Day 13: Salzburg and Innsbruck, Austria

Thursday, August 19 2010

My alarm clock rang at 6.45. We got ready and went for breakfast. It was 3€ for all you can eat. I was still sick so in addition to coffee, buns, cereal and juice, I got some tea and put a Finrexin in it. 

Our room had like a corridor with doors to the toilet, bathroom and the room with all the bunk beds. When we came back from breakfast, we just went in the room quickly with the beds and the lockers. The smell was disgusting!!! Ugh the room smelled so bad!!! We quickly took our stuff out of the lockers and dropped it all in the corridor. And that looked like this. 

And the end result was this. We had to take the sheets off the beds too. We packed, returned our room key and left our luggage to the common corridor lockers. We had to ask the front desk for directions to the Untersberg.

The bus stop was in front of the Mirabell castle. We took bus 25, and it cost 2.10€ to go to the Untersbergbahn, where the cable car went to the top, the Geiereck peak. The mountain's elevation is 1972 meters (6 470 feet, Google converter), but the Geiereck peak is at 1300 meters (4 265 ft, Google converter).

It takes about 10 minutes to go up with the cable car. It costs 20€ to go up and down. It would've been 11€ or so one way, but the climb down would've taken 3 hours, and we simply didn't have the energy or time to do that. And I'm sure we would have gotten lost!!! 

I'm going to let the pictures speak for themselves. This was my favorite thing about this trip and I would go back a hundred times.  You can click on all the pictures and see them in full size.

The numbers here are not the same as listed in Wikipedia, oh well... 

Going up

.

We wandered around the mountain for a long while. It was really cold and windy. In the beginning it was really foggy up there too. The weather was clearing up when we were returning to the cable car station. There was a restaurant there and we ate and had beers.

We went down with the cable car eventually, took a bus back to town, I fell asleep, and we had to find a grocery store before our train to Innsbruck. Of course, we couldn't find the closest one to the hostel, we went really far and had to hurry back to pick up our luggage and find our way to the train station. 

Our train to Innsbruck left 16.02. This time it was very easy to find a compartment (for 6 people). I'm sure we went directly to the right end of the train where these places weren't reserved. We shared it with an English couple. We nearly missed our stop since we didn't really hear the announcements. There was something wrong with the speaker in the compartment.

In Innsbruck we found a tourist information and got a map from there and asked for directions to our camping site, Natterersee Camping. BEST CAMPING PLACE ON EARTH!!! Pictures will be in another post. The map would've been 1 euro, but the old man selling the maps was kind and gave it to us, and gave us bus schedules too. We could take the first bus 4143 to Natters, and then change to a 4168 to the Camping place. One way ticket was 2.30€. The bus goes from town to Natters more often, but from Natters to the camping site every two hours.

Brain's side-note: we also asked the old man at the tourist info if it would be possible for us to buy some sort of a travel card to save money on bus tickets. He didn't know, and sent us to the nearby kiosk. We went there and they didn't know either, and sent us to the post office. The young boy working at the post office said that he's not from Innsbruck and so doesn't know anything about tourist cards (I thought that was a very strange excuse). He sent us somewhere else, but at that point we just gave up and went to the bus stop.

We arrived at the camping place and were in awe of the place! It's so fancy looking! It cost 62€ for the two of us and a tent for two nights. The bathrooms and showers were brand new. They had sinks to wash clothes in, and dish washing sinks. The kids playground was amazing and the artificial lake too! So awesome! 

Brain's side-note: after we checked in, one of the employees took us to our spot on a small car thingy (kinda like a golf cart). He was very weird, maybe Italian, kept talking funny, and I didn't really understand half of what he was saying. He seemed to be friends with everybody at the camping site and was very very talkative. Oh, and we ate our first real Austrian apple strudels at the restaurant there :)

The campsite quieted down around 11 pm and that's when we went to sleep as well. It wasn't cold this time really. 

-Pinky

Day 12: Vienna and Salzburg

Wednesday, August 18 2010

Our morning routine had to be changed. Our alarms rang 6:45, and we had planned on leaving with the 9.12 bus, but we didn't make it. We went with the 9.22 bus. Packing the tent wasn't complicated, it was just annoying. The inner tent was difficult to fold neatly. Also that had been directly on the ground, and the ground was wet, you get the picture. And we had to get rid of all the spiders, crickets and ants off of it too. 

Our train to Salzburg left 10.20 from Wien Westbahnhof. We there early enough and I went to get some tea and since I was still feeling like I was going to get sick, I added a bag of Finrexin, a cold medicine to my tea. Brain thought that the combination is disgusting.

The train was really packed this time too, and luckily we were there early enough to get good seats. The trainride wasn't very eventful. 

Salzburg Hauptbahnhof was under construction and it didn't look like it was going to be done anytime soon. It took a while for us to find an info place where we could get a map of the city.

Originally we were supposed to stay at a camping place, but we got an email from there while in Berlin, that they're fully booked and we can't go there. I had also gotten sick in Vienna, so we decided we'd stay in a hostel. We started walking to the wrong direction first, luckily not that badly, but still too much. I was tired and sick and getting cranky. I apparently was very cranky while we were walking to the hostel. I noticed it myself, but I didn't think others would, and Brain did. I thought I managed to hide it so well!

Our hostel was YoHo International Youth Hostel in Salzburg. We hadn't reserved anything and just went there. The 6-bed mixed dorm cost 22€/night/person. Including us there was an Asian girl and boy and two guys who we never saw awake. They weren't in the room when we got there, they must've been in town somewhere cause they got there around 2-3 am. And we left before they woke up the next day. Our dorm room had a bathroom and a toilet, and they were separate too!

YoHo hostel pictures (all clickable)

 We left our luggage in the room lockers, and left for town. We walked onwards on Paracelsusstrasse and turned onto Franz-Josef Strasse. There was a little cafe there, we got coffee with toasts. I got an Italian toast (mozzarella, tomatoes, olive oil and lettuce of some sort) and a caffe latte. Brain got a Greek toast and a caramel macchiato.  MasterCard wasn't accepted. Dun dun dun

Since it was already afternoon, we wanted to climb up to the Hohensalzburg fortress. We walked around Schloss Mirabell. I wasn't very impressed with it, after all, I've seen Sanssouci and Schloss Schönbrunn. This was in the very middle of the city, and it wasn't as grande as one would assume a Schloss to be. (Although there were sculptures of unicorns, which I thought were cool! -Brain)

  Schloss Mirabell (clickable)

We crossed the river and walked through the old town towards the Hohensalzburg fortress, but didn't spend too much time in the old town. We did buy a couple postcards, one for our friend's fiance who was fighting in Afghanistan at the time. The address was strange, it had no country on it. We assumed it was going to England first, so we just got stamps to England..

Hohensalzburg Fortress

Views of the fortress and around it

A funicular up to the Hohensalzburg fortress would've cost over 10 euros, so we decided to walk up the hill. It didn't take too long, and it wasn't very difficult, although it was a very steep hill. At one point we noticed we had taken the shorter way, which meant a whole lot of stairs. Once we were up high, there was a gate and entrance through that cost 7,40€ and that included the entrance to the courtyard, the museum in the castle, and some audio guide. We didn't want that, we just wanted to get to the courtyard, so we didn't pay the 7,40€. We turned around and started walking on the Mönchberg, which is the mountain/ridge the fortress is located on. 

To get back to the old town we had to climb down a whole lot of stairs, and some were quite scary too! We saw St.Peter's Abbey. It was very different from Vienna's St. Peter's. The Dom was near too and we had a look inside. It was very pretty. The center isle was probably as long as the one in Tuomiokirkko in Tampere, but this was wider and higher.

Brain's side-note: I don't think I'd ever seen a real-live nun before the visit to Salzburg, or after it, for that matter. But in Salzburg we saw several: one was riding a bike, and there was one on the bus as well. 

Mozart's birth house on Getreidegasse

We walked to Getreidegasse, which is one of the main streets in the old town. We saw the yellow Mozart's birth house. We ate at an Italian restaurant. Our waitress had the craziest hair, I tell you! Small pizza was 5-6€ and bit 8-9€. We thought we ordered the small pizzas, but I guess we weren't clear enough. The check had some funny numbers on it. Pizzas and drinks together were supposed to be less than 20€, but the total cost was 23€ or so. After dinner we bought Mozarts kugeln, they weren't that good. It had been raining a little the whole day so we walked back to our hostel and hung around there.

More pictures of Salzburg taken on the Mönchberg. You can click on all the pictures to see them in full size.

Stairs we had to climb down to get to the Old Town from the Mönchberg.

The Salzach river was a weird green color. Like all the rivers in Austria...

-Pinky

Day 6: Potsdam and the way to Prague

Thursday, August 12 2010

We woke up bright and early at 7 am. We saw our hostess briefly before she left for work. We had packed all of our stuff on Wednesday so that we wouldn't have to do that in the morning. We walked to Griebnitzsee station, and went with the S-bahn to Potsdam Hbf with our luggage. We left it there in the luggage boxes, cause there is no way we could've taken that with us to where we were headed. We had to get the biggest luggage box for the two of us. It was 4€. 

We started walking to Sansoucci. The center of Potsdam was very quiet, there were hardly any people around. I had imagined that it is a long walk to Sansoucci, but it wasn't. And I'd been there before but we'd gone there some other way the previous times. We arrived there around 10 am. On the way there we were stopped once again, and they asked us for directions, in German this time as well. We sure do look like locals then...

We walked around the park, saw the old palace, the new palace, the dogs' graves that the habitant had, I forgot his name already. Friedrich the Great I believe. I had told Brain about the potatoes that people bring to the graves, and she totally didn't believe me. But there they were, the potatoes. On the dogs' graves.

 

This is either the kitchen or the servants' house. It is by the New Palace. 

The Chinese Teahouse

Earlier we had asked for a tram & bus schedule from the security guards. They didn't really understand a lot of what we asked, I felt. The bus 695 goes every 10 minutes. When we were walking towards the bus stop we waw the bus leave. We waited for a 606 to S Hauptbahnhof. I was a little scared that would we make it to the regional train that was to take us to the Berlin Hbf where our train for Prague left.

We did make it. It was the 11.57 regional train. We had a little time to go buy water bottles from one of the shops in the main train station. The previous day we'd checked the platform where the train was going to leave from. It was platform 2. We then noticed that it was platform 2 on the big screens. Didn't think much of it, they had just changed it. There were a lot of other people too. We saw two Finnish InterRailers, I asked them if they were going to Prague, the whole platform change had confused us. There was an announcement, that the train for Prague leaves from platform 2 instead of the one we were on. All the people rush to platform 2, because the train was to leave any minute now.

We didn't have reserved seats, so we just had to find a free compartment. We didn't know which end of the train was reserved, and of course we started to walk that way that was reserved. All the compartments were becoming more and more reserved. I had my part of the tent attached to my bag horizontallly, so it was quite wide. I didn't know how else I would've attached it to my bag. So I kept getting stuck and hitting people with my tent when I was trying to walk in the train's small corridoors. People were coming towards me, and walking after me, trying to find their reserved compartments or free compartments, like we were.

We turn around and walk and walk and finally find a compartment where we weren't alone, but it wasn't packed either. We had two Spanish guys there too. They didn't talk to us. Except at one point, when they asked where we were from. Since we speak English together, it is confusing for other people. I don't think they really believed us when we said we were from Finland. They said they're from Spain. Like we hadn't figured that out. C'mon, it's easy to guess where they were from. We didn't tell them that.

The scenery in Bad Schandau was gorgeous! 

We got to Prague, got some money out from the ATM. We found our hostel  (Hostel Jednota) that was really close to the train station luckily. We went to check in, and soon left to go back to the train station to reserve spots from the night train to Budapest. We walked around Prague, and Vaclavske Namesti, had salads and huge beers in Cafe Amsterdam. Brain's post is more detailed about this night.

-Pinky

Day 5: Berlin

Wednesday, August 11 2010

We'd gone to bed really early the previous night and now woke up at 9. We started the day by washing some laundry. We didn't have too much clothing with, which meant we needed to wash clothes often.

At 11.37 we were at the train station and went with a Regional Train to Ostbahnhof. We wanted to see the East Side Gallery. It's a part of the wall that was dividing Berlin.

We walked back to the beginning of the wall where we started. Saw the O2-arena, and Sandsation from the outside. There were some holes in the fence that was supposed to prevent people from viewing the sand sculptures from the outside. We didn't want to pay the 5€ to get in, so we took pictures through the fence. Then a French girl asked us for directions on how to get to the Brandenburg gate, and we, the non-locals, told her which way to go. :)

The we spotted a beach bar and ordered Cuba Libres.

From Ostbahnhof we took a train to Westkreuz. There we changed to S41 ring S-bahn going to Westend. We walked to Schloss Charlottenburg. I'd never been there before, and now we just walked around it. We got asked that do we know something about the German phone cards, I guess we looked like locals, but we didn't. 

Eventually we walked back to Westend and went with a S42 to Westkreuz and then an S7 to Potsdam Hbf. At the Hbf we bought milkshakes from McDonald's because we needed some quick energy. It was more like a sunday, not really a milkshake though. 

We started walking towards Potsdam's center. On the way there we got asked for directions once, in German. We understood him and just replied in English. And then we did a little detour. From the Hbf you walk on a bridge and from there you can get to this park so we went there and sat around for a while. 

From the park we walked towards the Nikolaikirche, and then continued on towards the main street of Potsdam. There was this gate type thing and we walked through it, and turned to the right. We saw a building that I'd seen before. I'd actually been inside that building. My friend went to that school. Our hostesses daughter. 

We started walking back. On Brandenburger Str.s end we saw Potsdam's Brandenburg Gate. Then we noticed the time and had to rush back to Potsdam Hbf, we were meeting with our hostess and the other girl who was staying with them. We went to this Italian restaurant in Babelsberg, a part of Potsdam. I got lasagna. We walked back to our accommodation, our hostess was showing us places, where Harry Truman stayed during the Potsdam conference. And where he signed the papers that the USA can drop the atom bombs to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In front of the house there was a monument, that had only been there for a month or so when we were there. The house is right by Griebnitzsee, the lake. Glienicker Brücke is the bridge with two colors: light and dark green. We continued on, and to the Babelsberg film studios, they had the sets from The Pianist there for example. The sets are Berliner Strasse. 

We got home, and our hostess said she hadn't received a reply from the camping site in Innsbruck. She called them and reserved us a place for our tent. For some reason the camping place asked for the language that we speak, I don't know why. We said English, because listing Finnish, English, Russian, German, Swedish and French would've been too difficult. "Well, we both speak Finnish and English. She speaks Russian and has studied French. I've studied Swedish, German and French..." No, thanks, English is good enough.

-Pinky

Day 4: Arrival to Berlin and Potsdam

Tuesday, August 10 2010

We went to our accommodation with the 6:15 S7 train going to Potsdam Hbf, but our stop was Griebnitzsee. The walk to the house seemed like really long walk with 12 kg bags. I'd walked the way numerous times before and remembered it really well. It was just that we were really tired, and had heavy bags. At least the weather was nice and fresh. 

We got to our accommodation around 7:05. We had breakfast and the hostess and a girl who was also staying there left for work. Brain wanted to go to sleep, and I just wanted to take a shower. I felt so disgusting. It was so nice to take a shower! Eventually I had to wake Brain up, and we checked our emails and school stuff. And our Salzburg accommodation situation, as in they're fully booked which means we can't go there. Which wasn't good. Also, we had some issues with our Innsbruck accommodation, so we agreed to ask for help from our hostess later that day.

We left for town. We went to Zoologischer Garten, we bought snacks from a bakery there. I ordered mine in German. And I got laughed at. I tried my best, and it was a really long word! It was some sandwich. Brain ordered her snack in English. The reason we went to Zoo was that bus 100 left from there and we wanted a little tour around the important parts of Berlin, and this bus was good for that. Before we got on the bus, we found some store where Brain bought batteries for her camera.

We got out of the bus near the Reichstag. We walked to the Brandenburg Gate, the Holocaust Memorial, took the obligatory touristy pictures. Then we walked back to the Reichstag, and decided that we can't go there now, because the line of people who want to go to the top was already in the middle of the field that's in front of the building.  So we take pictures near it. There are also these little fountain type things. The water stops every once in a while and then it continues. We were jumping over those, and waiting for the water to start. We were running through the fountain, when there was no water and saw how many times we'd dare to run through it. We didn't want to get wet. 

 (pictures are clickable)

Then we continued walking towards the Berlin main railway station. We saw a beach bar, or river bar if you will, and had a tages cocktail (I think) there. It was a good break to relax, because we were still tired.

 

After finishing our cocktails we went to walk around the train station. We bought ice creams, and since I got laughed at the previous time I tried to speak German, I ordered mine in English. Brain ordered hers in German (she's never studied it, though) and her ice cream was bigger than mine. :(

We went from Berlin Hbf to Potsdamer Platz. We wanted to see Checkpoint Charlie. On the way there we saw some cars.

We got hungry and ate in a small chinese place. We then bought coffees from Starbucks and I bought a Berlin-bag from some kiosk.  We walked back towards Potsdamer Platz and saw these awesome bikes. There were 8 people there, the seats were in like a circle. Some were biking backwards too. :D It looked awesome. We got to Potsdamer Platz and sat around there for about 1,5 hours and we were just writing our diaries. We were so tired. Eventually, after 5 pm we got up and found our way back to our accommodation. Our hostess was helping us with the train to Prague. Also she sent an email to our Innsbruck location, in German, if they'd understand that better than our English email. She said that if they don't reply in 24 h she will call them.



-Pinky