Tonight’s stay – hunkered down in the Italian alps at Misurina

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And castles galore – another Lizzie, guest appearance!

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A village somewhere – Liz photo

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Reit im Winkl

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Hintersee, Germany in Berchtesgaden land

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View from our room at 0600 this morning at Hintersee

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A never ending procession…

Stunning mountain landscapes as we meander through southern Austria and Bavaria towards northern Italy and the Dolomites.

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Hallstadt, Austria

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The hotel had its own ski run and jumps used by the community for training.

And Hans was the ski instructor in the winter months and a farmer in the summer.

With my partner at the time, we worked here so we could ski. In 3 hours off in the afternoons we could race to a local ski field called Winklmoos, ride the lifts to the summit and ski several kilometres back to the car then race back to work in time! And on days off, we were off to St Johann and Kitzbuel in Austria only a few kilometres away and skiied til we dropped.

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Memory lane

In 1971 I worked at the Hotel Steinbacherhof (as a kitchen hand) in the village of Reit im Winkl in Bavaria and today, I went back to see what it was like now!

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Another view

See previous…

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Yet another ‘Wot is it?’ from the Austrian hinterland

Found on the edges of some fields adjoining roads…containing stakes about a metre long and lengths of lattice suggesting a temporary fence?

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Krumlov rapid used by canoeists and rafters

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Last evening in Cesky Krumlov

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Austria – Why I wonder?

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Kate and I enjoy just being in Cesky Krumlov

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Briefing on history of Cesky Krumlov

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Castle Cesky Krumlov

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Castle wall propped up by concrete columns

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One of numerous Restaurants in Cesky Krumlov

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Old town Cesky Krumlov, southern Czech Republic

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What is it?

Another in the series…these little structures are scattered through the Czech and Austrian countryside overlooking crops…what is their purpose I wonder?

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What kind of place would ban ice creams?

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And great views!

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At last the secret to perfect train travel-fold down seat in the baggage car windows open

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Segways for hire

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Travel tip #2 – A Sad traveller’s tale

We’ve made a few mistakes on this trip and here’s our most recent and most expensive one!

After jumping off the train from Nuremberg in Prague we headed for the taxi stand. As we were about to jump in a cab, the driver asked, ‘have you money’ and we looked puzzled, ‘yes, Euros’ to which he and a couple of other cabbies said, ‘no, we don’t have them here, you need Czech money’ and the driver offered to take us via an ATM.

How stupid we were to not even know that Czech Republic like the Swiss and UK, retained their own currency.

‘What is your money called’ we asked in ignorance and understood ‘ ‘Kroner’; how many to the Euro? He didn’t seem to know…warning bells…when Lizzie returned from the ATM she was clutching 3,000 Kroner and we went ‘whoah’ this is pretty wild and we became VERY interested in the exchange rate as the taxi sped to our hotel ten minutes away. And from sitting in the front, for the first time I noticed there was no meter.

How much? 1,600 Kroner he said…sounds a lot we said to which he showed us a page from the cab dashboard with examples of costs of taxis around Prague.

We paid and went inside and asked the concierge whose face fell…’oh dear, I’m afraid you struck one of the many bad taxis in Prague, you paid 10 times the usual fare!’ 100 Kroner is approximately AUD6  and we had just paid $96 for a 15 minute cab ride! Today the same trip cost us 200 Kroner which included a 20 Kroner tip (normal 10% accepted practice) ie $12.

Subsequent research on Trip Adviser of course revealed the extent of the scam and we became yet another statistic!

I had to be dissuaded from spending the next couple of days at the station looking for this bloody bandit and warning others to use the yellow cabs with meters!

On Trip Adviser we found references to people who had their taxi speed away with all their stuff and reports where meters had been rigged to operate at 10 times the bona fide cab rate just for suckers like us!

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Prague – almost an overdose of spectacular old buildings

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Praha city lights

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Girls night out – happy Lizzie and sister Rose!

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One of many portrait artists on the Karluv bridge in Prague.

One guy offers cariacature sketches in 4 minutes!

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Behind the scenes – thanks to Rose for the pic!

We arrived in Prague the very night the Czechs defeated the Ruskies in ice hockey, world champions and what a sweet victory it was in the City square.

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Prague Castle in the background

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Kate’s dream

Kate’s been having a series of dreams on the trip but one stands apart.

She dies and is heading for Heaven. She meets with God who tells her she has to pass a few tests in order to gain entrance to Heaven to see if she is a thoroughly good and deserving person. The tests consist of obscure shapes and pictures and her task is to describe what she sees. Should she see something evil or nasty she will fail and go to Hell. But, as expected, she passes and journeys through a big cathedral en route to Heaven.

But on the way she tripped over something valuable on the floor and God said, I’m afraid you cannot now be admitted into Heaven. So, she was sent to Hell.

When she arrived, it wasn’t the Devil she met first but a group of his employees who were whipping people and she quickly realised that it wasn’t the Devil who was evil but his employees!

On her first encounter with the Devil, she found him a small withered sort of chap who was actually not in control of everything at all, in fact he had been overthrown. He was simply misunderstood.

Kate decided she could help him to regain his self confidence and she commenced lessons with him to encourage him and provide him with examples. They sat down and together decided what Hell should really be like and people would take it as a compliment when others said ‘go to Hell!’.

Then they put the plan into action and it turned out that when someone was bad, they went to Purgatory not Hell, including the Devil’s previous employees and others already in Hell.

So from now on, when people died, they arrived at the gates and knowing Hell wasn’t so bad, they could choose between Heaven and Hell. Royalty and fancy ants people chose Heaven but the rest went to Hell.

And the funny thing was, God didn’t even know about this arrangement!

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The Nightwatchman

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The village park

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Township from the mediaeval village

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Savage little fellow

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Ah the smell of fresh horse dung in the morning!

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Mostly ultralights

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Flightline at the local airfield

Two hours watching planes take off and land, how about that for a good time!

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Festivities in the town square

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Important mediaeval men’s business

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Rothenburg

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Liz and Kate wandered the town with the famous Nightwatchman who was highly amusing and a great story teller

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Thought for a minute we’d spotted the Schaeffer-Devlin clan

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And lots of music in the streets

Jousting, horses and demonstrations of ancient arts and crafts, all really wonderfully festive.

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More drinking and frying of sausages

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Punctuated by cannon fire

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And women doing something similar but with more finesse…

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Annual 125th festival in full swing

Seemed to comprise of lot’s of blokes in period costumes sitting behind enclosures drinking huge tankards of beer and chomping on wurst and laughing loudly!

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The view from our room

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Our hotel overlooking the city square

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Unter der die oder das Rathaus

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Famous Weinachtendorf (Christmas village) shop, a true wonder!

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Arrival in Rothenburg ob der Tauber

The Rathaus and Markt square

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They don’t make them like this anymore

Check out the Museum’s website at http://sinsheim.technik-museum.de/

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Sharing a spot with an immaculate Mercedes

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Wonderful old Morgan handmade 3 wheeler

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Complete with rips and tears from being in the bush, patched and welded repairs

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My favourite exhibit – another Maybach!

This car was owned by a wood cutter who had been wealthy enough to own a Maybach but came upon hard times and converted his beautiful car to a mobile saw bench – he left the car to the museum in his will on the condition it remained as it was, not to be restored!

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Vintage Maybach

Little story to follow…

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Cockpit of Junkers from the 1920’s

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Cockpit of Concorde

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Tupolev 144

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