I love Austria. I’d move here in a heartbeat if all my family and friends could come too. We’d swim in the crystal clear lakes in summer, go skiing in winter, make ourselves fat on schnitzel (with noodles), cheese, apple strudel, gelati, Mozart kugeln, live in cute Austrian houses with flowers on all the railings and just generally be in awe of the beautiful scenery (and these are just some of my favorites things).

We started our Austrian travels in Vienna, although we stayed just outside it in a town called Klosterneuberg where the caravan park overlooked a beautiful cathedral and convent. Having arrived there on a Saturday night we again tried an international church on Sunday morning. Despite getting there almost an hour late because we got on the wrong train, (it had the same number and destination as the one we were supposed to go on so it was a bit confusing!) we were forgiven by the pastor who insisted it happens all the time and enjoyed a chat with an Australian family from Perth about how scary driving in Europe is.

Monday we set out to do some sightseeing, made our first souvenir purchase and walked around the beautiful old streets looking for somewhere to have lunch and could only find gelati cafes on every corner. Eventually we found somewhere to eat and then caught the tram to an area where all the important buildings are about a one minute walk from each other. We were content just to look at the outside of them. We then caught the tram back to the main cathedral, St Stephans, and caught a claustrophobic elevator to the top tower where we were rewarded with a nice view over Vienna. Then some more shopping and then “home”.

Tuesday we drove from Vienna to Salzburg which was covered in fog. We stayed at a campsite in St Gilgen right near the clearest lake I have ever seen. Unfortunately from this campsite it wasn’t very easy to get into Salzburg so the next day we moved spots. We had planned to do the Sound of Music tour on Wednesday but when we got up the weather was still miserable so we waited till the next day and we’re glad we did as Thursday was bright and sunny. The Sound of Music tour has been on my bucket list ever since I’ve known it’s existed and I really enjoyed it! Our tour guide had a very Australian sense of humour and didn’t try to make us sing (which I’d heard some of them do- I wouldn’t have minded but I think Aaron would have jumped out the moving bus).

We decided to climb every mountain and do the Eagles Nest tour on Friday with the same tour company. The SS built Eagles Nest high up in the Bavarian mountains, so actually in Germany, as a birthday present or Hitler but Hitler hated going there because he was scared of heights. They used it as a conference centre but now its just used by tourists for the fabulous views. It was definitely worth going there. We met some other Aussies, including one from Victor Harbor, on the tour and had lunch with them which was fun even if as a group we did add to the stereotype of Australians being loud and racist. Oops! We did a bit of Salzburg sightseeing that afternoon and it really is a beautiful city. It’s a lot smaller than I had expected, only about 100,000 and something people.

Sunday we headed to Switzerland but I was very sad to leave Austria.
Adieu, adieu to you and you and you!

(Sorry, all the Eagles nest photos are on Aaron’s iPad, check out his Facebook or Instagram to see some of them).

From Dresden we drove to a place called Bolkow, stayed the night there and then onto Krakow. Both these days were fairly tiring driving days as we tended to be going through small towns a lot rather than major highways. This is nice in some ways as you get to see more of how people live but it does make the days long. The other reason that made driving difficult is that our gps only works for West Europe and while we had downloaded an East Europe gps app onto the iPad it wasn’t as easy to use and we got lost both times trying to find the campsites. I was exhausted both nights and the first day in Krakow we just rested at the campsite and did some washing.

The next day we went into Krakow for some sightseeing. We found the public transport not as easy as in other cities we’ve been to so far- for example when we asked at the caravan park how often the bus goes into the city we were answered with “sometimes you have to wait 5 minutes, sometimes 20” but we figured it out eventually.

The main thing I wanted to visit in Krakow was the Oskar Schlinder factory which is now a WWII in Krakow museum. (Oskar Schlinder, made famous in the movie Schlinder’s List, was a Nazi but used his factory to rescue a thousand Jews from concentration camps). The museum was very well done and took you through rooms in chronological order of how the war impacted the Jews in Krakow. It was good background information for our trip to Auschwitz the following day.

Auschwitz was our main reason for going to Poland and while Aaron was eager to put his history degree to use I still hadn’t made up my mind if I wanted to go or not. I eventually decided to but I don’t think anything prepares you for it. There really aren’t any words to describe the horrors people went through in these death camps. Going there makes the whole thing very real, not just something you learn about at school or in documentaries, and the sheer volume of people who died there is just unthinkable. It was a very somber experience and something we talked about for several days afterwards.

From Auschwitz we drove to Slovakia for one night and then headed to Vienna. On the way we stopped at Bojnice Castle which is an amazing castle which we enjoyed walking around through the gardens. We had lunch in the town there with castle views. Then we drove to Vienna, Austria.

Saturday morning we set off for Dresden, Germany. We picked Dresden because it was the largest city about 200 kms from Prague. What we still can’t get used to here is that 200 kms doesn’t necessarily mean 2 hours driving like it does in Australia. Our campsite was a little bit out of the city of Prague in a small town which being a Saturday meant there was a market and we got stuck in a traffic jam about 3 minutes into our trip. Thankfully it didn’t take too long to get out of. About an hour later there was an accident on the highway and we got detoured through more small towns and another traffic jam, this time which lasted about an hour. Late afternoon we arrived in Dresden, still with the task of finding a hospital ahead of us.

Fortunately the hospital was a short drive from the campsite. Our first challenge was the information office where the man spoke no English but eventually was able to point us in the direction of the emergency room. After this we most people spoke English so that was very helpful. Their main concern seemed to be that because we didn’t have German insurance (only travel insurance) we would have to pay in cash that day but that didn’t bother us as we had already anticipated that. Anyway, I’ll cut this short because it’s not very interesting but after several X-rays it was determined that the ankle wasn’t broken or fractured but that it was a torn ligament. Aaron has a splint to wear for 6 weeks and crutches if he wants them (which we mostly took as we thought they might come in handy at crowded touristy places but he hasn’t used them at all yet).

Sunday morning we found another international church with very welcoming people from all different countries and an Australian family who were also visiting that day. They were having a church lunch that day which provided us not only with free lunch but more opportunities to talk to people which we enjoyed. The only mildly embarrassing thing was that they all asked things like “how are you enjoying Dresden?” or “what are you doing in Dresden?” and then we had to sheepishly answer back “um… we only came for the hospital…”

After two nights in Dresden, we set out for Poland.

From the castle we drove to Prague. Our first impressions of the Czech Republic was that it looked like a mix between Australia- flat with lots of brown fields and what we imagine a Soviet country would look like- with grey factories and run down buildings, not that we would say that to any Czech people! We found out later that they were in the middle of a heat wave which was unusual for them and therefore the dead fields.

We ended up stayed in Prague for a week, mostly so that Aaron had some time to work on uni assignments. We had a great campsite with a pool so I was entertained while Aaron was hard at work. The campsite also had a ridiculously cheap restaurant which we ate at a couple of times. We had read that it’s rude to say that things are cheap in the Czech Republic because it implies a bad economy but it really was cheap!!!

The Sunday that we were there we went to an international church and made friends with a young American couple who invited us out for lunch and then offered to show us around the city a bit. It was really nice of them to give up their Sunday afternoon for us and it’s always nice to be shown a city from people who actually live there as they know all the best spots… to get ice cream!

On the last day that we were there, a Friday, we went on an actual tour with a guide around the city. Prague really is a beautiful city full of amazing buildings and a huge amount of history. Apparently a lot of movies get filmed there as well, Mission Impossible and XXX being two that we had actually heard of. We also went on a boat ride with a really funny guide who while we were passing a small canal with ducks sleeping on either side commented “this is like McDonalds drive thru for a Czech!” (Duck is one of their traditional meals).

After all the walking we did on our tour Aaron realised that yes, maybe he should get his ankle looked at as it wasn’t getting any better. Because I understand German a tiny bit better than I understand Czech and the chances of the doctor speaking English was higher we decided the best thing to do was head back to Germany even though our original plan was to head up to Poland. So Saturday we headed back to Germany to the city of Dresden.