Germany Czech Poland Slovakia Hungary Croatia Montenegro Slovenia

So,

Off we went to Central/Eastern Europe in a van. If you're in Germany, then you're off to Eastern Europe. Once you get there, you find it's called Central Europe and 'East' means you're off to the Ukraine or somewhere. I think that's how it works. Oh and "we" is me and my little (6 ft 6) brother Si who snores a lot at night.

Now, thanks to Google which is taking over the world, here is a link to a map of where we've been (updated as we go).

Soak up our route so far in Google Map and reflect on the wonders of modern technology

Germany - Berlin

Berlin was cool. It's a dynamic rebuilding city and has lots of funky cafes, brand new flash buildings, and a nice vibe.. it was all about the vibe. Our first German campground reflected the greater Germany - neat, tidy, internet access from our van, about 3 million rules, showers were only allowed to be 4 minutes long, so best to be rinsing by 3 minutes or you're towelling suds off your back.

Dresden is in the former east, but you'd hardly know. Most of our time here was spent out of Dresden camping on a nice lake and bumping into a Medieval festival with flag throwing dancing women, and men in a human powered mini ferris wheel, plus seeing a nice castle. Dresden itself has another nice castle. Then through the hills towards the Czech republic, where we waited 10 minutes at a train crossing while a train full of Skodas whizzed past.

Czech Republic

After the dudes in the border police nursed our passports for 20 minutes then let us in with 4 people in the van, one on the bed with no seatbelt !?!?!, the first thing we noticed after the scantily clad ladies on the side of the country road not doing too much - sort of waiting - was a Tesco supermarket. Deja-vu UK. Heading west we noticed that Northern Czech lands have a lot of holes where some coal used to be, and a lot of German DIY stores but the best was yet to come.

Arriving in Karlovy Vary, which is an old spa town, we decided to check out the hot springs. These are not your Rotorua hot springs, they all come out of little marble fountain things in 18th century marble buildings. And not so much looking or bathing, instead you grab your specially designed mug with it's integral staw, collect some water, and drink it, instantly feeling the health benefits permeating your body. If you don't have the special cup you buy one from one of about 4 million tourist stalls handy nearby. Lovely place with cool buildings, except for the b@stard pizza man who ripped us off. Here we said goodbye to June and Gareth at a hard-core communist era train station where all the signs were written in Russian and you were allowed to walk across the tracks between platforms.

Plzen (pronounced Pilsen) is where they invented Pilsener, which is pretty much a blonde lagery thing of course but they brew it subtly different. So we went there and drank some "Pilsener Urquell" at their brewery, which was nice. The modern brewery is huge just like the Skoda factory next to it.

Then Karlstejn Castle, out of Praha (Prague), which was nice. Once we found a nice camping ground in Prague (no 4 minute limit since Germany) we wandered to the metro station. We followed a normal looking dude over the tram bridge then discovered there was no room once the tram arrived on the bridge as well. Then the normal looking dude dropped his bag on the street and ran up a hill, climbing up into a hole under an overpass. Prior, there was a normal looking woman in front of him, who then went and hid in another hole then peered out at us. We looked for our own hole to hide in but the next one was the metro station so we settled for that and travelled by different routes thereafter.

Prague

Praha is crazily touristy - as much or more than Paris say. A wicked city nonetheless though, especially if you don't follow homeless people around. Prague castle was nice. We had many a nice Czech beer, and beer in these Central/Eastern countries involves being waited on rather than having to go to the bar. Cruising around on Trams and Metro was a piece of cake. Being fiendishly interested in the whole communist era, the communist era museum was damn interesting and the scariest bit was secret police element. You didn't know who was involved until they were beating you up and dragging you to the normal police. We watched a video of a guy getting bashed during the velvet revolution, then yelling to his thugs "come on, don't beat us, join us in this revolution". Amazing too seeing Tanks in St Wenceslas square in 1968 - the square was a bit more relaxed in May 2007.

On the way out we stopped at Kutna Hora. There's a church there completely decorated with human bones and skulls, which is what you do once your cemetery is getting a bit full after a plague or two. So you had chandeliers, wall hangings, vases made out of human bones, skull pyramids. It's all great. Also a nice town to have beef stew dumplings and beer on a warm evening, so we did. Driving out of the country we were avoiding yet more cyclists - I think Czech republic has more people out cycling than even France on a summers day.

Poland

After that we decided to drive to Poland. Suddenly over the border people are driving like maniacs. We arrived in Wrocław. You'd never guess this was pronounced "rots-wahf" would you. Well it is. Nice town square, where we listened to a brass band crank out some tunes which turned out to be old communist tunes which seemed to kind of amuse the younger ones but got some old homeless dudes having a ripper and dancing in the street. We get the impression that the old regime suited some people.

Then the customary visit to Auschwitz in South Poland. This is of course shocking, looking at the ruins of a building where they could gas and cremate 1400 people per day, and there were 5 such buildings. The vast camp behind it was only for the 20% of prisoners who weren't murdered immediately off the train. It made me wonder just what the hell has to happen before human beings will do that to one another and you can't really comprehend it. "Oops, maybe we took things a bit far" doesn't quite cover it.

We then arrived in Krakow which is pronounced more normally. On the way we took some rural roads and saw blokes driving around with their wives in the back seat which is an interesting innovation of course. Most of the back roads are pretty shocking even if the houses you see are pretty big by European standards. If there is a choice of lane it's based not on whether you want to pass but which lane has the less dreadful potholes. Luckily we were driving a quality motor vehicle product of Ford and nothing has fallen off since the front mudguard a few months ago and the front skirt which is taped up with masking tape since it half blew off in a breeze.

Krakow was a fairly mad place with a nice castle and good places to eat and drink. While we viewed the castle, someone tried to break into the van, smashing a window and two door locks. So we went to the police, who weren't bov-vered (bov-vered? face? bov-vered?), didn't even report it, then spent the rest of the day figuring out what "door lock" and "car window" were in Polish ("Wkładka" and "Szyby Samochodowe" FYI) and where to get them repaired. Exhausted and since it was my birthday that day, we found another campground and took the tram into the city to have a nice dinner (we had planned to leave town). We got on the rear carriage then jumped off and swapped to the front so we could buy a ticket from the driver.

This is relevant because 15 minutes later the rear carriage derailed itself on a corner, swung out and smashed into a building at which point things stopped. We got out thinking this was hilarious, but that quickly gave way to shock and consternation once we realised that a guy had been killed between the tram and the building, one of the only people on a quiet street at 10 pm at night. I guess this is what you call a freak accident but it was by far the most horrific thing I've ever seen in person, and everyone knew there was no need for an ambulance. We went and had a very quiet dinner, contemplating new thoughts on the meaning of life, then went home - in a taxi.

The next day we needed exactly what you'd need in the UK - polish tradesman to fix your car. We managed to find with the help of the camping ground staff and Sat-Nav, a lock repair place which had two new lock barrels re-keyed and installed in 3 hours for about £70 and I think he apologised that it took so long but have no idea exactly what he was saying, then drove to a window place where the front triangle window was replaced in about 10 minutes for under £20. The cash for these jobs came from the safest ATM in the world, as it was on a police station building with about 20 armed police hanging around.

Finally we drove to the Salt Mine at Wieliczka, where they dug table salt out of the ground for 800 years. The mine is a huge underground maze going up to 150m down and features things like giant cathedrals and various other rooms down there so it's pretty cool. And a handy way of getting table salt in 1200 AD when you live hundreds of km from the sea. Salt preserves wood so all the wooden constructions have lasted centuries no worries.

Slovakia

A quick look at Zakopane in the south revealed it to be a tourist mountain town so we shot over the border into Slovakia and it's High Tatry mountain range. We did a walk that closely resembled something you might find in NZ, but at the end ended up having soup and beers in a bar that looked like a replica of something from the late 1950's/60s, only I think that it was original. The food and beer was very cheap (like under £2 for a meal, and beer around 40p). However parking is often up to £8 per day which seems a bit out of order since you can camp for about the same, although someone is there to guard your car so you don't have to learn the Slovak words for lock and window.

We planned to do more hikes but the weather had other ideas. Once the rain eased to a torrential downpour we drove off and had a day of seeing Spis castle (nice) and its village (nice) and some other castles and churches in Levoca (nice). We also saw some real poverty in the form of some Roma villages, to the extent of people living in corrugated iron shacks in one village. The next day it was the same weather so we went to see an Ice cave in the Low Tatras which did what it said on the tin - Ice and Caves. Awesome sight though, kind of cruising round an underground glacier. You could feel the chill as you got near the entrance.

Camping closer to Bratislava near Liptovsky Milkulas in Early June by now, it rained again and we gave up any hope of seeing the high Tatras properly. Instead we tried to eat dinner on Simon's birthday so went to a local restaurant. We tried in vain to communicate with the waitress but the inevitable problem would be she wouldn't even stop walking. Eventually she said some stuff while walking but unfortunately our Slovak was a little rusty due to only being there for three days. Maybe she mistook us for Russians or something, or maybe we swore in Slovak by accident but in any case we didn't get any food or beverage so Si's birthday dinner was sandwiches owing to the only other restaurant being closed.

Bratislava

We decided to head straight to Bratislava via a nice dinner at Trencin after witnessing too many near death overtaking experiences on Slovak roads. Here is the method: Wait until a blind corner is approaching but there's a truck on the wrong side of the road anyway, then gun it. If you're not overtaking however, then the car will kind of steer itself along the road due to the tyre tracks embedded scarily deep in the asphalt.

Anyway Bratislava's old town is really cool and there are plenty of nice places to chill out over a beer and some great food which we did over two days and evenings, even getting served at restaurants which was great. We also saw the castle and a few churches (nice). There's a crazy, enormous communist-era apartment site across the river where 150,000 people live.

Unfortunately on our second night someone stole Simon's bag out of the slightly open window of the van while we were sleeping in it, parked inside the camping ground. The camping ground staff (not bov-vered) mentioned "yeah this happens all the time.... there's nothing we can do". Oh ok cheers then. The police spent a few minutes driving around before leaving (also not bov-vered), and were later to spend far longer just looking at Simon's passport while we were trying to get a police report which involved being directed to four different police stations. We're still not sure why it was so interesting, but as it happens we were lucky to have it because the thief himself threw it out of Simon's bag before fleeing the campsite and it was found on the ground. Luckily again through all this we bumped into people who spoke good English which I guess is a privilege.

Hungary

Crossing into Hungary we realised we had no idea what to expect, having never even met any Hungarians and hearing very little about the country, but immediately it sells itself well with nicer roads, cool and well-kept towns and friendly people who will chat to you about the state of the world, and even an old farmer on horse and cart. We started out seeing Gyor, nice old town. The next morning while ghetto camping on the Danube we were visited by a local cop who was wondering what was up with the dodgy blue van but he was stoked to find out we were tourists from New Zealand.

Sat-Nav then took us back into Slovakia which I'm sure would have been the fastest route to Esztergom (Hungary) if you didn't have to wait 10 minutes at each end to get passports stamped. However, two major benefits of this were 4 more stamps in the passport, and seeing the most awesome birds nest of our life in Slovakia - an enormous construction at the top of a power pole containing some enormous Stalks (from Africa apparently), on the main street of a town of tumbleweed rolling size. As for Esztergom, nice cathedral (biggest in Hungary), nice town. Had a chat to the bar person about things like Portugal and Russians. Further down the Danube our camping ground that night involved shade (good when 30°C) a swimming pool (even better when 30°C), a view over a scenic part of the Danube, and Wi-Fi (Ghetto-Fi?) to our van, thus winning our camping ground of the month award.

Budapest

Budapest is just south of these Danube bend locations. It was a wicked city and we ended up spending 4 nights there. Buda is on the right bank and Pest on the left, and they were only united in 1870 or something. Since then it's been rogered with two world wars, 44 years of communist dictatorship and was also wrecked during 1956 in the Hungarian Uprising. Despite all that it really is a world class city with amazing buildings, bridges, parks and squares everywhere, many restored to their former Habsberg era glory and cool things to see and do so we spent four days there. Am I selling it?

The House of Terror museum once again drilled home to us that the communist era wasn't a very nice time, in fact pretty much like living Orwell's "1984". We spent an afternoon in one of the centuries old thermal spas which is amazing on the inside. Because I'd had a cold/cough since we started travelling and Simon a buggered knee we spent some good time in the medicinal bath. Did it work? Not really but it was nice. Also nice were the castle and old town of course. Out on the street, the locals are quite into various sports such as roller-blading at or beyond legal speed limits, some cool street freestyle biking, and trying to scam tourists into bars, and we managed to avoid getting hit by all three. In general the city seemed a fairly safe place apart from a couple of token crazy people, don't know if you count the Roma who try to clean your clean windscreen for money at an intersection on a green light and don't understand "Nem", "No", or any expletive.

We saw a few museums as you do. On the way back from the Open Air Museum we had torrential rain, hail, 30°C heat, wind, and sun all at once, as one of the daily thunderheads dumped on us. Ten minutes later it was dry roads and sunny and hot with some lightning in the distance, such is the way.

Lake Balaton

So then we went to Lake Balaton ("the biggest lake in Europe outside Scandinavia"). It was like visiting Germany as this is where lots of Germans come and swim, drink beer and sing songs. The lake is crystal blue at the eastern end, and it's a pretty relaxed place that hasn't yet matured into a Las Vegas style circus luckily, though they have managed to pave the entire shore we think. Unfortunately at the Keszthely end, the only direct access to the shore involved moats, reeds and large snakes (I managed to avoid the large snake by a good 30 cm so that was good), either that or paying a fee to bathe at someone's private lakeshore space. We're pretty lucky to have universal access to the sea and rivers in New Zealand I reckon.

Croatia

Croatia is another place that you don't know much about except it had a war in our lifetimes which when you hear the word Croatia makes you think "hmmmm dangerous...". Well it's probably one of the safest places in Europe (crime of all kinds is very low), maybe unless you really piss someone off. The people seem an incomprehensible mix of aggressive/chilled, very friendly/not bov-vered. In general we got good results with our feeble use of Croatian (ohhhhh look at the tourist trying to speak Croatian). Anyway we started in Zagreb, saw all the things you're supposed to see in about 8 hours (old town, church, etc etc nice) and managed to have some beers as well, then hit the coast.

Zadar.... nice town, town wall, church, castle. It's in Dalmatia, and we saw one Dalmatian dog too but not 101. On the waterfront is a singing organ that works when waves hit the wharf, that was cool. And Si's first taste of the Med. Life was rough when we camped 10 metres from the sea and it was 30 degrees in the shade. Then roughly four swims and a few km's later we were in Split which you've probably seen on the Ryainair website. Has a cool castle, church, wall, Roman Ruins, actually the Roman Ruins here are pretty good and even better over a beer on a warm summer evening listening to Jazz.

However we quickly traded in all this for an Island lifestyle and stuck ourselves and the van on a ferry to Brac island. Here it was even hotter but luckily we were camping at the nicest beach in Croatia. "Beach" is a funny term... in Croatia a beach involves rocks rather than sand, but that's okay because you don't get sand everywhere. And the beach still looked pretty with palm trees, etc and there was good snorkelling with things to look at including the fish that were nibbling at your toes. I went for a cheeky windsurf but there really wasn't enough wind for anything more than a potter. Some drinking was conducted with some Australians. We had plans to conquer the highest hill and learn to cut stones (the Whitehouse was made from stone from Brac Island), but it was too hot so we just stayed in the sea.

After three days of this we needed to move along so it was the ferry back to the nice town of Makarska, which had a nice church, old town, port and some cool cliffs.. in fact the cliffs and scenery in general were getting progressively more impressive as we headed south on the Dalmatian coast.

Dubrovnik was the next stop.... it's supposed to be fairy tale beautiful and sure enough it has a nice town wall, churches, port, old town, 3 million American tourists from two giant cruise ships going "oh my god, like this is reeeeeeeealy old". However we had a good time here meeting a few travellers who convinced us to play cards until the early hours in a bar. We also met the Aussies from Brac Island again who by this stage had convinced us to go to Montenegro, where they had been earlier.

Montenegro? Where's that? First we thought it was a city in Yugoslavia, then we discovered it is a part of Yugoslavia, but hang on, only in my 2003 Lonely Planet as Yugoslavia no longer exists. Simon's 2006 "Let's Go" book suggested it was a part of a country called "Serbia and Montenegro" which we later found out also doesn't exist. Montenegro is now actually an independent country we think, and it's real name is Crna Gora. It's on the Euro too, but it's not an official Euro country... it was more like "excuse me, our currency is buggered so we're going to borrow yours.. cheers". And Montenegrin is similar to the other Yugoslav languages but is written in the Cyrillic alphabet.... some of the time.

Knowing a little more about it and that the van wasn't insured for it we headed across the UN sponsored border crossings and arranged some local insurance. One of the first things we saw was an old dude with the hose all the way across the main highway, watering his driveway! The Yugo in front of us pulled up and leaned on his horn, he ignored them, so they drove right through his hose and both lanes of traffic got going again. Herceg Novi.... had a nice old town, castle, church, and €1.50 Pizza.... hmmmmmm.

That night we "ghetto camped" on the Bay of Kotor, at a point with a 270 degree view of the bay and hills (one of the most spectacular fjords in Europe!), swimming, and a toilet. For free it made quite good value. Better value was seeing a local turn up, park right next to our van and spend 10 minutes in front of us throwing shellfish hand by hand into the Sea before driving off.. kind of odd. Then later another guy decided to check us out and parked right outside the van but instead nearly crashed into a park bench. Embarrassed he then fled. In the morning yet more people were crowding around the van... Italian tourists. We decided that if they had no shame and were willing to lean on our van as they viewed the scene then we would hold no shame giving them a welcome dance, so Simon put on his nastiest drum n bass quite loud on the stereo and we did some crazy dancing and everyone else steered clear.

We then fled ourselves and further round the bay, roughly a swim or two later I can't quite recall, there was a cave which needed to be conquered so we grabbed our headlamps and cruised deep into it and made recordings of scary noises that we were making ourselves. A swim or two later we were observing two islands which both contained a church that filled each entire island. Why you put a church on an Island I'm not sure but maybe it helps out if attendance gets too high. Like you'd only get your hard core fans who were willing to row to Church. An added bonus is that Turks find it more difficult to cause a scene there too.

Further round the bay (another 1 or 2 swims), there was bunch of fishermen cleaning mussels and things. And then further round again is Kotor, which has a nice old town with a wall that goes right up the cliff, old churches and things. Actually we were glad to have seen this particular town as it's cooooool, cooler than Dubrovnik with less than 3 million tourists too. We conquered the town wall up the cliff with it's spectacular views, and had a few yarns with some locals even about the war and various things.

Another two swims later we were camping near Budva on the coast of Montenegro. Unfortunately you pay foreigner tax on everything here, beer, food, camping, and even lying on the beach!! The camping escalated to €16 while locals would pay €8... not hideous but the camping site had more like the feel of a refugee camp... one dirty toilet with no seat and the whole place sort of falling down. However, Si got his hair cut for €4 at 11 pm on a Sunday night, just one of the many things you could do for entertainment on the beach which also specialised in dudes crooning away in Montenegrin (or an 80's western power ballad) solo with their keyboard. It was here we came up with the album idea "The 30 best songs you never heard because you were living in a Russian Totalitarian Communist Dictatorship" which might or might not sell in these parts.

Turning the van around at our most southerly destination of this trip at 42° North, we shot up to Cetinje, once the capital of Montenegro back before WW I. We couldn't find the Royal Palace or anything nice so left again and went up higher into the national park. This was very pretty, wicked views of giant Karst cliffs and out to sea. Instead of walking up the hill we cheated and drove but that was okay. Saw the Mausoleum of the last prince of Montenegro (Danlo)... someone shot him in 1860 so that was not very nice. He was a poet, in fact everyone was then I think. If you want a statue of yourself in the Southern Slavic States in 100 years time better start writing some good poetry. Unfortunately my poetry skills are a little rusty but I'll let you know if they improve for any reason.

Then we drove one of the craziest roads I have ever driven... the windy zig-zag road back down to Kotor. Luckily we were in a quality motor vehicle product of Ford, the Transit with its spectacular cornering qualities demolished the 300 million switchbacks with ease, taking only about triple the amount of time it would have taken going the other ("long") way. The view was amazing on the way, we were basically cruising down a giant cliff on a one lane road towards a giant fjord. On the way there was a dude selling stuff on the side of the road who spoke no English. Curious to find out what the liquid was he was selling we bought a bottle, with tourist tax of course. Once we hit the bottom of the hill and another two swims and the most intense border checks we have ever had (dudes rummaging through my clothes, cupboards, draws etc), we were allowed back into Croatia and began the cruise back North.

Croatia again

On the way we had some more Ghetto-Camping on a quiet road next to the sea with our own private Jetty. Here we drank the contents of the bottle - best guesses involve honey and fermentation and possibly some level of alcohol but we remembered everything from that night and had a nice swim in the morning. We stopped off at yet another vowel deprived Slavic name, Krka National Park (Maybe the best so far is Italy's Trieste, spelt Trst in Croatian or Slovenian, let's not muck around with excess vowels shall we), to look at the pretty Skradinsky waterfalls via a boat. Now Nikola Tesla invented AC power so that's pretty handy, but he was born in Croatia (then Austria-Hungary), and the world's second ever Hydro plant was built at these waterfalls... pretty good.

Further up the coast towards Rijeka there are camping ground after ground on the coast itself, so we stayed at one in a nice little cove, and observed an awesome set of lightning storms in which I composed a bunch of good photos with time exposures. Our last stop in Croatia was Rovinj (nice town, has church, town squares etc) on the NW coast of Istria, where everyone speaks Italian and waves their arms in the air. Here a German guy turned up to camp in very short shorts and without his camping poles; fortunately he had a giant axe for smashing his tent pegs (which were 6 inch nails) in, so we lent him our tent. Simon spent his last 2 Croatian Kuna on a Banana, but then got change by accident, so bought 1 cherry for 1/2 a Kuna.

Slovenia

Slovenija took us by surprise... we have yet to meet a grumpy Slovenian. Everyone seems happy but most people are also very fluent in English, so you end up having good chats. They also like to take the piss and have a bit of fun too with a very good sense of humour. And we have met an inordinate number of people who are into coin collecting so we managed to get rid of all our spare Florins, Kronas, Kunas, and so forth.

We stopped in Ljubljana (the capital) which was the nicest city to hang out in that we've been to in Eastern Europe. Food and drink easy to come by, and cafe life all arranged down by the little river. Lots of people out having a good time, lots of live music. Public transport is inexpensive but plush and efficient. There's even a nice castle, museums, parks etc to hang out in. Later on there is no shortage of drunk people as Slovenians also like to drink!! Unfortunately the driver of the Audi had probably been drinking before he rear-ended the city bus, reversed, and drove off. Same with the crazy scooter guy who was playing chicken with other vehicles and enjoying his horn but didn't seem to hit anything luckily.

Coffee Break
If you've already read this far then you will be able to stop briefly, and make something nice to drink. (Coffee is ideal, especially a good coffee. Don't make instant which is of course rubbish and was only meant to be fed to pigs. You could also try tea which luckily isn't available in an instant variety.) After that, you can read on below. Also don't forget, you can check out the road's, highways, and farms we drove on/through by clicking here.

Julian Alps (still slovenia)
So we started the Julian Alpes visit at Lake Bled which is a picture postcard with yet another church on an Island on a lake to make it difficult to go to church (?). It was here that my brother entered an arm-wrestling competition with a Hungarian and lost, despite having swum from the island to the mainland for training. I entered with a Slovene and lost too and I'd had rowboat training all afternoon. We clearly needed more training. This was staying at the Lake Bled camping ground, which is one of the nicest in the world, with bathrooms almost flashier than the Philharmonic Pub in Liverpool.

After that we went to Bohinj and had some very wintry weather. Our first night was parked up on the waterfall road in torrential rain and I think more water fell on our van than off the waterfall. In the morning we were woken at 6:45 by the park ranger who wanted €100 in fines each for parking rough in the National park. Luckily the fine turned into a warning once our NZ passports were presented. We then stayed at a camping ground and ended up stuck in the van while it was 8 degrees outside and torrential rain in every direction. We were better off than the others though as we weren't in a tent that had just turned into a boat. The lake (a large one, Bohinj) rose nearly 1/2 a metre and swallowed the jetty (see right) which was a bit scary. We had Wifi to our van (as in all Slovene campgrounds!) so we caught up with what was happening in the world which was a lot of not very nice stuff.

Then once it fined up, some mountain biking. We bought the local mountain bike guide and of course picked the two hardest rides which were both a good day out and knackering but not so technical. After that it was time to head around the other side of the Julian Alpes to see the Soca valley and go to the "Reggae Riversplash Festival". On the way the exhaust fell off. I txted Rob in the UK who suggested that "exhausts are over-rated", but the next day (a Saturday) managed to track down a mechanic in Jesenice who welded it back up for €20 and a smile within the same half-hour. That was to be our only 'breakdown' of the whole 13,000 km too so not bad going. And while it was broken we didn't climb any steep hills so both of us still have our hearing too.




The Soca valley was bloody amazing what with 1,000 metre cliffs and aqua blue rivers so I definitely want to go back there. We hooned straight to the Reggae festival. I was no expert on Slovenian Reggae but it seemed all the bands were from elsewhere in Europe, places like Berlin or Rome. I didn't know white boys could 'Rastafari it up' but apparently they could, and all in English too. The locals probably weren't too bothered what happened owing to an abundance of local herbs that were being set on fire in paper tubes. It was on the said aqua blue Soca River and the stages set in the trees so a wicked atmosphere and very chilled out compared to most UK festivals. So that was Slovenia. Slovenia was wicked; friendly people, scenery, things to do, and facilities. Go there.

After a short time there we had to do a burn to Salzburg to meet Simon's girlfriend Nina who was with us from then until Germany later. So we drove through Italy and into Austria. The Austrian Alpes had even more hard core driving than the French Alpes and some steep hills caused some heating up of some engine and some brakes. I should have stuck a leg of lamb under the hood and done some slow roasting. It was our first time back in the "old West" so suddenly roads were better and everything a bit flasher and more expensive. Some Austrian road signs were sensational, having whole paragraphs written on them featuring single words of 200 letters or so. I think it should be an extra level on your sight test (Pass, Good, Excellent, "Can read Austrian road signs at speed").

Austria
Salzburg is the home of Mozart, not that you'd know. Once you've flown into W.A. Mozart airport, cruised into town on Mozartstraße past the Mozart museum, booked into the Mozart hotel, had a coffee at the Mozart cafe finishing with some Mozart chocolate, bought a Mozart souvenir at Mozart's souvenirs after visiting Mozart's birth place, got hungry and had dinner at the Mozart restaurant while listening to someone play Mozart.
As for us we stayed long enough to have a look around in the rain and cold. It's a nice place (has castle, old town) but what we really needed was a place that was more kind on the Euros for Si and Nina so we made a run for the southern Czech republic.

Czech Republic (again)
Going back here made the trip really seem quite long - we were trying to remember again what the currency is and what version of "Dobry Den" or similar meant "hello", what time shops close and so forth.

Cesky Krumlov
This place also has a castle and old town but both were pretty cool. And a 0.5l beer out on the town cost 18 Ck (40p), still with table service. Cheaper than Thailand, in fact 1/3 the price of Coke, cheaper than mineral water or juice and similar to Petrol, not that you drink that unless you were very desperate. Needless to say we sampled a fair bit (beer not petrol) while were there, also enjoying the inexpensive food (dinner with side and two large beers for about £2.20). We were staying at a camping ground mainly for rafters, located on the river. Every night Czech paddlers would have beers and sing folk songs over guitar and accordion in the communal hall. Nice, even if it was still only 10°C and we were wearing winter coats.

Cesky Budejovice
This was where we went the next time we were sober and one of the first things we did (after seeing the town square and having some cheap food and more drink) was go to the Budweiser Brewery. Budvar, which you've probably heard of, is the town's old German name from the Habsburg reign. And the beer brewed here has the same name as American Budweiser but is much better; however this Budweiser isn't allowed to use it's own name in some countries because the American brewery went around buying the rights, even though it only copied the name in the first place. The packing hall was probably one of the busiest factories I've ever seen.

Tabor
This is, like the other towns, South Bohemian. My old Lonely Planet reckons that this town is where the term "Bohemian" came from, as supposedly Tabor used to be run like a commune and you would drop your worldly possessions off at the gate when you moved in. However, Wikipedia, which never lies, reckons that the term was coined by the French who had artists and writers living in the Ghettos with Roma, and thought that Roma people came from Bohemia, which they didn't. (They did cruise through though - but Roma people originally came from around India way, some time quite a while ago). Anyway it's all a bit complicated but our visit wasn't. We just relaxed in the van and then on the second day went for cheap lunch and beer in the old town. I guess we were over seeing old buildings.

That was kind of the end of our East Europe phase. After this we cruised back over the border to Germany. The border crossing took some time - possibly due to dodgy looking English van with masking tape on the front wing, driven at night by a Kiwi with a UK work permit but a Sat-Nav that spoke French, his Kiwi brother who had a German working holiday visa, and a German girl randomly hanging out with the aforementioned dodgy kiwis in the Czech republic for some dodgy reason.

Our first night back in Germany had us larging it up at a party in a little German farming hamlet. "Where are you from?" we got asked. "New Zealand and Gottingen". "Yeah? Well I'm from a farm two kilometres east!". The beer was only €2 which we thought was cheap until realising it was four times the price of the Czech.

The burn back to Gottingen (Nina's home, where Simon will be for the year) involved 38 degree heat (someone switched summer back on), and a visit to the Bauhaus museum in Weimar where the movement got started so that was awesome to see for someone in Product Design. Along the way Nina educated us on what all the grains being harvested were - Wheat, Rye, Barley, Oats, and Rapeseed. We stopped for samples to stick in the dash for reference.

Then a visit to the Rohloff factory where they make the "Speedhub" gearbox for bikes (I have one such contraption, and therefore probably the only person who would go here for an interesting day out). It was wicked to see though; Mr Rohloff (inventor) and his wife are also cool people who live in an extension to the factory and have a tame crow who hangs around outside next to the factory swimming pool.

Leaving Simon and Nina at their home in Gottingen, I drove back towards the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. On the way I tried to buy clothes in Holland but failed partly because there was no chick with me to force me to stay in the shop, partly because I was feeling quite sick, and partly because there weren't many good clothes. So I went to Belgium and bought Belgian beer instead and that was much easier. Then, steadily sicker (I hadn't drunken any of the beer either), spent the rest of the day either driving or sleeping and made it just in time to watch a bunch of English people queue not very well at all, at the ferry in Boulogne. This was pretty disturbing given their normally world class abilities.

I arrived back in London to find that the place has had nothing but rain and flooding pretty much since I left, so it was good timing that I'd been away on one of the trips of our lives, which involved 13,000 kilometres and involved wearing one pair of jandals completely out.

Now here are the things I forgot about which were quite good at the time:

1. Before Berlin we had gone to the VW centre in Wolfsburg to be filled with information and marketing about the VW empire but it was a cool place.
   
   
2. In Prague, we had met a crazy guy who must have just taken some kind of Class A and kept on licking his chops and talking rapidly. He talked quite a lot about life, and how you don't need much in the way of worldly possessions and money to have a good life. Then as we were about to leave he then asked us for money.
   
   
3. East Slovakia - There was not much in the way of farm fences, but shepherds instead, who were out seeing to their flocks even during a torrential downpour
   
   
4. Hungary - Driving along one day saw a farmer with a horse and cart full of hay which was pretty cool and something to tick off the list.
   
   
5. Montenegro - Talking to a 50 year old sailor who had been everywhere in the world pretty much. He had just drunken a 2 litre bottle of beer by early afternoon and therefore did a lot of talking but no excess of listening.
   
   
6. I learnt quite a bit of good ideas from Si, my little 6 ft 6 brother. For example, when there are kids in your way (as in many of the places we went while School holidays were on), you can put your hand on their head and steer them around. Wherever you steer their head the rest of them will follow and you can therefore quickly get one our of your way. Pure genius.
   

I'm sure I'll also wake up in about half a year and remember 14 other fascinating things too but they will have to wait for now. Anyway, hope you are all well wherever this finds you and hopefully I catch up with you soon.