Worst... flight... ever!

After a brief but enjoyable pitstop in London, we bid farewell to Europe and boarded our plane bound for Brazil - coincidently on the same route as the Air France flight that crashed earlier in the year. About halfway throug the flight we were convinced that we were about to follow their fate - after some ongoing turbulance, the plane hit an air pocket and all hell broke loose. Food trays went flying, glasses smashed and oxygen masks fell from the ceiling. Thankfully we recovered from that, but shortly before we were due to land in Rio de Janeiro (and after making several in-air circles), the pilot announced that we'd be diverting to Sao Paulo due to bad weather. So the plane sat on the tarmac for a couple of hours, finally getting the all-clear and landing in Rio at about 2am. An hour of customs and immigration queueing followed, and to top it all off, we discovered that two of our credit cards had been blocked. In the end our 9:30pm arrival time had stretched out to see us stagger into the hostel at around 4am, what a nightmare...

However, despite all the night's misgivings, Rio is a beautiful city. The beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana stretch long and golden, a shimmering front to the staggering green hills that envelop a contrasting mix of glossy high-rise suburbs and favela slums. At every corner there's a hole-in-the-wall snack bar selling about 100 different sucos - freshly squeezed juices of tropical fruits - to go with tasty deep-fried pastries and fresh burgers. Restaurants offer churrasco - tender delicious meat roasted over coals and sliced directly onto your plate - and pay-by-weight buffets of some of the best food you'll ever eat, including the former slave dish of feijoada.

It was rainy and overcast while we were in Rio, making lying on the beach somewhat less appealing, so we headed up on the little train to check out the Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking the city. Unfortunately given the cloudy conditions the view over the city wasn't the greatest, and about an hour after we got there the whole statue was engulfed in mist.

A couple of days in a city that has a reputation for violent crime and muggings was more than enough for us (even though we had no problems, we later heard that there'd been a gang war with the police, and a police helicopter was shot down!), so we've headed south for some beach and rainforest action - more on that in our next post.

Seduced by Switzerland

To round off our travels in Europe, we made a short but very sweet foray into Switzerland, exiting Germany at Lindau - a little island town with views towards the start of the Alps, situated on Lake Constance at the borders of Germany, Switzerland and Austria.


After a handful of train changes, we stepped out into Lauterbrunnen, a small valley town in the Jungfrau region. We'd heard great things about the place from numerous people, and we sure weren't disappointed. The hostel we stayed at was fantastic, and we got to sleep in a little loft with views across the valley. The town is set in the most beautiful green valley dotted with typical Swiss wooden houses and flanked on both sides by towering sheer cliffs. Fat cows, sheep and goats grazed on the rich pastures, their bells tinkling in the clear alpine air.

After spending a rainy day exploring the town and acquainting ourselves with some Swiss cheese and chocolates, we set out on the next clear day towards Stechelberg. The hike took us to the end of the mist covered valley, where the green pastures gave way to the mountains proper, with a cable car linking up to the mountain villages of Gimmelwald and Murren.


From here you can hike or get another cable car up to the Schilthorn, Blofeld's hideout in the James Bond movie 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service'. Since the clouds were rolling in and views wouldn't have been very clear, we skipped the Schilthorn in favour of hiking back down the mountain, passing a handful of the 72 waterfalls in the valley. As it happened, an unfortunate paraglider crashed into the powerlines, so had we gone up we would have been stuck at the summit for the rest of the day.


The next day dawned grey and ominous, but we thought we'd make the most of it anyway and got the train up to Grindelwald (another gorgeous mountain village). However it soon became clear that the warmest of our summer wardrobe was not up the task of withstanding alpine sleet, rain and wind, so we retreated into a teahouse for hot chocolate. From Grindelwald you can catch a train up to the Jungfraujoch - the 'Top of Europe' - which is the highest train station on the continent, and possibly the most expensive train leg you'll ever take.

We liked Lauterbrunnen so much we decided to stay an extra night instead of relocating to another hostel in Basel. This was our last stop in Europe (aside from London) for the trip, and we've definitely finished on a high. The whole Jungfrau region of the Swiss alps is possibly the most beautiful place we've ever seen, and we were sad to say goodbye... But on the plus side, Brazil awaits us with promises of beaches, balmy sunshine and rainforest - endless summer here we come!

Blog facelift

Anyone notice something different about our blog page? If you haven't, take a look at the top - yes, we've updated our blog header - using completely our own photos! The funniest thing was when we realised that one of the original header pictures was of Schloss Neuschwanstein (the Disney castle), which we just went to, and our picture is almost identical...

Bavaria

Apart from Oktoberfest, there is actually more to Bavaria than you'd realise. Munich itself isn't a bad place to start, but once you get out of the city you realise how beautiful a place it is, full of variety. To illustrate this I'll tell you about 2 of our day trips.

The first one was down to Fussen to visit the castle of Schloss Neuschwanstein (New Swan Stone palace). This castle was built by King Ludwig II, although not completed. He was an interesting case by the sounds of it, who had a hell of an imagination and loved the surreal....he was later declared clinically insane and was stripped of his right to rule Bavaria. Not long after he was found dead in a lake along with his psychiatrist, the reason why remains a mystery to this day.
Before his death he managed to build a couple of other beautiful castles/palaces, but Neuschwanstein was in many people's opinion the most beautiful. Having seen it we think it is definitely the most beautiful castle we have seen. You might recognise it a little....this castle is actually the one Walt Disney copied to build the Cinderella castle at Disneyland.


After touring the castle we managed to squeeze in a trip to Oberammagau. This quaint little town which is famous for its woodwork was beautiful. Parts were reminiscent of Goslar, although the town is much smaller. We went on the hunt for Cuckoo clocks and found one we liked without too much trouble....the main problem was choosing one from the multitude available, all of which were beautifully hand made.


So trip 1 was like being in another world most of the time, one of fairytales and of beautiful things. Trip 2 on the other hand, although as if not more captivating was definitely about the real world and things that no-one is proud of.


It included a trip to Dachau concentration camp. Dachau was the first concentration camp in Germany, upon which the other camps were modelled. Following Hitler's election as Chancellor, it was originally set-up for the 're-education of political prisoners', capable of housing ~4000 people in barracks, and was situated outside the law. Of course from the outset it wasn't really used for the stated purpose, though the propaganda surrounding it led everyone to believe it was....consider that independent organisations such as the Red Cross commended the SS on the running of the camp and how well everyone was looked after. Of course this was all a facade, a staged event put on for such organistations.


Later, with several other events occuring in the meantime, the capacity of the camp was increased to around 40 000, although they were still fitting into the same barracks. The atrocities that occurred in the camp was so great that the on-site crematorium couldn't keep up, and a new crematorium considerably larger was constructed, complete with in-house 'showers'....which was actually a mass gas chamber. The new crematorium building was in effect a very efficient killing factory - prisoners entered one end as living people and exited as ashes.


The stories that we heard went on and on, each more dreadful than the last. One of the most disturbing for me that made me realise the scale of this was that the dentistry that was set-up for the camp - which was paraded to outsiders as a service to prisoners - was actually only used to remove the gold from the dead's mouths (fillings etc). In a single letter, they were asking what should be done with the 50kg they had already extracted. This letter was before the camp was in full swing.


You couldn't leave without being disgusted. A couple of other facts that I found particularly outrageous. There were serveral HUNDRED camps throughout Germany and occupied territories.


Also, after hearing everything that went on here, consider that Dachau was a concentration camp, NOT an extermination camp like Auschwitz was. Also, only Auschwitz prisoners were given a tattoo, the reason being that people were killed in such numbers there that they had to use the tattoo to identify who was dead for their records.

Bavaria, was a fantastic place to visit. It certainly has an interesting history and it kept you on your toes....

Die Weisen

When you think of Germany, there are a few things that instantly spring to mind: beer, big meat meals and lederhosen! And of course, all of those things combine in perfect harmony at the largest drinking festival in the world - Oktoberfest.

Armed with some tips from our friend and host Dana, we headed off to the festival early, stomachs lined with a solid greasy breakfast, beer hands at the ready. The festival grounds are huge - there's apparently 32 beer halls (8 main ones), all decorated inside and out, and (by the end of the day) filled with thousands of Germans and tourists decked in lederhosen and dirndls, with giant 1L steins of beer in every hand.

The festival gets absolutely chockers, but we were lucky enough to see the full spectrum - relatively empty on a weekday where you could get into the beer halls easily, through to shoulder-to-shoulder maddness on the weekend when you couldn't even get within cooee of the beer hall entrance.


To satisfy your beer-induced hunger you could get 1/2 a roast chicken or a roast pork knuckle from the massive roasting stands in the kitchen, or 1 metre of bratwurst sausage and giant pretzels from stands outside.


And if you weren't content to drink beer, stand on the bench seats and tables and sing along with the oom-pah-pah German band, you could always jump on one of the hundreds of sideshow rides on the other side of the grounds. Someone must have had a really sick sense of humour when they added the rides to the festival - beer and rides that twist, spin and go up and down is obviously not a good combination!

We managed to squeeze in about 4 days of Oktoberfest-ing, as well as some Munich and surrounds sightseeing, which we'll write more about in our next blog.

Checking out Czech

We landed in Prague, Czech Republic in the middle of the night, and one of the first things we noticed was the abundance of 'non stop' bars everywhere. Clearly this is a city that likes to party - although with Lecky surcumbing to a stomach bug, we didn't get to experience this in a big way. Prague is a pretty, picturesque city, with numerous bridges over the river Vltava providing plenty of photo opportunities for the hordes of tourists.

We checked out the castle and wandered through the labrynith of cobbled streets in the centre, and made good use of the network of trams criss-crossing the city. The surprising thing about Prague is how well preserved all the old buildings are - despite being occupied during WW2, the city escaped almost unscathed.


There is also a mini version of the Eiffel Tower on a hill overlooking the city that you can climb up - apparantly Hitler ordered that it be destroyed, saying that it 'ruined the view from the castle', but the Czechs managed to delay the order and ultimately saved the tower.


There was some festival going on while we were there, so the old town was filled with stalls offering roast Old Prague Ham, grilled sausages and Trdelnik (cylindrical donut like snacks covered in cinnamon and almonds). Further out of the town we visited a medieval market, complete with replica catapaults, armour and jousting sticks, a proper old blacksmith and loads of folks in medieval garb (including a local jester).

Next we headed south to Cesky Krumlov - a UNESCO listed town touted as one of the prettiest in Czech, if not Europe, and they weren't far from the truth. The town is overlooked by a huge castle, flanked by green hills and trees decked in their autumn best. A narrow river snakes its way through the town (and past the Eggenberg brewery), and one of the most popular activities is to hire a kayak, tire tube or other floatation device and navigate your way through the wiers and rapids.

We checked out the castle's resident bears who live in the moat - they didn't surface when we visited in the morning (must have been hungover), but made an appearance later in the arvo to pose for our pictures. Seeing as Czech is home to absinthe, we had to give a go, and did so in the Horror Bar - an underground hangout with coffins for tables and decorated with some real skeletons (we found this out later thankfully), where you can get several varieties of 'proper' absinthe (complete with wormwood) and also gory test tube shots of 'Devil's Blood'.

Cesky Krumlov turned out to be a bit complicated to get to, so to get out we opted to pay a little more and got a direct shuttle bus (really just a guy with a van) to Munich. This turned out to be a good option, since we drove off the highways and through some stunning Austrian countryside, and got dropped off right at the door of our home for the next week or so - more on that in our next post!