground.


On the Sunday we saw Schloss Schoobrum, where the Hapsburgs lived until 1918. Te grounds are absolutely huge and there is a really nice Gloria at the top of the hill, from which you can see for miles.
There was also a few hedge mazes which were pretty cool. Unfortunately it started to rain while we were in there and we had to find some shelter. We saw a few squirrels in the gardens, which was pretty cool.











On Monday we went to the house of music, which had a very hands on display of music and sound which was fairly good.
In the evening we went to a chamber concert which had some really good music, mainly classics like the ‘Blue Danube” and stuff.

On Tuesday we went to a modern art gallery. It turns out that Matt really like photorealism as a style of art. There were some really nice pieces there and some that were a bit bizarre.

We also took the tram to see some work by Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who was an Austrian Artist/ architect. The buildings are pretty cool and there are still people living in them.

Epe

Gronau-EPE

Next Matt and I traveled to the other side of the country to spend some time with his “Aunt”.
To break up the journey we stopped for the night in Hanover, which is a very industrial town without much tourist stuff, but some pretty cool buildings like the one shown below.

We spent 2 weeks in Epe, which is near the Dutch border. It was a very relaxing fortnight and we went to Holland one night to see “Charlie and the chocolate factory” and as it was screening in English with Dutch subtitles. Before the movie there was a really cool laser show.
We also went to Munster with Jannine and Haunau to have a look around. The Dom there has a really cool astronomical clock.

We also went to visit a castle one day.
We went into Enschede a few times and it became obvious that we had crossed the border back to Holland when we saw all the bikes parked outside the shops.
As the weather was really nice we indulged in a lot of ice creams and did uber touristy stuff like mini-golf. With the added challenge of not being able to read the rules.

After a few relaxing weeks we caught an early flight to Vienna to continue out holiday.

Dreseden and Saxon-Swiss

We took the train from Berlin to Dresden Tuesday the 2nd of August. The trains in Europe are really good, and very easy to catch as there are boards on each platform to say when and which platform for every train and the trains are pretty much on time. The train from Berlin was only a couple of hours.

When we got to Dresden we had to walk for about 5 kms to get to our hostel. It took us a while as we had to make frequent stops to rest, but we got to see some of the town. When we got there it turned out to be a really nie hostel (pity about the cleaning ladies.)

Dresden is fairly well known for its buildings and it has some pretty cool architecture.



On our walk around town we saw a small car, parked behind and even smaller car.
And it looks like the Ibis hotel is a popular choice for people to stay at in Dresden.





One day we took the train to see a castle, (schloss Weesenstien) whish was really cool, although a bit out of the way (20 Km's south east of Dresden).
It was really well preserved and the gardens were pretty cool. It was first documented in 1318, and has had renovations throughout the centuries.




Our main reason for going to Dresden, however, was Saxon Switzerland, a huge national park that extend to the Czech border. Saxon Swiss is most famous for its amazing stone structures that stick out of the ground. These are naturally formed by the river Elbe over 100 million years. If you are really into climbing you can climb them, but the park doesn’t allow the placement of any protection so you can only climb if you know about “knoodles”. We took the train to the local station, crossed the river and started walking up the hill. Which was a really good way of doing it :)

The walk was ok, but I was got confused when we got to the top and saw a lot of "mature" tourists in sandals and high heels wandering around (it turn out that there is a bus that will go straight to the top of the mountain for those who don't want to walk.)


As we got towards the top of the mountain we found some ruins which have been preserved very well. There were some signs of stone age life including graffiti.
The site was chosen as it’s very easy to defend, as invaders would have to climb up the bastai structures as the bridges could easily be removed.




On our last day in Dresden we managed to find a really cool house.