Czech Republic to Austria (twice)

27 Aug Up and out at 7am and en route to Prague. It was a long drive of 5 hours / 350km approx but the whole way was motorway which was very welcome. The traffic in the CR is fast but not as bad as Poland. I SET Mary bound for Prague and to a hostel called ‘Sophie’s place’. When I got there they wanted €41 for a dorm bed incl parking for 1 night. It was early enough so I drove off and found a free car park, and set off on foot to see Prague that day and head off that night. I trekked around Prague from Midday to 7pm incl doing a walking tour and a wander around myself. I think I saw most of the highlights and it is a superb city steeped in amazing architecture and history. I was fascinated by the place and will definitely go and see it again. It started getting dark after 7pm so I decided to head back to the van and hit the road. I set Mary to take me to Cesky Krumlov an historic Czech town near the Austrian border and the setting for the recent movie, Hostel. I didn’t intend to get there today so on the way I stopped off at a 24 hour Tesco supermarket (that was a surprise) and picked up some necessary supplies. It was a grand spot so I stopped there for the night.

28 Aug Up and out at 8am, into Tesco for the breakfast and off I went. I got to Cesky about 10am and it’s a lovely quaint little place set on a bend in the river. It’s got little narrow cobbled streets amongst its old buildings. I had a walk around the town and its castle and at 11.15 I was in the van on my way to Austria. I went via a little town called Cesky Budejovice where the original Budweiser beers comes from and only interrupted by a snooze was in Austria an hour later. As I entered Austria, the difference in wealth was striking with better houses, smoother roads, better kept generally. It was great to be back in the Euro zone as I have had 8 currency changes since leaving Germany to go into Austria. I arrived in Linz, Austria second city, to meet Johannes a lad me and frog met in Antarctica. He brought me for a tour around the city and in this particular place we walked past a wax dummy robot. I could have sworn it was real and I was asked to sit down and talk to him. We chatted away in English and the robot told me he was from Japan. He had moving eyes, hands, facial twitches etc. I could go on but I won’t. We went to city hall after that and Johannes showed me the floor which was an aerial view of the city. The authorities had the whole city photographed and then had it made in a lino and used it as floor covering. It was amazing. It was a lovely evening, so we sat out in the sum and drank a couple of beers before heading up to a Church on the hilltop to look out over the city at night. There was lightening in the distance and we watched the lightening forks but without the rain which we both agreed was great additional entertainment.

29 Aug It was raining today so we decided to go to the cinema to see the new Quentin Tarrantino movie, Glorious Bastards. It was about a team of US mercenaries in WW2 France and Germany there just to kill Nazis. It was a good film but I lost a lot in the translation. That evening we went to a nearby Spa and enjoyed a swim in an indoor and outdoor pool, steam room, Jacuzzi and sauna. It was a lovely relaxing evening and even enjoyed a beer in our nice surroundings.

30 Aug Up and out at 10am and me and Johannes went for a traditional breakfast in a nearby café. It was a lovely sunny morning and we were joined by a friend of his. After that we headed for the hills to his parents place in the mountains. At his village the weekend fair was in full swing and we had Bratwurst while watching the entertainment. After that we headed for a walk up to this high point that looks over a like. The lake forms part of the border between Austria and the Czech Rep and Johannes showed me where the Iron curtain once was. It was a lovely spot. After that I set course for Dachu, a town outside Munich to call to Galway friend of mine, Paul Hanlon, who has an Irish pub there called the ‘Muddy Boot’. My visit was to be a surprise and as I was driving around looking for the place the only man on the street to ask where it was, was Paul. I drove up to him (he was on the phone) and shouted ‘Oi, where’s the Muddy Boot!’ He was talking to his brother on the phone and he couldn’t believe it, he was shouting at his brother ‘You’ll never believe whose just pulled up in a van!’. It was a great laugh. I had a beer and a bite to eat in the pub before he locked up and we headed to his apartment in Munich to stay the night and meet his better half Nadia.

31 Aug That morning I met Paul’s daughter Cara. She is a lovely girl around 3 and spoke German. Nadia speaks to her in German, Paul speaks to her in English and she always replies to Paul in German although she has been spoken to and understands in English. So she understood me but I hadn’t a clue what she was saying.
We all went for a traditional German breakfast this morning of boiled white sausage with mustard. It came in a big bowl of boiling water and we scooped out what we wanted. As I was about to take my first bite I was stopped and told I had to peel the skin off first. As I was doing so, Paul told me the story of the Korean lads he brought here and after a phone call Paul had to go back to the flat for a minute as breakfast had arrived. By the time he got back, the Korean lads had eaten the sausage, the skin and all the hot water. They said they liked the soup but had cramps all day after the sausage. But on this occasion they were very good and no soup.
After breakfast, we went into Munich on the underground. It was a lovely city but very different to what I expected. We walked around the sights and the pedestrianised streets and went into the famous Hofbrauhaus which is a huge refectory style pub with big long bog standard timber benches and tables. We had a typical German dinner of Pork knuckle and potatoes washed down with a litre glass of Bavarian beer. After that we walked around the area that the annual Munich beer festival ‘Oktoberfest’ is being held and it was huge. It must be 10 times the size of the Galway races hospitality area. They weren’t building tents either; they were full on barn sized timber structures. After too much of the amber elixir we headed home to Paul’s for the night.

01 Sep This morning we went to the Olympic park, the setting for the 1972 Olympic Games. It was a fabulous complex with lovely modern buildings, walkways, man made lakes and hills. (The hills were made by the WW2 rubble created in the city and were brought by hand by the residents of Munich as a mark of respect for their dead.) We hung around there for a while and Paul went home early while I stayed on to go across the road to the BMW world at BMW HQ. BMW world is a fabulous set up with all kinds of exhibits including all the new cars, old cars, futuristic cars, racing cars, motorbikes, cars used in movies including the 2 BMWs that Pierce Brosnan used in 2 of his James Bond movies. We got an Indian take away that night, not something I’ve eaten since I was at home. Lovely.

02 Sep After a coffee and croissant breakfast I left Paul, Nadia and Cara and off I went to Stuttgart. A few hours later I arrived and had Mary set for the Mercedes museum. I ended up at one end of Mercedesstrasse (Mercedes street) and needed to get to the other end to the museum, but apparently only staff and deliveries can go that way, everybody else have to detour. To find that out was only half the story. As I had arrived in the van the non English speaking security guard wanted to see my delivery documents and couldn’t understand why this van driver had no documents. I said ‘Museum’ he said ‘what for Museum?’, then I said ‘Tourist’ and opened the van for him to see. Anyway, after the hullabaloo he gave me sign language directions and off I went. Parking a couple of minutes walk from the museum, I walked along the Mercedes plant perimeter and it was like a secret government agency as I couldn’t see in with all the carefully placed landscaping and couldn’t climb in if I wanted to for all the high metal railings. Apparently these companies have huge problems with rival companies spying on them. As I walked past the staff exit they were coming through huge turnstiles with screening and security guards etc. Outside the museum is the other end of Mercedestrasse and has a big roundabout. I thought I was in a Mercedes ad with all sorts of Mercs from every entrance pouring in and out. It was comical to watch and suddenly they became boring to look at. At home I think a lot of people would subconsciously look twice at somebody driving a Mercedes but when it’s all Merc, that changes.
Eventually, I got into the museum and saw the world’s first car. It was 115 years old! Mercedes has a huge motoring history and even had the Pope mobile on display. I spent over 3 hours there but enjoyed the BMW museum a bit more. It was a close call though.
I continued down the autobahn to a town called Baden Baden on the edge of the Black Forest (Schwartzfeld) before pulling into a service station for the night for a meal and a DVD.

03 Sep Up and out around 9am and into Baden Baden. Ironically my father was telling me yesterday how bad the weather was in Ireland and I telling him that the weather was great in Germany only for the heavens to open up today. Baden Baden was a nice town but didn’t offer much other than being the gateway to the Schwartzfeld. The first town I stopped in was called Schiltach, it is a stereo typical German village with cobbled streets and that Swiss/Tudor style look houses but is especially popular as 2 rivers meet there. After that it was onto Triberg, called so as 3 mountains meet there and it’s situated in the valley between them. It’s a famous Cuckoo clock location and shops there had thousands of clocks. The 2 world’s biggest cuckoo clocks are located there, each claiming to be the biggest. The clocks are the size of a house and the cuckoo the size of a swan. After that onto a lakeside town called Titisee, all towns pleasant but nowt too exciting. On then toward Lake Constance on the Swiss/German border stopping 50km shy of it for the night. The place I pulled into was disappointing as it had crap food, no showers or green areas and I had to settle for a giant hotdog with a bread roll with a blob of mustard and ketchup. I ate that and topped up with biscuits and came to the conclusion that I could find a better spot to stop for the night. As I was driving out, around the corner the complex extended to a great spot with buffet restaurant etc. I was full though and full of junk. Feck. I stopped there though for the night.

04 Sept Up and out at 9.30am and had my nights accommodation, shower, breakfast and internet for €6, bargain. I headed off into Constance and it’s a lovely city and the lake being exceptionally so. It wasn’t a particularly good day so after a couple of hours I pushed on to Zurich. A short time later I reached the Swiss border and for the first time I was stopped for a passport check. He went off with the passport and came back a couple of minutes later and told me to pull the van over as they were going to check it. I did that and he told me to wait by the van for his return. He came back with this gun toting lad that had a puss on him like some character I had seen in Shawshank Redemption. He had me open the doors and was surprised to see a camper in the back rather than goods for commercial purposes. He hopped in and started looking at a couple of things and after two closets he abandoned the search and sent me on my way. I arrived in Zurich an hour later and although it was a fine city, I expected it to be nicer. I walked around for a couple of hours (it was cold and wet) and hopped in the van and headed to Lichtenstein. Lichtenstein is the 6th smallest country in the world measuring 12km X 35km and Vaduz is the capital. It’s more like a town the size of Loughrea but very well presented. I walked around for a bit before heading back into Austria towards Innsbruck. I crossed over the Austrian border, stopped by the very pleasant border control momentarily and pulled in a few miles up the road for the night.

05 Sept Up and out early at 8am en route to Innsbruck, Austria. It’s a nice small city nestled amongst the Alps, a place I had flown in to a few times skiing but never getting the chance to look around. On then to a small town called Berchesgaden, just inside the German border. It was the location of Hitler’s Bunker and nearby summer residence, ‘The Eagles nest’ or ‘Kehlsteinhaus’. The bunker was a barren old concrete thing but was very high tech and had dozens of rooms. It had clean air systems for gas attack, fresh water and huge reserves of food, wine, tobacco and chocolate. In its hey day was very luxurious and akin to a luxury hotel foyer, they say. It was looted after the war and huge local pressure convinced the occupying yanks not to blow it up. They also wanted to blow up the Eagles nest, Hitler’s summer home nearby. It is accessed by a 6.4km road uphill onto the mountain top (1650 metres above sea level), just below the summer snow line. It’s so high up your can see Salzburg from it. It was an amazing feat of engineering to build it and was a gift to Hitler from the Nazi party for his 50th Birthday in 1938. He entertained local and foreign dignitaries there and I’m sure they were very impressed by it and how the hell they built it so high up. All part of the ‘superior ability of the Germans’ image they wanted to convey to the world.
Off then to Linz to stay a night with Johannes. Fair play to him, he got more than he bargained for with me but still brought me out that night to see a festival and fireworks display that was going on. He also downloaded the full series of ‘Only fools and horses’ for me which was 5 DVDs. That will keep me entertained until I get home for sure.