To Austria

We awoke to rain – still….and we had to be on a bus on the main street (1.6 km’s away) by 8:18. It was 6am. We got our packs covered from the rain and started to pack the tent. This was no easy feat because it was still raining. Eventually everything was on our backs, a little heavier from the water! When we left the reception was still closed, so we left some money for them by the door – hopefully they got it, otherwise we may be considered fugitives in Germany by the time we get back! We power walked down the meadow path to the main street, with ten minutes to spare until the bus! (Not like us…we are normally still running down the path when the bus would come!) We were quite pleased with ourselves, and enjoyed the quiet, warm bus ride to Garmisch. We boarded a train to our next destination about lunch-time, heading for Innsbruck in Austria.

The train ride was fantastic, something out of an old western as we darted in and out of the mountains, tooting along the outside of the rockfaces and through the dark tunnels. We found our way easily from the train station in Innsbruck to our camping ground, where we have an awesome package for a few nights. We have a tourist card for the town that lets us see all of the sights, plus use the public transport & all of the cable cars & ski lifts in the area. The town is situated right between the Austrian alps, and is one of the best skiing areas in Winter, and hiking areas in Summer. The campsite is really basic, and we are starting to get a taste of what it will be like in Italy – tonnes of RV’s looking for a spot to squeeze into, and lots more tourists than we are used to! So far we have managed to scare away the RV’s trying to squeeze next to our tent, but we have been more than lucky so far! Our little mountain tent looks ridiculous among some of the holiday homes that come rolling through.

Our first full day in Innsbruck we took the bus into the city, and took the sightseer bus through the town and to the Castle. The Castle belonged to Archduke Ferdinand I of Austria, and was full of artefacts from the 1500’s. The old armour and weapons were fantastic, and we didn’t even have time to really look at them all! The buildings were a lot more accessible than the German Castles, and we could walk right into the 16th Century bathrooms and bedrooms.

We got the Sightseer bus back to town, and jumped on the KristallWelten Shuttle to Swarovski Crystal World. The company built a museum into a hill to commemorate their 100th year in business. After all the excitement of visiting the ‘Crystal World’, the gift shop ended up being the most interesting part. We ended up spending most of our time in the gift shop looking at the €4000 crystal parrots.

Fussen

The next day we started early to get to Fussen by lunchtime. We made our way to the camping ground in Schwangau, and could see Neuschwanstein Castle sitting on the mountain opposite us. The campground was right on a huge inland Sea, and the day was so hot we couldn’t wait to jump in. We had our first swim since leaving home! We came to Fussen, by bus, to see the Neuschwanstein Schloss (Cinderella Castle). This castle, built for crazy King Ludwig II, was the inspiration for Disney’s Castle, and it is easy to see why! It sits on a small mountain that can be seen for miles away, and the little turrets and windows look much like the fairytale Disney version.

After dinner, we went for a walk around the little town. The campground is on a little peninsula on the lake, surrounded by dairy farms. We walked along a little farm road and found a little hill that we could climb to get a good view of the town, the castle & the sunset. We found that the hill led to a meadow that we could cross back to the water, so we tramped through in our waterproof pants. We played with the cows a little, and got some great photos of the sunset.



The next day we went to Neuswanstein. We decided to walk there, as the ground around the town is so flat (until you get to the mountains…) We walked to town, and it started pouring rain, our umbrellas were useless and our clothes were getting soaked. We found a little outdoors shop who had rain/wind proof jackets on sale! We picked up a bargain jacket each and kept going on our way. We felt great walking along the meadows in our raingear, stopping for heaps of photos and sights while approaching the castle as all the people in their cars and tour buses went whizzing by!



We took the hiking trail to the castle (most people go the main way by paved road) and arrived in heaps of time for our tour. The castle was pretty inside, but not as spectacular as it’s exterior design. We went to see Mary’s Bridge, which has a good view of the castle from the mountains. The bridge is suspended over a small river & waterfalls - very high! There was a track leading off the other side of the bridge, so we thought we’d follow it to get an even better view of the castle (and a bit of adventure away from the tour buses). So we climbed what you might call a (mountain) goat track. We travelled higher and higher and the path got thinner and closer to the edge of the mountain. We had a peaceful view of the castle and then worked our way back down for some lunch. After eating we found a sideway path down behind the castle which lead to the river below. We followed it through some lush forest and then onto a metal bridge leading along a rock face. We reached the bottom and found that it lead back to a main road into town (this meant that we didn’t have to climb up again to get back) After stocking up at the supermarket we finish our trek on foot by walking back to the camping ground. All up we estimate about 13 km for the day.



Not having had enough walking to day before we decided to head to a summer bob-slead track in the side of a mountain. We took a different route from camp along a river and arrived at the place to early (it opened at 12:30) Our map showed a walking trail behind the track so we thought we might give it a go. This path was bitumen and extraordinary steep to begin with. We reached a fork in the road already tired after 30mins of climbing. Deciding to continue we chose the closes mountain, Hornburg, and head up the now dirt track. The path wound up and up and eventually we reached another mountain goat track. We followed the red dots on the rock, the trail markers for 20 mins. We were creeping along the edge of a very steep mountain side when a safety rope appeared, at this point it started raining and we decided the rain could make this a very dangerous situation. We carefully picked our way back down the track as it became more slippery by the minute. The rain was heavy now and we power walked back down the hill to the crossroad. It was pouring and still another 20 min walk to the bob-sled building but to our luck there was a timber shelter in a neighbouring paddock. We climbed through the barbwire and took refugee here until the rain cleared. We eventually made it to the bottom of the mountain and had started heading towards town only for the rain to start again. This time we climbed under the bridge that we happened to be walking over and waited here for the rain to pass,
again. It rained on and off all the way back to camp and even our rain gear was struggling. We washed some clothes and headed for bed with the rain still pouring.

Zugspitze

The next day was perfect mountaineering weather, and we got going early for our trip to the peak of Zugspitze. We walked to a train station, where no trains stopped, and then found a bus station nearby. After singing Lauren a happy birthday (one day too early!!) we took the Seilbahn Cable Car to the top of the mountain. The view was spectacular and the clouds were hanging off just long enough for us to reach the top. From the viewing platform, we could see people climbing up on a path to the peak of the mountain. Being fair weather, we thought that’s fine – we can do that! Once we exited the safety gate – and entered ‘Alpine Conditions’, we had to traverse a steep icy path, complete with snow dropping steeply to one side, and a rocky cliff on the other, before coming to a vertical ladder, with a couple of safety cables to hold onto. It was a lot harder than it looked. We got halfway and sat down for a breather and considered whether we could continue to the peak. We decided to have a go, and started inching along the rockface, holding onto the safety cables with sweaty hands. We made it to the top and felt very accomplished! We hung around on the peak for a few minutes, savouring our little victory. We left a little piece of string tied to the top as a tribute to our first climb. Once we began climbing back down, Dee had a little panic moment, almost freezing on the cliff face, but managed to get back to safety in the end.

We took the next cable car down to Sonn Alpin Glacier where they have the large ski fields in Winter. Zugspitze is one of the best mountain areas in Germany during Winter. There was still snow around, and after traipsing through it in our waterproof multifunction shoes (!) we headed back to camp.

Garmisch Parten-Kirchen

Finally, we decided we should leave our cosy home, as we were getting a little too comfortable even to write on the blog! We checked our camping list and made sure we were prepared, and jumped on a train to Garmisch Parten-Kirchen. Or Garnish Park in Kitchen as we have been saying….We arrived on the train open jawed…the view of the alps was spectacular as we approached, and we couldn’t even see the tip of the Zugspitze (highest mtn) through the clouds! The air is so fresh and the rivers sparkling clear. The museums and bridges we have seen are nothing compared to what it’s like here.

We got off the train and followed the signs (or so we thought…) to the info centre. We walked a big square around town before we finally found it. We had been given different directions by about 4 people, and they were all wrong. We got some maps & some food from the supermarket and jumped on the bus to the camping ground. We asked the driver to let us off for the camping ground, but he got confused and took us all the way to the cable car that takes off up the mountain…. We had to wait 15 mins before the next bus went back down!! We got off again at the bottom of the hill, and walked what seemed like 3 km’s to finally reach the camping ground. (It was actually only about 800m). We set up camp looking up at the Zugspitze, with an Alpine river flowing behind us. The water was icy from the mountain, and was really good for cooling beer! We cooked our first dinner under the mountain, and slept our first night camping in good weather.

Munich / Markt Schwaben

After hostelling our way through France, Spain, England & Scotland, including one night at Heathrow Airport (on a couch in a coffee bar) we were more than relieved to be flying to Munich to meet up with friends. We were greeted with open arms, and led to our room – we had a whole floor of a lovely traditional Bavarian home to call our own. We had a long hot shower, the cleanest we had been in a month, and were treated to a homemade apple cake and coffee. After a trip around town in a 1980’s BMV convertible, we got familiar with the S-Bahn networks and our little ‘home’ town.

The next week we spent exploring Munchen and surrounds, and being totally spoilt once again by our lovely hosts. We ate lots of tasty traditional food and learnt more Deutsch that we found very useful! Munich is full of Biergartens where BYO means bring your own food. Bier is supplied out of every store, by half liter or liter. (They look at you strange if you order the half….). Beer considered premium in Aus (like Becks, Heineken) is treated like VB here, and is the cheap dirty option for those who can’t handle the German Biers. Ivar has grown accustomed to this lifestyle, and will find it hard back in Aus we think!

The Rest of Europe....

so. today we are off on another adventure! We bought camping gear, and are now going to camp for the rest of the trip!! we have bought proper hiking shoes, and a little mountain tent, a little gas cooker and some unbreakable cutlery and dishes, and today we leave Munich for a little town called Garmisch Parten-Kirchen. It's at the foot of Germany's highest mountain - The Zugspitze! We are going to get a steep little cog railway up the mountain - because we are too inexperienced to hike it :(. We are very excited though, and have been planning in Munich here for about two weeks now....we are staying at the bottom of the mountain for a couple of days, then moving onto an even smaller town called Fussen - where the castle that inspired Disney's Cinderella castle lives! So we will camp on the lake there, and visit Cinderella's castle, and then we head to Austria. We have got an awesome little package booked in Innsbruck - the hiking capital of Austria! We have 4 nights camping booked, along with a visitor card that gives us access to everything in and around the town, including the Cable car and funicular railways up the mountain. We can even go to the zoo. From Innsbruck, we will be making our way down to Italy, and camping our way from Verona, down the North East coast - including Venice, Ravenna, Rimini etc. Then we go to Rome for a few days, and then down to Naples and Pompeii. We have ridiculously cheap flights back to Munich from Naples.

Then - depending on how we cope - we have planned the biggest leg of our trip! We will hopefully be departing Munich again on the 15th July (or near), and going to Norway. From Norway we hope to get a boat to Iceland. Yes, Iceland. We will camp our way around the island for a week, and stop also on the Faroe Islands for 2 days, on the way back to Norway. Then we have a few weeks to camp our way through Northern Norway following the coast to the Arctic Circle, and then through Sweden to Northern Finland. We will visit Santa's real house, and then head South to Helsinki. From there we ferry to Tallinn - Estonia, where we have another 3-4 weeks to camp and explore.

Last day in Scotland

The last day in Edinburgh we spend exploring the city and went on a Ghost tour under the streets. We had a really small group for the tour - normally they get 30 people or so. Our group was us two, plus an Indian family - about six of them. Two small kids and four adults. We went around the town learning about the old buildings and walkways, and then ventured underground. One of the kids didn't want to go underground, so she stayed with one uncle in the office. We saw a real pagan temple where they still do their thing in the underground vaults, and then went on towards the next level. The other child and the aunt didn't want to go further, so they were taken away. That left Ivar and Dee, the two Indian parents and the guide. We went up to the Level 2 of paranormal activity, where you could feel the temperature drop. The lady took us into the old pagan temple, where she said that bad things happened to the worshippers, so they had moved to the lower level. Nothing happened to us..... We were just about to enter the Level 3 room, after the guide had spoken to us about in the hall because you can't talk much in the vault, because it is where one of the most violent poltergeists in the world is believed to exist. Talking and cameras make him mad. And he doesn't like women. Suddenly, the Indian parents wanted out. The guide took them out and left Ivar and Dee standing at the entrance to the violent ghosthome. Dee was scared. The guide returned, and took us into the vault. Everyone had to spread out because it would confuse the poltergeist. Ivar had to stand on his own on the dark side of the room (he wasn't scared), and Dee and the guide had to spread out on the other side of the room. The ghost would be torn between protecting his territory that Ivar was near, or attacking the women because he doesn't like them. Nothing happened. The guide spoke about past experiences, and we looked into the dark tunnel where he was meant to be. Suddenly, a lady in a cape jumped out in the hall and screamed. Dee screamed. They had told us that they weren't the tour to have jumping people in capes, so we were annoyed. It was funny, but really mean. Dee shook all the way back to the hostel.

Rugby 7s Part 2

Day two at the Rugby we got to see Australia play England in the Semi final and be unlucky to loose in extra time. After the two days of playing New Zealand ended up winning the competition and the fans loved it.
Borat streaked and there were fire works and a haka.

After the bus ride back to the hotel we when back to The Three Sisters and it happened to be the official pub for the rugby. There were a lot of drunk Portuguese players dance very hard and we met a lot of the players including the Aussies and Kiwis.

Rugby 7s

Today we trekked to Murryfeilds Stadium for the Sevens.
The first of the two days were still group games (the finals coming on the second day) 16 teams competed including Australia (Fiji was tipped to win) The crowd had a lot of fun. It was the first time the final leg of the World Series has been held in Scotland, and it was obviously an annual thing for lots of groups of people! There were sumos, oompa loompa’s, british sissy-nannies, a roman guard, a banana, Snow Mike and his dwarves, and even borat and his green swimsuit came. The crowd was full of Kiwis and Fijians, and a good Kenyan and South African crowd as well. There were a few Aussies, lots of Americans but not to many English. No one likes the English in Scotland. They were booed when they played anyone.

After a full day to Rugby we headed to a big pub near the hostel called The Three Sisters to watch Estonia play Croatia in the Euro qualifiers of Football. We lost 1-0 but the Croatians cheated.

Edinburgh Scotland!!

We love Edinburgh! We arrived on a beautiful sunny day, at 8:30 in the morning
with no sleep the night before! We found a tourist info place and got a map of the town. The lady showed us a good way to get to our hostel – it was on the other side of the castle, and if we walked one way it would be downhill, the other up! We still took the wrong one….We ended up walking uphill until we thought we were going to collapse and roll all the way back down! We made it eventually, the hostel is quite Australian themed (a little annoying because we were in Scotland!), but clean and fun! We dumped our bags at the hostel and headed out to find a big coffee. We started walking towards town (the downhill way), and we stumbled across a few vans with some sports teams getting in…hmm we say, who could this be?? We looked on the vans and it was the Kenya, Samoa and Argentina rubgy sevens team….as we walked by, who popped out of the hotel but the All Blacks!

We asked when the games were and headed off on a new mission: Coffee and Rugby tickets!! We got Starbucks (yay!) and walked right around town looking for the ticket office. No luck. So, what shall we do – more walking!! We came across some of the oldest, spookiest graves we have ever seen – complete with green moss and shady buildings. The gravestones are so interesting and we could have spent ages walking through the historic cemeteries.

We kept moving and skirted around the outside of the town. We passed the castle (where the royal family stays when in Scotland), and it was all closed up. Why? We asked the guard….we had missed Prince Chuck by about two hours!! He had been staying all weekend, “good riddance” the guard said! Not like the Royal Guard at Buckingham here…. We saw a mountain ahead, and having nothing else to do thought we would do the climb to Arthur’s Seat, one of the high lookout points. We got halfway and remembered we had had no sleep the night before, and only coffee and muffins since…..so we headed back into town for some lunch. We found the rugby ticket info at the tourist office, and bought weekend passes over the phone – concessions were free with an adult ticket, so we got a whole weekends entertainment for 16 pounds!

Day 5 London

Today we walked our asses off to see a large department store. Sound ridiculous? It was. We walked through the Palace again, followed some smelly horses under an old arch, walked by lots of designer stores and eventually arrived at Harrod’s. After two minutes looking on the ground floor, we couldn’t remember why we came, and after a small domestic in the poshest store in London, we walked out. We ‘discussed’ things on the footpath, and decided that after our friggin long trek, we weren’t leaving now. We rode the elevators, took illegal photos of the food hall, played in the Toy Department, and then walked out again.


We went through Hyde Park (the real one….) and walked all the way down Oxford Street and went home to make dinner. We caught up with an Aussie friend after dinner in Trafalgar Square, while watching a live screening of Swan Lake Ballet from the theatre on the large screen and drinking wine and beer (really cheap from the supermarket).


We remembered at 10PM that we had to get up again in a couple of hours! Our flight to Edinburgh left Gatwick Airport at 06:30 the next morning…this meant we had to check in at 4:30….this meant that we had to be on a bus to Gatwick at 03:30….which meant we had to leave the hotel by 2:00 am……We ummed and ahhed about going to the Airport that night, but decided we’d paid for a bed, and even a couple of hours sleep would do us good!! We woke up at 1:00 am and set off on a very exciting adventure! It was pitch black, so quiet in London and we had to get 2 buses to the coach station. We worked ourselves out and arrived at the coach station with heaps of time to spare! We boarded our bus to Gatwick at 03:30 and made our plane to Edinburgh on time!

Day 4 London

Really crappy London weather! We caught the bus to Tate Modern…unfortunately we got off one stop too late and had to walk all the way back over the Thames in disgusting sleety rain. We arrived at the Tate sodden, but glad to be inside for the next few hours! We wandered around the 5 floors of modern art, including works by the likes of Jackson Pollock, Jeff Koons, Monet, Picasso, Marcel Du Champ. Ivar took some more illegal photos – we were visiting the original artworks that he has studied for four years! We eventually left the gallery and went back into the rain. We walked down The Strand (looooong road!) and went to Tesco’s to buy groceries. Groceries are veeery expensive and they do not sell beef. Enough said.

Crappy London gave us both a cold.

Day three in London was spent mostly inside…we both felt like sacs of wet flannels and slept in until we could face the day….the weather was actually nice (after the rainshower passed!) so we ventured out (very rugged up) to do a bit more exploring.
We checked out the West End again and bought half price tickets to Les Miserables at the Queen’s Theatre that night.

We got all dressed up and went out to see a Broadway show…..the show was great, no photos were allowed inside unfortunately (like it has really stopped us before…) We got ok seats, but moved to better ones when some people didn’t turn up for theirs! It was a weeknight but the theatre was still sold out (and they play every night….)

London Day 2

Today we had a real day of crappy London weather! We braved the cold rain and did the main tourist circuit – Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Regent & Oxford Street…..you can really walk around the Monopoly board here……by accident we found ourselves in Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly and more! Luckily, we arrived at Buckingham Palace right in time for the changing of the guards…massive fuss and kafuffle over a couple of marching bands and horses…it was very exciting anyway, but we thought that with all the fuss that maybe the Queen was coming home!! We walked through the West End and Soho, no celebrities there ☹.

Alive & Well

We are currently in Edinburgh - and have heaps to update about our London & Edinburgh adventures - but have limited net access at the moment. We return to Munich in 2 days, and hopefully will have enough time to add our new photos then! Keep checking for an update in a couple of days!