The end of term came and it was off to the airport for our 00.55 flight to Dubai (via Colombo) and then onto Prague. Excitement was bubbling - our big trip to Europe had finally arrived!
The seasoned traveler above has developed a few effective airport strategies.
Dubai Airport is a massive international hub. It took 15 mins to get bused into the terminal from where we got off our plane. I also noticed a sign for departure gates 212 - 260! The terminal had a very international flavour with Arabs in full regalia as well as many exotically dressed Africans waiting around for their connecting flights. Here we are boarding for our Dubai - Prague leg.
Waiting at Prague airport to get picked up for the transfer to our apartment.
Prague
We stayed in an apartment in Kobylisy, an inner suburb but well out of the tourist zone. It's always a toss up about where to stay but in this case it was a good choice. The apartment was light and airy, set in a lovely garden in a quiet neighbourhood with a superb supermarket 5 mins walk away. The array of breads, cheeses and sausages had us jumping up and down as soon as we walked in. Getting into town was easy - a choice of two trams that went via the old town or zipping in on the metro to any of the connecting stations.
The back garden of our apartment block.
Museum of Communism - we didn't get there but they had great posters.
We had lots of delicious picnic lunches with goodies like these from the local shops.
...and then it was onto the subway and into town in Prague.
We started off on Sunday morning in Mala Strana - making our way up to the castle. The streets were quiet and captivating. We hadn't seen anything like this before.
The doors and door handles on many of the buildings are extraordinary.
The streets of Mala Strana, charmingly quiet on a Sunday morning.
We headed up to the castle and I had my first sight of what is called 'sgraffitto'. It all looked so grand and stately. This street/courtyard was full of elegant buildings leading to the castle.
Sculptures on the front gates of Prague castle.
He goes in and the other guy goes out - the changing of the guard at one of the side entrances of Prague castle.
Heading out into a local park for a break.
Having a rest on one of the local sculptures. Security moved him on pretty promptly!
Hard to see and even harder to photograph, but the gargoyles on the cathedral were huge and grotesque - better than Jeff Kennett on St Pat's cathedral!
Cathedral of St Vit at Prague castle.
Baroque alter piece inside.
There are lots of amazing stained glass windows in the cathedral but this one by the artist Mucha is an art nouveau gem.
Another view of the cathedral.
Looking over some of the rooftops of Mala Strana from the castle walls.
Inside the castle grounds.
Enjoying the view and the incredibly good weather.
Mala Strana doorway - very pretty.
Jordy and I got up early on Monday morning and caught the tram into town. Actually the days were really long, it started getting light at 4.30 am and didn't get dark till 9.30 pm. We wandered through the old town and down to the Charles Bridge. It was great to see it uncrowded and fresh in the morning...
... sitting in the old town square, working out where we were at 6.30 am.
The old town square.
On Charles bridge looking back towards the old town.
Early morning sun lighting up the bridge, Mala Strana with Prague castle in the distance. Magnificient!
Home for breakfast and then back into town on the tram...
Decoration above doorways in the streets of the Old Town. The house of the black sun or something like that.
I put these shots in in the wrong order but the top one is the cafe at Obecni Dum, the 1911 built Municipal House (above), still in use for performances and with a cafe and restaurant - an art nouveau masterpiece!
At the astronomical clock, looking back into the old town square and the gothic spires of the Tyn Church.
The astronomical clock wasn't too crowded in late May/ early June, perfect time to be in Prague.
Coffee and ice cream at Au Goumand, a nouveau era cafe just off the old town square.
Re-visiting Charles Bridge later in the day, a lot more action happening now.
One afternoon, we took a left turn down a lane way off Wenceslas Square and ran into the cubist lamp post. This was just before an old derro came and pissed in the corner and Felicity took off in a hurry!
The ongoing, hotly contested European canasta tournament, played in airports, apartments, cafes, trains, train stations and a caravan park in Dubai, Prague, Crakow, Wawsaw, Berlin and Venice.
Even the manholes in Praha are interesting!
Soviet-style relief sculpture on a building in Nove Mesto.
The sculpture on buildings is amazing. This was just down a little side street in Nove Mesto near the Mucha museum.
The top end of Wenceslas Square.
Relief on a bridge pillar - courtesy of Jordy.
We spent one morning walking the delightful streets of Josefov the former Jewish quarter, now undergoing significant renovation and transformation.
In Josefov, we visited St Agnes monestry, which has a superb collection of mediveal art. It was one of the highlights and well worth the time & (not much) money - superb medieval painting, sculpture & spaces.
Czech dinner at U Ferdinandu.
Estates theatre where Mozart premiered his Don Giovanni opera - still going strong !
Old town Square in the evening.
Terracotta roof tops, spires and basilicas.
Stairs through Mala Strana leading up to the castle.
Earning a few kronars.
More astounding doorways!
Inside Sv Mikulas (St Nicholas) church in Mala Strana - Jesuit, high baroque with a few rococco touches, frescoes, organs, marble everywhere - totally impressive!
Checking out the more contemporary John Lennon wall on the back of the Grand Priory of the Maltese knights. Don't think the knights were too happy about it but it has become a significant cultural landmark!
A snack in the park on Kampa island...
...looking across to the other side of the river.
On our last day we visited the Vysehrad park and wandered the walls of the old fortress. Then it was...
...goodbye Prague and onto an early morning train to...
Crakow
The leafy park a short walk from our apartment in Podgorze, Crakow.
Jarden Jewish bookstore in Kazimierz, where we booked our tour of the ghetto.
First meal in U Vincentu in Kazimierz - traditional Polish pierogi - delicious!
Szeroka square in Kazimierz.
Sunday morning trash and treasure in Kazimierz.
The atmospheric streets of Kazimierz at dusk.
The pedestrian bridge linking the jewish area of Kazimierz and the area of Podgorze, where we were staying.
The entrance to Wauvel castle
Castle grounds...
Royal apartments at Wauvel castle - very sumptuous.
The cathedral at Wauvel
On the bridge...
Lit up, local church near our apartment in Podgorze.
On Saturday, we spent the day visiting Auschwitz about two hours away on the bus. It was an amazing experience to be in such a somber place on such a beautiful day. At Auschwitz I, we toured with a guide and saw many of the rooms, cells, quadrangles used by the Nazis to house, torture and kill their prisoners - polish, gypsy, jewish, homosexual and more.
The famous 'work makes you free' entrance gates to Auschwitz.
Sleeping quarters for prisoners - boards, or maybe even the concrete floor underneath.
About 3km away was Auschwitz II or 'Birkenau' as it is known - there were many other, lesser known satellite camps as well. This was a death camp. Unheated, rapidly built wooden huts were used to house tens, even a hundred thousand jews in sub-zero temperatures (up to -15/20) in the long European winters. The Nazis blew up the gas chambers to try to destroy the evidence before they left but you can still see the piles of rubble. What surprises here is the sheer expanse of the place which stretches as far as the eye can see.
The infamous platform where inmates were unloaded and divided into two groups - workers and those to be immediately exterminated - mostly the elderly, women and children.
Entrance to Birkenau.
Haunting acres of barbed wire...
One evening we had dinner at U Babic Maliny... a quirky Polish place - avec local musician.
The goulash was too salty!
Wandering through the old town on Saturday evening.
'Sukiennice' - The renaissance cloth hall in Crakow's old town square.
This was a spectacular church - a Franciscan Church. It has a fully painted interior, walls and ceiling - very beautiful.
We had a coffee at Jama Mickalika, an art nouveau cafe, the hangout of writers and artists in the 1920s.
In side the medieval Barbican - a defensive fortress surrounded by a moat, used to protect the old town.
The Florian, also part of the defensive wall of medieval Crakow - now used to hawk art to tourists. How times change.
Inside the Barbican.
Outside the Barbican
Streets of the old town.
These are called obwarzanki - pretzels sold on the streets around town.
We hired bikes and spent the day riding around - sooo good!
Polish lads getting into a bit of Sunday arvo breaking in the old town square.
She bought the blue ones.
We had a nice meal at this place in Kazimierz.
For our last morning we had booked a tour of the jewish area, Podgorze ghetto and the Oscar Schindler factory. Our guide was the guy below 'Bart' not a jew himself but he had just finished a degree in Jewish Studies from the uni. There are only about 100 jews left in Crakow these days.
This wall was reconstructed from tombstones and graves that the Nazis had smashed up to use for roads and building rubble.
There is also only one fully functioning synagogue left in Crackow. This one is now a museum.
Yay! Summer fruit in the market in Kazimierz - by the way Poland was very affordable.
'Piekarnia' - we tried them too!
This is in Podgorze where we were staying. Here is what is left of the ghetto wall. They moved maybe a hundred thousand jews out of Kazimierz, put them over here, built a wall around them and forced them to live in utterly cramped conditions. Just to inconvenience them further, all the signs were changed to Yiddish which many did not even read or understand!
Outside the Schindler factory.
The ghetto square where a monument of empty chairs has been created. After the liquidation of the ghetto, random furniture was left lying here. This memorial is a reminder of this.
Berlin
The view from Maria & Ivo's apartment where we stayed in Neukoelln in Berlin.
On the first day we did a free tour - great value.
This is the Alte Bibliothek in Unter den Linden.
My shot of the Brandenburger Tor
We spent some time exploring the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe. This is regarded as a controversial memorial both because of the ways it looks and the ways that people use it. But in walking through it it brings up many images, all the more relevant for us as we had just been to Auschwitz and the Podgorze ghetto.
Total tourist schlak - Checkpoint Charlie!
The Berliner Dom on Museum island
Painted trees in Prenzlauerberg
Braunschweiger strasse, our neck of the woods in Berlin - a little bit run down, a little bit alternative. It has a lot of Turkish immigrants so really it was not unlike Oakleigh - our neck of the woods in Melbourne - olives, fetta, spanokopita, baklava - we felt very much at home. The local Turkish supermarket had a sensational bakery where we picked up our lunch as we headed out each morning.
Pizza in Prenzlauerberg.
Pergammon Altar at the awe inspiring Pergamonmuseum (German spelling).
The gates of Babylon at the same.
The Pergamon is all about architecture and the spaces and collection they have there are breathtaking. Incidentally Berlin has over 170 museums, even one dedicated to the currywurst. No, we didn't.
Not usually part of my local neighbourhood - buildings still with schrapnel and bullet scars all over them.
Another view of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
The boys took an afternoon trip to the zoo.
We took the train to Potsdam, hired bikes and spent a glorious day riding around. Here we had lunch in the cool shadow of the Schloss Babelsberg.
This is Schloss Cecilienhoff where the last Kaiser lived and where they held the Potsdam conference at the end of the Second World War. We saw the room where Atlee, Truman and Stalin sat with their interpreters and carved up Germany.
The totally rococco Chinesches Teehaus - a fanciful, oriental playground for the 18th century aristocrats.
This is the late Baroque Neues Palais commissioned by Frederick the Great. We were late getting here so it was a bit of a rushed visit. It is astonishing - over 200 rooms. One called the Grottensaal is a massive hall totally (& I mean totally) covered with shells, coral, semi-precious stones and even stalactites. Who were these people?
Dinner at Manoush in Kreuzberg.
One of the other free tours we did was an 'Alternative Berlin' tour. We started at Alexanderplatz and wandered along the rail line looking at the street art of various artists. Around the Hackerscher Markt we saw a couple of original lane ways from the former east Berlin that have been left intact.
In Kreuzberg we visited a few artists studios - basically places where artists have been squatting for years and which are now under threat as the real estate prices in the area improve.
Oh yeah - legal to have a beer at 16 in Germany - with parents permission of course. You know Berliners call this place a beach (ha ha!!). We were not able to apply the word beach to a layer of sand spread along a mid-city river bank - but nice try anyway!!
Playing his electric guitar in his boxers on the bridge between platforms at Ostkreuz station - as you do.
Painted building around the corner from where we were staying.
On Saturday we hired bikes and began the day with a ride day down Karl Marx Allee to view the soviet style wedding cake architecture built on the only new post-WWII boulevard in Europe.
The man himself. 'Who's he?', they said. We tried a little explaining!!
Colourful flowers and summer fruit at the Saturday market in Boxhagenerplatz.
Yep - a great time to be in Europe.
Continuing on we ventured down to the East Side Gallery to check out some of the murals painted by an array of international artists on this 1.3 section of the Wall. Jordy was not feeling too good at this stage so we had to head home, but we saw a good selection nevertheless.
Our final dinner in Berlin at Barraka an Arabian/Egyptian restaurant in Kruezberg.
Sunday morning, Xave and I rode the bikes back while Felicity took Jordy, who was quite ill, to the local hospital. He got the all clear to travel and in the early afternoon we headed out to Shoenfeld to pick up our German Wings flight to Venice.
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