Brugge, Belgium and Home
Note: At last we are almost home and the update is nearly complete.
Brugge, Belgium is not at all what you would expect of the hometown of Dr. Evil. Once a great thriving port specialising in lace and other textiles, it has now morphed into an extremely beautiful town. The reason the city is no longer a major textile city is because it's main river silted up and boats could no longer travel there. The city went into decline and today is the tourist but also working city it is today. I say working city because a number of Old Towns in Europe seem to be mostly for the tourists and relics of glory days past. Some, including Brugge feel as if there is still a working city with a real residential population. Basically a city like you and I know but with beautiful old architecture that is used and not just full of museums and trinket shop.We ate plenty of pommes frittes, moules and waffles, not to mention the Belgian beer. Sadly we could not stay long as it was Saturday and the next day we had to drive to Dunkerque, France for the ferry home.Arriving back in London after four weeks on the road, we had forgotten how much stuff we had left undone in our new flat. But all and all I don't think either of us would have missed out on spending four weeks on the road seeing northern Europe. Next we just have to see southern Europe.
Luxembourg, in a jiffy
Luxembourg is a fantastic small city and country set in ravines and rolling hills. It has picturesque castles set on hills that look like they are out of a fairy tale. A definite place to visit....but that's all I have to say about it.
Smart Car, here we come
On our way to Luxembourg we stopped off in northeastern France to visit the Smart car factory. Even though we showed up unannounced we were let on to a tour group from Switzerland and got to see the interior of the factory where they make the Smart For Two. The factory tour was very intersting where we learned different facts about the Smart car and the technical advances of the factory. but no fact was more entertaining then the one about Michael Jackson.Michael was on a European tour when he was passing through the area. One can see the Smart factory from the expresway but the tell tale sign is a tall glass tower that holds about 16 Smart cars in two stacks. The tower is all in glass and is highlighted by the different colours of the car. This was originally a publicity stunt and a marketing ploy when Smart first started out. Michael Jackson, had his tour bus driver pull over at the public relations and tour building and he walked in and wanted to buy the tower. The Smart car people misunderstood what he meant and thought he wanted to buy a Smart car. He said no, and pointed that he wanted the whole glass tower, the cars and all to be shipped to his Neverneverland ranch in California. Unfortunately for Michael it never ended up as a display for him at his ranch....some people, sheesh!
Vienna and onwards
Note: Getting near the end now....almost done with the update.
Vienna is only 40 kilometers, more or less from Bratislava so it is very easy to get there. Beause we started to run out of time for the trip by this point we only stayed two nights in Vienna. The city is vast and too difficult to try and see everything. So we saw as much as we could on the bicycles we rented from out Hotel, the Hotel Pratestern.I can't remember too much about Vienna now but will mention the bits I can and that happened to be what I enjoyed most. On this trip that cuisines and the food you can find are all delicious but they are also very similar. Around the Baltic you get a lot of herring, in the eastern european countries a lot of meats and cold cuts. it gets a bit boring. We tried to spice it up a bit by occasionally going to different places but tried to stay true. By the time we got to Vienna we needed something different to eat.We lucked out by just choosing the first place we saw, Tacos Lopez on the Pratestern. In Europe, good Mexican restaurant are few and far between, if they even exist. Tacos Lopez is a traditional taqueria type of restaurant that is amongst the best places I have ever had Mexican food. It is not like the bad Tex-mex you often get at so called Mexican restaurants in Europe. This place was tops. Go there!We very quickly drove through Germany as we were trying to make good time, as you might imagine on the autobahns. This was exciting because we could push the smart car to its speed limited 95mph but also to get passed by cars going much faster.We stopped in Baden Baden for the night where we had some tradional schnitzel at the Lowenbrau restaurant which serve beer by the liter and a half. It was all very tasty after a whole day on the road. Baden Baden itself is a posh spa town that was recently well known by the WAG's during the recent World Cup. Though we didn't see much of the town itself, I think I would like to go back and spend some time there.
Slovakia
Note: Yes
Of all the places that I was most surprised by I would have to say Slovakia was the most unexpected bonus of the trip and Bratislava its main city. This is another place, along with Krakow, that you should get to before it loses its charm. The city is very picturesque, very walkable and a bit off-beat. It's strange because Prague rightfully deserves its praise but Bratislava, and Slovakia should not be as overlooked as it has been.We stayed in the Hotel Kiev which used to be the westerner hotel in Bratislava. each major Eastern Bloc city had a western style hotel that was strictly for westerners. I suppose this was a two-fold purpose. One to keep an eye on the westerners as potential spies and also to show them how great life and things were under a Communist regime.The hotel Kiev, though falling into a bit of disrepair and becoming a giant advertisement, was decent enough. It showed the old Communist opulence and the building's interior, I found, quite interesting. Though the funniest thing about the place is that you have to pay extra for a room with a tv. We thought this would be a good idea but were sorely disappointed when all we got was a 13 inch tv sat on the floor in the corner. However, this was more than made up by the outstanding breakfast available as part of the room rate. It was top notch.
Poland: TO Krakow 2
Note: Still updating
Krakow is a beautiful city that is the opposite of Warsaw. Krakow was fortunate not to have been razed to the ground by the retreating Nazis. Apparently the Nazi general in charge had a great affection for the city and refused an order to dynamite the city. Unlike the general in Warsaw who had every building dynamited which explains why much of the city has brutal Communist architecture and the avenues are so long and straight. If you ever go to the old town in Warsaw keep in mind that it was completely rebuilt following World War II from remaining drawings and paintings of the city. Everything there is more or less from 1952 when reconstruction happened.Unlike Warsaw, Krakow is almost all completely original and very European. I hadn't been there since I was 9 years old and rediscover why Poles call it their most beautiful city and their cultural capital as well. Krakow was the capital of Poland before it was moved to Warsaw.To do this we rented bikes once more but with a twist. We took a bike tour from a Canadian of Polish descent who decided to start a bike tour company in Krakow during the spring, summer and autumn months. I would highly recommend the tour and the company is called Cruising Krakow. We saw all the sites, from the dragon, to the castle, to Oscar Schindler's factory. Well worth the time and little money that it cost. We got a real sense of why a lot of tour books have started to call Krakow the new Prague. Go before it gets ruined by drunk Stag and Hen nights from Britain.Also on the outskirts of the city is the deep salt mines of Wieliczka. Definitely worth a day trip.
Poland: to Krakow
Note: Yes, I am still updating.
On our way down to Krakow we stopped off in Oswiecim which is a Polish village outside Krakow better known by the German name given to it, Auschwitz. Don't really want to say too much about the place. Auschwitz, the original camp, is a place to visit and get all the info you could ever want on what happened under the Nazis during World War II. The buildings, the displays will give you all you need. But for sheer depressingness and understanding of what it must have been like for concentration camp detainees, you need to go a little further away to Auschwitz-Birkenau which is the camp that was built when the original became too small. Auschwitz-Birkenau is what you imagine a camp to look like. Row after row of blocks where the prisoners spent their time. The size of the camp is big and from the gate tower you can see how far these buildings stretch. In the middle is where the train tracks are and where the trains would pull in to leave the prisoners. As the day was coming to an end and the sun was going down the air turned chilly quickly which then made mist collect in the gulleys next to the tracks. Looking at this with the backdrop of the gate and watchtowers was very moving.
Poland: On to Warsaw
Note: Still catching up on the northern European trip from last summer.
We finally got to Poland and the roads just turned crap with one-lane roads being the mainstay. Very disappointing that POland can't get its act together and invest in the road infrastructure. We entered Poland north of Bialystok which is in north eastern Poland and we drove to Augustynka a small hamlet further south. This is where Veronika's mother's family comes from and where they use to have a home and land. There isn't much there of the hamlet as it is so small and nothing of the house where they had their house. Only a couple trees that marked the entrance gates to the path that went to the house. Under Communism, private land could and was confiscated from landowners and redistributed to farmers. This is what happened with their family land. The family could go through the courts and claim the land back but at present their is no desire to do so. Like I said the roads weren't good so it took a lot longer than we wished to get to Warsaw. We spent about four days just hanging out with family as it gets tiring being in the smart car, no matter how smartly they designed it.
Vilnius/WIlno
Note: Still catching up on the old postings from the trip.
We left Palanga in the morning so that we could make good time to Vilnius about three hours away. The drive went well and we got to Wilno quickly. I say Wilno because at one time Lithuania and Poland were one country and Wilno was the Polish name for Vilnius. As a result of a marriage between a Polish princess and the Lithuanian king the Jagiellonian dynasty arose in the 15th century. Eventually Poland became the dominating partner in this relationship and the area that was ruled stretched from present day Poland, west to parts of Bohemia, south to Hungary, and east to present day Lithuania, Byellorussia and Ukraine. All in all quite sizable. After that the country crumbled and got partitioned by the Prussians, Russians and Austro-Hungarians by the 18th century.Vilnius was the other capital and was a part of Poland when World War I ended and Poland reemerged as a country. So there are a lot of historical ties with ethnic Poles making a small minority in Lithuania. Interestingly during those centuries the language never melded into one and we found it easier to speak English then bother with the Polish. While we were in Vilnius there was a joint military parade with both Lithuanian and Polish troops performing.Vilnius is set in a small river valley which makes it very picturesque. Having limited time we rented bicycles once more and cycled around the city taking in the old town and a district called Uzupio. Uzupio is a small district that for some reason was historically neglected by the Cmmunist and has fallen into disrepair. Like cities around the world this is usually ripe for artists/fringe society to move in and make it their own. This is what has happened in Uzupio and it has certainly come into its own, literally as well because they are a breakaway republic...at least in their own minds.Another noteworthy item about Vilnius is the fact that Vilnius was known as the Jerusalem of the north. It had a large and thriving Jewish community that has now dwindled to a few hundred according to an older gentleman we met at the old synagogue. There are spots in the old town where you can see old signs written in Hebrew on even older buildings and streets named as such.The last thing I want to say about Vilnius is that there is a life-size bust of Frank Zappa, who I guess was of Lithuanian ancestry and that Lithuania is cheap so you should go ASAP!
Lithuania (At Last) and get me Audi here!
Note - The subject matter of this post occurred back in August and September of 2006 during our around northern Europe trip. I have only gotten around to finishing the blog for this now.
We left Riga, Latvia and drove to Lithuania where we were going to spend the night in Palanga. Palanga is a nice Baltic seaside resort frequented by Lithuanians on vacation. We had never heard of it until we met our builder, Valdas, who renovated our new flat. He's Lithuanian and from Palanga, Lithuania. It just so happened that at the time that we would be going through Lithuania he would be on vacation visiting family. He invited us down.Not to harp on about the roads on this trip but the roads were by and large in good shape and the expressways were excellent. You come to appreciate the speed that you can go on the expressways when you get stuck on a one lane stretch of road behind a grain tractor because they haven't yet upgraded the roads. But by and large the driving was good.On the other hand, the drivers are not so great. There is generally a lot of bad driving in Eastern Europe, where Poland is probably the worst (it's okay, im Polish so I can say that). This is because the roads are so bad in Poland and the drivers are maniacs. However Lithuania doesn't come too far behind.As we entered Lithuania we got stuck behind a lorry but couldn't pass because the smart car doesn't have great pick up speed and there were cars coming from the other direction. Simply did not want to risk it. This situation did not stop a number of Audi 80's from passing all the cars behind us and including us to try to pass the lorry. At first there was just the one, and then another until four Audi 80's were trying to pass one another and the lorry. Compared to the lorry they all looked like flies flying around a piece of crap. Every couple seconds one Audi would swing out to see if it could pass another and then wither pass or quickly jump back into the correct lane before it was involved in a head on collision. This went on for a few minutes until the road widened into a multi-lane highway.Talking about Audi's, and anyother VW product, it seems that Lithuania is where they go to die. The cars are highly regarded for their engine durability and are highly prized. You will see loads of them around. Due to Lithuania being a relatively poor country they are usually older models from the early 1990's with some being fairly new. These cars are imported from Germany once they get to the point that the Germans don't wish to buy them on the used car market. It was funny seeing all these Audi's and VW's because it has almost become a stereotype of Lithuanians in my mind now. It made me think back to our builder who drives, back in London an Audi A6, as well as the electrician and the plumber who drives a VW Passat....all Lithuanians.Anyway, we met Valdas in Palanga where he showed us around the town, took us to a Lithuanian restaurant where we saw a Ukrainian pop band, singing in Russian. The weather was nice and warm so we rented bikes and explored a bit more. All in all it was a good evening and a very nice seaside town.
