Europe

Smurf!

We decided to break up our train journey from Prague to Slovenia with a stop in Vienna.  Now this is a city that you hear a lot about, so we thought we shouldn’t miss it.  With the way the trains were scheduled we had just about a four hour stop.  We did our usual routine of finding a map and heading for the sights.  Fortunately, our Eurail pass was valid on the city train, so we were able to easily get into town from the train station.  As usual, click any of these pictures to see the gallery.

First up, the cathedral

The weather was miserable.  Cold, windy, and little drops of rain now and then.  Even the carriage horses needed coats.

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Many of you are probably thinking: Why haven’t they gone up to see the castle yet!  It’s so spectacular!  I don’t know, but we never did end up going to see the castle.  We heard rumors of another sight not far from Prague that sounded so much more unique and exciting to me that we went there instead!  It was the Sedlec Ossuary, a church whose cellar is completely full of (and decorated with) human bones!  This is not the type of thing that even exists in the US so we jumped at the chance to go.  It took a two hour train ride to get to the town, a suburb of the city of Kutna Hora.

Sedlec Ossuary

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JAZZ!!!

As we walked around Prague we saw so many signs for live jazz that we knew we had to get out and see some.  And we met a very cool Dutch couple and an Irish guy at the hostel who wanted to come with us!  The first night we were there was a Sunday and so I went online to try to figure out what was going on in the town.  The internet in the hostel at that time was slow enough to be completely useless, so we ended up just marking some places on our map and heading out on the town.

We dubbed it the “Jazz Crawl” and aside from the company and the chance to see the famous clock strike at night time (there is no trumpet player at night) it was a jazz failure.  We went by about 5 different possible places.  Three of these were closed because it was Sunday.  One was expensive enough that we didn’t want to pay for it (although the music coming out of the doors sounded pretty good).  The one place where we actually heard a little jazz was called Jazz Republic and as far as I’m concerned gets a mixed review.  The music was just okay.  The atmosphere was pretty good except that even though they advertised it as free you could only get in for free if you sat in a tiny area at the back of the room where you couldn’t really see the band very well.

We decided to try again the next night and to abandon the “Jazz Crawl” concept.

Justin did a little research and our Dutch friends paid attention while they were out walking around and we all came to the same conclusion: Jazz Dock was the place for us.  And it was.  We were there while their summer workshop was going on, which meant that every night the workshop teachers and students would have a giant jam session.  It cost a little to get in, but very reasonable and the place had a great atmosphere.  So great that we went back for a second night in a row.  We had an amazing time, heard some great music, and loved getting to know our new friends.

If you’re looking for jazz in Prague, definitely check out Jazz Dock!

Our second day in Prague was laundry day.  The hostel told us about two possible laundromats, so we set off for the closest one first.  Could not find it.  We found the address, but there was definitely not a laundromat there.  So we headed on to the second one.  Also could not find it.  Went to a hotel and asked them if they knew of a close place to do laundry.  They gave us directions to the one we were looking for, and we headed over.  Out of business.  BUT, there was a fabric shop right across the street – which was closed.

We were about an hour and a half into this project by now and had no other leads.  So we went and had cake.

Delicious cake

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We arrived in Prague in the evening after a pretty long day of travel from Berlin, with a stop in Dresden.  We hadn’t been able to get our first choice of hostel for the first night there, but we found one which was pretty cheap.  It wasn’t too hard to find and a quick subway and then tram ride later we arrived.  Probably plenty of people liked this hostel, but honestly, it was not for us.  Our room had a very sticky floor (spilled beer I believe) and smelled really, really strongly of AXE body spray or some such.  Like so strongly that it was hard to breathe.  We made a swift retreat back into town and had a beer and some dinner.

That night we didn’t sleep so well because of the people in our room coming back from the clubs at 4 in the morning and having a really loud conversation about their friend who apparently has a habit of starting fights.  Oh boy…

Fortunately, we moved hostels the next day and the one we went to, the Dizzy Daisy, was a really good place to stay.  It also had a kitchen, so we were able to cook some of our own meals.  We got settled in and then headed out for another free walking tour.  It was a very hot, sunny day, which was great for taking pictures, but not so great for all the walking.  We even considered ditching the tour in the middle when we came across an awesome band playing on the street.  We stuck it out though and were rewarded with some good shots of the city.

The famous clock tower

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We left Berlin heading for Prague, but since it was a pretty long train journey we decided to make a stop in Dresden, in the south of Germany, to break things up a little. We were supposed to have a few hours to walk around, but because we misread the train schedule we ended up only having about an hour and a half.

Dresden has a fairly compact center, so we were able to walk from the train station and just spend some time wandering around. There are many really beautiful buildings to look at. We first walked through a kind of shopping mall area, and then arrived at the older part of town.

Since we didn’t have time to investigate much I’ll just post some of the pictures we took and leave you with the same kind of general impression that we got. Click any of the photos below to see our whole gallery.  It looks like it would be a good place for a holiday…

Shopping mall area

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We landed in Berlin’s TXL Airport without a hitch after passing through Latvia’s hugely expensive Riga airport. The first sign that we had that life is different in Berlin is the convenient Contact Lens Dispenser, right on the way out of the airport! Neither Hazel nor I had ever seen such a thing so of course we were required to buy some contacts for me right there on the spot. Hopefully they will be usable during snorkel and scuba dives later in the trip!

Contacts!

After some currywurst in the airport, we were refreshed enough to try to find our new hostel: Main Station Hostel. You would think that this hostel would be right next to the main station in Berlin (known as Hauptbanhof) but in fact it is a small distance away from a rather secondary train stop on one of the city lines. Oh well. We found it after about 30 minutes and were pleasantly surprised at the quality of the hostel. The bunk beds were solid – no shaking – and the lockers were more like little closets. But the best part was that our 8-bunk dorm room was divided into 3 sections: a bit by the door with 6 beds, a bathroom, and an intermediate room with a table, some lockers, and only 2 beds! So we were able to have a a semi-private room there. We were both still exhausted; running around Helsinki with friends is a great way to visit, but it does take up a lot of your energy to do so much cool stuff, and we still hadn’t had a chance to do absolutely nothing for a while after Herrang. So we more or less went to bed straight away.
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We were lucky in Finland, since we had a local guide and she was able to take us directly to a fabric shop!  Actually, it wasn’t quite that simple.  We thought it would be nice to get some Marimekko fabric, since it is a well known Finnish designer and I really like a lot of the patterns.  However, when we arrived at the shop we found out that for a tiny little piece of this fabric we would be paying almost 20 Euros and we just couldn’t bring ourselves to do that.

So we set off again and found a different fabric shop and there we found this beauty.

Finland fabric

The colors seem especially appropriate to me since blue and white are the colors of the Finnish flag, but also it really strikes me as a place of water and ice.  Another fabric success!

We pulled in to Helsinki in the morning and were met from the boat by my friend Tania. She even managed to spot us as we were walking down the long hallway into the terminal. Apparently she first noticed our backpacks and then was sure it was us because Justin was wearing his “pirate hat.”  (click the link and scroll down if you want to see the hat.)  And this is what she would expect from someone who married me! I was still so excited to see her and to introduce Justin and we had a wonderful three days hanging out and getting to know her awesome boyfriend Lauri.

Lauri, Tania, and Justin

We spent a lot of time walking around the city and just chatting and catching up. Tania knows a lot about Finland and knows all of the good places to go, so she was a wonderful tour guide.

Fountain in downtown Helsinki

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As we were out and about doing our chores to get ready for dance camp, we happened to walk right by a fabric shop.  And inside we found this little beauty!

Swedish Fabric

So not much of a story to this one…but we love, love, love the design!