From Barvaria and back again!

Hello,

We're back in Barvaria but this time we are in Munich! We haven't seen much of the city yet but thought we'd update on some of the other places we've been in the last little while.

Salzburg.

Salzburg the sound of music capital of Austria! Most Austrians apparently hate the film but are happy to take your money should you be a fan. We did the bus tour, a very light tour that plays the soundtrack and gives you trivia from the film to impress your friends with like: the mountain the VonTrapps escape over actually leads into Germany - not so smart eh?

The tour does take you out of the city and gives you a fantastic look at the mountain and lake regions that are breathtakingly beautiful.

Also in Austria we ate goulash and drank beer by the litre (literally) at a huge 2000 seat beer hall. The beer hall was an old monastry and was silient from the outside and with every door you opened it got noisier and noisier until you amost stumbled across hundreds of people drinking and laughing. It was awesome.

Cesky Krumlov.

From Salzberg we took the train to Linz where we were met by a van that drove us (at high speed and only choosing a side of the road when it had to) to the UNESCO world heritage site of CK. So the Czech Rep. are part of the EU but are not on the euro, which is great because you get 20 Kronnes to the euro. So we chilled for 4 days, ate like kings, saw the sites and still had ample left in our pockets for Prague. We even saw some sun and there are bears in the castle moat, yes bears!

Prague

Great city, did the walking tour but to be honest didn't fall in love with the place. Lots of pretty statues and buildings and cool easter markets. Oh and a million tourists.

Berlin

The home of modern design and a haven of great street art (old people call it grafitti) and architecture. Again we did a walking tour, Berlin has so much history that after five hours we're pretty sure our guide could have gone for another 5. We saw the wall and many other famous sites and heard the guides passionate rendition of how the wall finally came down. We climbed the Reichstag building (parliament) and at the top is a dome you can see the whole city from, and it's free.

We visited Sachenhausen concentration camp with a guide and while it was a grim day it was an important thing to do and we learnt a lot. It rained the entire tour making it even stranger and more somber.

We of course did some art and design site seeing, including the Bauhaus archives (bestill my design heart) and a fantastic ice sculpture exhibition.

Also while in town we saw Sophia and Ezekiel my old workmate and her husband.

Munich

Well we saw snow from the train and then we went out for dinner and had thai food for the first time in 10 months at least. We are on a (surprise surprise) walking tour today and we hope to soak up heaps because tomorrow we fly to Istanbul.