Day 17: 28/04/06 Vienna

Our only cooked breakfast! I know it looks sad but we were quite happy about it...

View of Vienna from Schloss Schönbrunn

Inside Kunsthistoriches Museum

We had been talking about cooking our own breakfast since we saw this group of people cooking dinner at the hostel in Luzern. It realised here in Vienna: we bought packets of mee goreng and sausages from a supermarket nearby and created our first and only self-cooked breakfast. It wasn't exactly nice but it was a welcomed change after days of bread/ham/cheese/butter/jam breakfast. The 2 Korean girls cooking together with us were even more powerful: they had kimchi instant noodles with brocconi. I seriously thought they brought the kimchi noodles to Vienna as I didn't see it being sold anywhere...

There were only 2 places that we went to today: Schloss Schönbrunn and Kunsthistoriches Museum. Both were huge places and took us quite a lot of time to see the whole of both.

Schloss Schönbrunn (Palace of the Beautiful Fountain) was a pleasure palace built by the royal family in the 17th century and was extended and renovated at the 18th century under Maria Theresa. It was the place where the last Habsburg emperor, Charles I, abdicted in 1918 after they lost the First World War. The palace itself has 2000 rooms, and behind it is a great garden which includes several fountains and a little hill from which the whole of Vienna can be seen. As usual, the palace was not built to its planned scale due to a lack of funds.

In order to tour the interior of the palace we were supposed to join a guided tour, which was what I planned to do. However, when we reached the palace, both Tk and Yj voted against visiting the inside of the palace after knowing that we had to pay for the tour. Apparently they were not exactly interested so I went along with them.

We visited the gardens though. The front was actually rather similar to Schloss Nymphenburg of Munich, with a main road in the middle and flower beds on both sides. At the end of the front part was the Neptune's fountain, and behind it was the hill. We climbed up, took some photos of Vienna, came down and walked around the sides. There were some more fountains and that was about all the we saw. The only thing interesting was the rows of trees shaped like walls and tunnels to partition the paths leading to different parts of the garden.

As we were visiting the gardens, it started to rain quite heavily. Yj, the hero, did not have an umbrella and his jacket was not waterproof; so he depended entirely on Tk's umbrella. Tk was rather upset about Yj not taking care of his umbrella as he was always throwing and turning Tk's umbrella around when he was holding it.

We had lunch at the same place in the U-Bahn station as we did the night before. Tk and I bought a sushi set, soup noodles and prawn tempura rice to share; Yj bought another piece of pizza from the same stall. After our lunch we proceeded to Kunsthistoriches Museum.

Kunsthistoriches Museum was one of the best museums in Vienna; the collections inside were basically the art collections of the Habsburgs in the past. GCS said that it was impressive and indeed it was. However, we visited it because I did not want to alter the plans; both Tk and Yj actually had voiced out that they did not find visiting this kind of art museum fun. Anyway, I was glad that I did not listen to them this time.

I will not describe the exhibits there as there were too many and it was not appropriate for me to do so. The most prominent exhibit there was the golden salt cellar brought to Vienna from Innsbruck; it was originally supposed to be in Schloss Ambras. The ground floor mainly consisted of artifacts and statues, e.g. Greek statues and Egyptian mummies; the first floor were all mainly 17th - 18th century mannerism/baroque paintings. Do not forget: the building and its decor is a piece of art by itself.

When I was there, half of the ground floor was closed, and that was why I could finish most of it by 6pm. If not, I would need the whole day to finish it: the scale was smaller but comparable to Deutches Museum. The audio-guide was very important: initially I thought that wasn't necessary, but after 2 halls of incomprehensible German explanatory texts I was forced to pay 2 euros for the English commentary. Although it did not include explanation for all exhibits the audio-guide was excellent; I got a really good art history lesson from it (from the point of view of a person who has extremely limited knowledge of the subject). At the last hall the audio-guide protested and hanged itself as I forced it to work too hard.

Tk and Yj finished the whole thing much earlier than I did as they didn't have an audio-guide. Yj needed to revisit a shop to buy an angel for his sister (as claimed by him, nobody knew exactly who he was buying that for, and nobody had ever seen the angel) so he left the museum first. We got him to wait in front of Stephensdom at 6:30pm, hoping that he would be able to navigate himself there on time. Tk went around the whole place with me again, but I believe there should be some instances in which he was sleeping on the couches :)

We left the museum at around 6:15pm to meet Yj for dinner. We walked through the Hofburg and came across this ruins site at Michaelerplatz where we stopped for a while. I guess we got Yj worried (probably worried that he was waiting at the wrong place?) that we received calls from him which we purposely rejected, hoping that he could get the hint.

We hunt for a dinner place using the guide I had; however, the first place we went to did not exist (the address given was the site of a church!!), and we walked to the other side of Inner Stadt to find another one we picked from the guide. Luckily it was around.

The cosy restaurant was somewhere around Am Hof. It served rather good food: I had a beef stew, Yj had a veal Wiener Schnizel (which was supposed to be original as opposed to pork), and Tk had some pork as usual. The veal Wiener Schnizel was not as nice as the pork one. We had coffee: Melange for Tk and cappucino for me, and dessert too: Apple strudel, and pancake witth nuts and cream. The coffee was good, one of the best I've had; however, for apple strudel I still prefer those I had in Singapore which was cold and crispy. The apple strudel there was entirely different: it was hot and soft, and not sweet.

Over dinner we had Yj's story No. 5:

The conversation started with talks about what Tk would be doing in DSTA and he rose a point where he might run into some problems in terms of security clearance when he ceases his service as he might be dealing with weapons dealing and rather highly classified information. Yj disagreed with that point, and asked 'why should there be a problem'. He then rose some highly incomprehensible points which he was very sure of (e.g. 'if you are just a middleman linking the weapon-maker and weapon-buyer together the governments would not know your identity as you work anonymously' (?!!)') and he even claimed that he knew people doing such things. When asked who these people were, he just gave me a company name which I cannot remember. Tk's worry might or might not stand but Yj's claim (highlighted in red) was simply too deep for me to understand. It might possibly be true in a utopia where intelligence networks do not exist.

We were 'chased' out of the restaurant as they needed our table for some reserved guests. Anyway, it was good as we needed to rest early. We were supposed to wake up very early the next day to take a cruise down the Danube.

Day 16: 27/04/06 Vienna

The Austrian Parliament House. The tower in the background is the Rathaus.

The main altar of Stephensdom.

Inside the State Opera House: we were waiting for Swan Lake to start

Our collection of soft toys: try to guess which one(s) belongs to who?

We reached Vienna at around 0730; we were all half-awake due to the poor sleeping condition. Luckily the hostel was very near the train station (we had no more route marches after that as I intentionally booked hostels just next to train stations) and we went straight there hoping we could at least get a room to rest for a while.

Vienna had more than one train station; we arrived in Wien Westbahnhof, the main station for most EC, IC and ICE trains. Our hostel is called 'Hostel Ruthensteiner' and is a rather good hostel to my standards. I will elaborate later.

The hostel was rather packed. There were a lot of Asians too, which I highly suspect a family group eating breakfast to be Singaporean. I booked a triple which cost 15.50 euros per person per night (very cheap! compare to Heidelberg's 20 euros bunk beds which we could not check out at 10am). We bought breakfast and sat at the bar to eat while we wait for our room to be ready; the girl who sold breakfast saw us doing that and was really amused. By the way, the reception girls were all quite cute :)

We could not get our room in time as they needed time to clean it, so we decided to start our programme first and return to get our room in the afternoon.

My programme for the day was 'sightseeing' and 'ballet'. Vienna was famous for its Philharmonic Orchestra, State Opera House and Vienna Boy's Choir (which caused Jeff, Tk and Yj to start making fun of me doubting my sexual inclination even before the start of the trip); and in terms of sights other than the palaces it was famous for Ringstrasse's artitecture. Before leaving for Europe I had done some research and I knew that the programme at State Opera for the night was Tchaikovsky's 'Swan Lake'; I was determined to make it happen. Of course, other than that GCS recommended some sights e.g. Heldenplatz, Belvedere and Kunsthistoriches Museum. I was determined to make that happen too.

We started off from Karlsplatz, taking a tram anticlockwise around Ringstrasse and alighted at Universitat (To GCS: is this the place you studied when you were there? And what was the golden statue with wings opposite it?). There was nothing much to see along this stretch of Ringstrasse so we skipped it conveniently on the tram. We started walking towards Karlsplatz from Universitat. From there onwards we passed by the Rathaus, a neo-Gothic structure which was more than 100m tall; opposite it was the Burgtheatre. Further down we reached the parliament house, which was built in Greek style with Athena, the goddess of wisdom, standing in a fountain in front of the main entrance. I didn't know what it was built using (marble perhaps?); the whole building looked purely white and some gold fleece and it was impressive. We spent quite some time there taking photos and admiring it.

Next we reached Maria Theresien Platz, the place where the Naturhistorisches Museum (Natural History Museum) and Kunsthistorisches Museum (Art History Museum) are located. The two buildings directly opposite across the square were exact mirror images of each other; we tried counting the small statues on the roof and even that was exact. In the middle was a huge bronze statue of Maria Theresa, a (or rather the only) Habsburg Empress who left lots of palaces and buildings for us to admire. Kunsthistorisches Museum was highly recommended by GCS and we would be visiting it the next day. The collections were indeed very impressive.

Opposite that is the Heldenplatz, or Hero's Square, another location recommended by GCS. Our guidebooks did not say much about the place; the only thing I knew about that was Hitler used to made a speech on a balcony in the Hofburg facing the square during the Anschluss. We did not know why it was called Hero's Square too. When we were there, we could not understand why GCS liked it so much: the whole place was full of tourists, horse carriages and vehicles, and there was nothing really grand about it other than the side where Hitler spoke. And the grandeur was destroyed completely by the cars parked beneath the building.

We detoured through the Volksgarten to look for roses, and of course that didn't work. We continued our way back towards State Opera, and on the way we stopped by the Mozart statue to take pictures. Mozart was exploited commercially to the ultimate in Vienna you would see billboards and people in funny costumes asking us 'Guys, concert?' in every corner of the city, and needless to say, there were the available-in-every-part-of-Austria Mirabell brand Mozart chocolate which was not nice.

We stopped by State Opera to check where we could get standing tickets for the night's ballet. We were told to return at 6:15pm when they would start selling the day's standing ticket. At Vienna's State Opera, there is this Stehplatze or Standing Tickets that poor people like us could buy so that we could watch anything showing there for as low a price as 2.00 (limited-view) to 3.50 (full view) euros. Well, compared to the cheapest full view ticket (30euros) it was a lot of difference; however, there were also some limited-view tickets which cost 7 euros.

We went to BK for lunch after that; by that time our tour around Ringstrasse was over and we had moved on to the Inner Stadt. The Inner Stadt was one big pedestrian area full of cafes and shops and some interesting monuments. Its centre was Stephensdom, a Gothic church and famous landmark of Vienna.

We passed by Hotel Sacher and decided against eating Sacher Torte there due to the possible high cost. As we walked along, we stopped by numerous souvenir shops so that Tk could find his porcelain piano. Yj, despite not having any order, shopped a lot as well and saw an angel which he did not buy (on this day). I was the only person not interested at all; the only thing I bought from Vienna was a postcard with a simplified Habsburg family tree which cost 30cents.

We meandered through the route I pre-planned on the map; we visited some interesting sight and skipped some, and that mostly being those that admission fees were required. We went to the Donnerbrunnen, which I couldn't understand why Maria Theresa felt that the 4 statues representing the 4 main tributaries of Danube 'too revealing'; but we did not visit the Kaisergruft (Emperor's Vault), which was a place where the Habsburgs were buried after death. By the way, Tk (Yj to a certain extent too) did not like visiting these places where there were close associations with death so it would be appropriate to skip it.

Stephensdom the first Gothic church we encountered; it was already around in the 12th century and was rebuilt during the 14th - 15th century. They took crazily long to complete it; 75 years, and only the South Tower was completed with the North capped when half-complete as the court ran out of funds. Today the front gate belonged to the original 12th century church, and the roof was tiled with hexagonal colourful tiles, which was quite unique in Austria. The interior of the church was very different from the mostly Baroque churches that we had visited previously; it was mainly white and grey with decor that was very typically Gothic. The church was cavernous with a very high ceiling, nevertheless it did not look empty; on every wall or pillar there would be something, one famous example was the sulptures of the 4 saints that were the fathers of the church. Opposite the church there was this piece of wood studded with nails protected in plastic casing; it was thought that the wood suffered that fate as blacksmiths leaving Vienna in the 16th century would hit a nail into the trunk for good luck.

The souvenir hunt continued; we passed by Graben, a wide shopping street with the prague memorial in the middle; Am Hof; Judenplatz with the strange looking Holocaust memorial, which was a plain, stern structure called the 'nameless library'; Hohermarkt where a clock, which was supposed to chime and show figures running across its surface at 12pm, was located; and then we were back at Stephensplatz. At that time we were rather tired due to the train ride; hence we took a U-Bahn back to the hostel to rest.

The hostel generally and the room was very clean and neat. Despite the room being a bit small, it had enough space for us to hang dry all our laundry; there were individual bed-lamps and power points sufficient for everyone. The bathrooms and shower rooms were well maintained, the only fault being the shower being not strong enough. The staff was friendly and willing to help, and the place wasn't really noisy; there were even a piano and guitars for us to play around with. Very importantly, there were 4 Internet machines available!

We bathed, did laundry and slept for a while before we set off for Swan Lake. It was raining rather heavily at the time we wanted to set off, so we decided to wait until the rain stopped. Luckily it stopped on time to allow me to get to State Opera on time.

We did not manage to get the better 3.50 tickets, so we bought the limited view one. For dinner we settled at a pizza shop in the U-Bahn station, and to my delight, there was a piece of pizza with an egg on it! And of course I bought that.

The State Opera was very high; we were right at the top in front of the chandelier. 10% of the stage could not be seen from our angle. I thought that was not significant, but, apparently a lot of dance suites finished off at that part of the stage.

I have listened to the Swan Lake music pieces before but not the ballet. It was actually a very simple fairy-tale like love story; if you are interested you can find that easily in Wikipedia. Basically, the whole experience watching and listening was fantastic; it was worth putting up with the 3-hour long standing up. Actually, the standing was not a problem as there was a railing we could hold onto and we could sit down during Intermissions. It would be rather stupid for me to describe what I saw; it would be better if you can go there and experience it yourselves. The State Opera has performances almost every night.

Day 15: 26/04/06 Innsbruck

Schloss Ambras

:)

Waiting for our overnight train to Vienna... Sleepy...

Innsbruck is not a big city, however, its importance in history is not to be underestimated. It used to be the seat for the Habsburgs; in the late 15th century Holy Roman Emperor Maximillian I moved his imperial court to Innsbruck. Earlier on it had been serving as the capital of Tyrol as it is now.

According to my plans there were 2 main places to visit for the day: the Altstadt or City Centre, and Schloss Ambras, a castle built by Archduke Ferdinand II. Tk suggested that we should visit the castle first to avoid the crowd and that's what we did.

Although we could take a tram or a bus there we decided to walk. The castle was about 2km from the city centre, and the walk was easy. On our way we kept pestering Yj to practise his navigation skills. Despite our repeated warnings about the consequences of getting lost in the desert with grand-junior he refused even to take the map from me. He did not want to assume responsibility as he was afraid that we might bash him if he got lost. On top of that, there was also an argument about who should be blamed if he brought us to the wrong way when he was instructed by me to navigate. He felt that since he was under my instruction I should bear total responsibility and he should be spared. That was so typical of Yj (nothing would be his fault..., no matter what nothing would be his fault); Tk and I never let him off easily whenever he made such comments.

Schloss Ambras was empty by the time we reached there. The castle was not very big, and it was actually quite inconspicuous from the outside. It looked like a castle only when viewed from the courtyard; the Upper Schloss, the main building, had windows painted with the Austrian colours which was a typical design for quite a lot of Austrian castles and fortresses. The Lower Schloss, however, was rather plain and looked like a school building.

The interesting thing about the castle was not its architecture or outlook; rather, it was the collection within the castle museum that was intriguing. As we enter the Lower Schloss, the first things that greeted us were rows of armours of all sorts: Infantry, Calvary, Darkriders, and some belonging to the rulers and the Archduke himself. They really caught our attention, especially some unique ones like the one meant for a giant kept by the court which was >2m tall.

As the Archduke lived in the 17th century the craze about exotic collections affected him too. The Kunst und Wunderkammer showed whatever exotic collection the Archduke had; the collection was not big but some items were indeed quite interesting. An example would be a portable altar which also served as a cabinet with 100+ drawers (and I couldn't even tell where they were located). There were some statuettes of Asian deities which, again, we were quite surprised to see.

The Upper Schloss used 3 levels of floor space to display portraits of the Habsburgs who lived before the Archduke in chronological order. It was very well organised with elaborate and clear English explanations of each portrait but we were still in the fog after we came out. The family structure of the Habsburgs was extremely complicated; their breeding habits were so perculiar to modern eyes that it just could not be accepted. There were instances where the father would marry the daughter and gave birth to children. Also, their titles were so very confusing: one would be Emperor of Germany, Austria and Hungary then the other Emperor of Spain and some other guy the Archduke of Tyrol etc etc and yet all of them belong to the same imperial family. It was even more confusing than China's Warring States as at least I am sure that the feudal lord of Zhao would not assume the throne of Yan unless one ate up the other and the biggest King just sat in his palace to wait for something to happen to him. Tk and me were saying, even if GCS came to this place he would still be as blur as sotong. The difference would just be the level of blurness only.

We ate at a place with a partial view of the city. After lunch, we walked back to the city centre with Yj finally was forced to hold the map. However, it was easy as we could remember our way there; despite that, at the ealiest possible chance he gave me back the map.

Our first stop at the city centre was the Hofkirche, the Imperial Church, where the cenopath of Maximillian I was located. In the centre of the church there was the empty tomb (Maximillian was buried not in Innsbruck but in Wiener Neustadt, as he was refused entry into Innsbruck just before his death), with a black kneeling statue of himself on top. The tomb was surrounded by larger-than-life (again black) statues of kings, including the legendary King Arthur and some Habsburg ancestors. When we were there there was nobody inside the church and the atmosphere inside was stern; however, after a while a school group (there were a lot of school groups in Innsbruck, I didn't know why) came in and started to make a lot of noise. It was then we went up to visit the Silver Chapel, where the tomb of Archduke Ferdinand II is. There the atmosphere was even more stern; he was buried near his commoner wife (if not because of his this beloved wife and the strange breeding habits of the Habsburgs he would have been Emperor), where there was a statue of him kneeling in front of Mary as if he was showing penitence for his sins.

After the church we did not visit anymore places which we needed to pay. We did not want to enter the Hofburg as there was nothing much to see inside and outside; whatever Hofburg we wanted we could get in Vienna anyway. We went back to the Golden Dachl with the travel guide and listened to the tour guides' explanation to their groups. We went back to Maria Theresian Strasse for the day view of the Nordkette. Somehow the night view was better as it was not blocked by clouds: it had already started raining. We walked past the Annasäule where we asked Yj to block the ugly roadsign the day before towards the triumphal arch, and then back to the city centre again.

By that time it was too late for us to enter any museum to pass time, and it was too early for dinner. Our plan for the night's accommadation was a night train, which departs at 0038hrs. Between 5pm and 12am there were 7 hours which we had nothing to do.

So, Tk went on his journey to look for his cow. We walked in the rain in circles around the Altstadt for at least 30mins before we found the cow. There, he almost immediately he found out that the cow was not actually a soft toy, which did not suit his collection and he did not buy it.

We went to the train station to have dinner. Tk and me had Wiener Schnizel with potato salad to preview Vienna's (guess what that was, ubiquitous throughout Austria), and that turned out to be very good and extremely filling. The raspberry sauce was especially yummy. Yj, the special, ordered carbonara spaghetti. In the restaurant, Yj suffered further bombing with details as follows: (Yj's story No.4)

The conversation started with us continuing our story about Yj's hopeless perception of direction, our worry for the safety of grand-junior in the desert and the fact that he should practise his navigation skills. Tk and me gave an analogy to illustrate the point: 'It is like when you are an industrial engineer, as you design the utility pipes for a building, because of your poor map-reading, i.e. plan-reading skills there would be a possibility that you might connect the water pipes to the air-con pipes and everything would be screwed up.'

That comment sparked strange responses from Yj. First, he kept insisting that, as an industrial engineer, there would be no need for him to design the water pipes and air-con pipes at the same time as that would be the job of 2 different people. This perception was not even a single bit weakened despite us putting a lot of effort to illustrate that it might actually happen. So, our logical conclusion was: when Yj finally graduates as an industrial engineer, he would only be designing WATER PIPES (or whatever speciality), and NONE OTHER. Or even if he had the ability to design more things, he would only do the WATER PIPES (or whatever speciality), and NONE OTHER. So if you are a government official trying to make a deal, don't waste your time and taxpayer's money.

Secondly, he kept asking us this question (it repeated several times), which we didn't know whether to laugh or to cry when we respond: 'In the first place, who will connect water pipes to the air-con pipes? Why is there a problem?' Well, friend, we used that as a ridiculous analogy to illustrate the importance of you practising your map-reading skills (and he did not see the connection between a map and a floorplan/building plan), and we were not making a serious statement!

In the end, he called for a change of topic. We were glad that he did that as people were already staring at these 3 stupid Chinese guys arguing over something trivial. Yj was so agitated at times that his voice rose without himself even noticing it.

Subsequently we went to this shop at the station where we bought the 'Happy Birthday' (as how we called it throughout the trip) for SK's birthday. It is a cute tiger holding a birthday cake and is supposed to sing (?) birthday song (?) in German (?) when the batteries are inserted. However, due to my negligence, I did not put in the battery even when I gave it to SK.... :( I had never heard it sing...

As we were waiting in the waiting room we met this old guy from America whom had been travelling in Italy and was on his way to Salzburg. He kept talking to us about all sorts of things from 'there would be another economic crisis in the US due to rising oil prices' to '3 Japs got misled by another Jap in Italy and they couldn't get to the hostel'. There was also another American couple who told us that their daughter-in-law is a Singaporean living in California. Well, the wait was quite long and the guy kept talking without stopping and Tk couldn't take it anymore; he kept going for 'walks' until the old guy commented to me 'Your friend is really restless, huh'. Haha :)

It was really cold on the platform at night and we couldn't wait to get up the train to sleep; however, to out dismay, our reserved cabin had already 2 person inside. So, I sat all the way to Vienna, for 7 hours, without actually getting any good sleep; I didn't know what happened to Tk and Yj, though after we arrived Tk kept saying that he was feeling shack.

Day 14: 25/04/06 Zurich/Innsbruck

The Golden Dachl

Pizzas and Pasta: some things which we ate quite often

Maria Theresien Strasse with the Nordkette in the background

We would be leaving Switzerland for Austria this afternoon. Since we did not have anything else to do (or rather, did not know what to do) in Bern we woke up late and as soon as we were ready to go we took a train to Zurich. In order to get to Innsbruck, our next destination, we had to wait in Zurich for quite a while. Hence we decided to leave the station and take a walk around the city to get a feel of it.

As we were still in Switzerland we were still bearing the consequences of Yj's negligence. We had no map and no guide; and as a result, we did not dare to venture far. We tried to remember the map at the station and walked in the general direction of the river. We walked through a stretch of shops and went into a Co-op supermarket where we bought a box of instant cappucino and mushroom soup which we consumed only 2 weeks later. (However, it was good to note that Tk's orange juice which he bought in Bern the day before was gone very quickly.)

Zurich was more like Geneva than the other 2 Swiss cities we went to. We were unable to know the place better as we had no information and we had too little time. However, I did remember that we passed by a sex shop which had 4 levels, and there was even a level specially dedicated to the homosexuals. That certainly tells something.

We stayed in MacDonald's for quite some time waiting for time to pass. That MacDonald's did not have Internet services so Yj was still unable to contact his grand-junior after his unsuccessful attempt in Bern the day before. (By the way, he wanted to use the Internet in Bern and the hostel guy told him that he could use it in MacDonald's. So we went with him, and after putting coins into the machine Yj found out that the Internet didn't work. He was quite upset about that.)

Before boarding the train Tk and Yj, desperate to get rid of all their francs coins, went to a vending machine to buy snacks. Tk's Kit-Kat and Snicker's bar was being kept all the way until the 2nd last day of the trip before it was eaten.

The train ride to Innsbruck was long and uneventful; we passed by Liechtenstein, a small principality sandwiched between Austria and Switzerland. We reached Innsbruck in the late afternoon. We were smarter this time round: as I projected a long walk to the hostel, the first thing we did when we arrived was to take out all that we need for one day and store the rest of our luggage in the train station.

Finally we were out of the pathetic mapless/guideless state; Austria and Hungary were planned by me and I had a file with all the information I needed. However, there was still one problem: I left out information for restaurants and cafes for certain cities in my set of notes! As food was very important (I underestimated the importance of food) we had quite a bit of problem finding a good restaurant sometimes. Next time I know what to do :)

The hostel was on the other side of the city centre (again) and we had to pass through the whole of the city centre to get to it. The hostel was not exactly very good: the shower room had 2 shower heads (which only one worked) together without partition, and worse still, as Tk and me were showering, the warm water turned cold and you can imagine how freaking cold that could be. We were lucky that we did not go in winter.

In the evening we went to the city centre to look for dinner. I did not bring out the travel notes, however, we knew what was what based on the map. We passed by a lot of attractions, which I would elaborate in the journal for the next day as we would revisit all of them. Tk saw an interesting cow soft toy in one of the shops which were closed; we would be looking for it all over Innsbruck the next day also.

Shopping was one big element of the trip; Tk was obliged to go into every souvenir shop possible to fulfill the orders given to him (he has really tonnes of orders). Initially I still went into the shops with them, however, from Vienna onwards most of the time I stayed outside the shop to wait for them. It got really boring for me sometimes especially when they were looking for something specific and every single souvenir shop looked almost the same. Luckily, at Innsbruck, every souvenir shop seemed to sell this map of the Alps which I could stare into for even longer than Tk and Yj could stay in the shop.

We were happy that we were back in the Eurozone; compared to Switzerland everything suddenly seemed so cheap. We ate pizza and pasta in this little roadside restaurant; rather good and budget as the total cost for one person was lower than the cost of a mango there (8 euros!). We went to Maria-Theresien Strasse afterwards; it was famous for its view of the Nordkette behind the city and we intended to compare the night view with the day's. I got Yj to pose in front of the camera in order to cover an ugly roadsign; only he was big enough for the job. On our way back we had ice-cream at a roadside stall near Hofkirche; it was more expensive than Heidelberg's and not as good.

In our hostel room we met this middle-age Singaporean who was travelling with a female friend staying in another room. He was in Innsbruck because he missed a train on his way back to Germany. I couldn't remember the full story but apparently he was going back to Germany specially on his friend's request to visit a castle (which we suspect was Neuschwanstein) that they missed. They were really going to have a long journey ahead of them.

Day 13: 24/04/06 Geneva/Bern

Foreground = Yj, Background = Jet d'eau

UN: In order to take this picture, Yj braved his life to get to the centre of the road for the best angle.

We found this in Geneva! The duck was not bad but the rest were similar in standard to the Biopolis foodcourt.

Tk and me on a bridge near the hostel in Bern.

Bern's old town has retained the original Medieval layout and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

What are you looking at?

Since we reached Hwee Keng's place rather late the day before and we spent quite a lot of time searching for a street directory on the net in vain, by the time we woke up it was already close to 10am, a record for our trip. The night before we asked Hwee Keng for directions back to the train station, and we hope to navigate from there.

Since we knew the general direction we walked to the train station, and we took the Mont Blanc Bridge to admire the Jet d'eau on our way there. The Jet d'eau, literally 'water fountain', is the landmark of Geneva; it is situated inside Lake Geneva, with a capacity of bringing 2000L of water into the air up to 140m at any one time. We took some photos of it from the bridge. Before we reached the train station, we located a chocolate shop which we subsequently went to purchase numerous boxes of chocolates to bring back to Singapore.

Geneva is a lakeside city that belongs to the French-speaking part of Switzerland; it was indeed not easy to navigate mapless when we did not know the language at all. Even all the abbreviations for the United Nations organisations seemed so unfamiliar. Luckily, we were adequately prepared by Hwee Keng the night before. Anyway, Geneva is very metropolitan; it is the most vibrant among all the 3 lakeside cities we visited.

Since Yj did not know anything about Geneva other than Jet d'eau and the United Nations, the only other place in Geneva we could visit was the United Nations complex.

There were some construction work going on at the plaza in front of the United Nations building. We could not get in and we did not have time to partcipate in the guided tour, so we just went in front of the gate and took a photo of the classic avenue with the flags of the member states lining it. After that we took a tram back to the train station, where we went to a Chinese restaurant 'Boky' (initially we thought it was a Japanese restaurant as we were attracted to it by the sushi sets it offered), and we had noodles and fried rice. My beef brisket noodles were not very good, but Tk's roasted duck was rather nice. Anyway, our first taste of Chinese food in Europe :)

We left Geneva for Bern after that. After we arrived at the train station Yj, without informing Tk and me where he was going, went ahead and expected us to follow. Tk and me decided to let him stay in front and we would just follow him wherever he led us, including the walk to the hostel, without helping him with the navigation.

Yj went to the tourist information to get a map. Tk and me went to look at other brouchures and discovered that, Bern, being the capital city of Switzerland, was a UNESCO world heritage site due to its well preserved medieval city style; it was also where Einstein came out with the theory of relativity. There were quite a few museums, buildings and monuments which were of interest. And all Yj told us about Bern was 'there is nothing much to see there, just a bear pit'. Well, that was what happened when he did not have a travel guide with him...

We went onto a shorter route march (compared to Heidelberg) to the hostel; the hostel was on the other side of the old city, which we reached after ~30min of walking. All the way Tk and me did not assist Yj in his navigation even at times when he was confused. Our consensus: since he did not know how to navigate, it would be possible that he gets lost in a desert with no gas station within 900km radius with his grand-junior in a car that has exhausted its petrol. Hence for the safety of grand-junior, he needed practice which he lacked. Anyway, his navigation was quite successful and we ended up in the correct place without losing our way. A round applause for Yj.

After we settled in we went to the rose garden to look for roses; there was no rose as usual but we did find a lot of ladybirds whereby one pair was corpulating. It was a nice place to take a panaromic view of Bern too. From that angle, the whole old city, which was surrounded on 3 sides by the river Aare, was visible; with the setting sun behind the church towers illuminating the whole city, it was very beautiful.

The bear pit, which Yj featured, was nearby; it was actually just a round structure built in the ground with bears in it. It was really nothing much; the bears in Singapore zoo were much more impressive. I did wonder whether Yj knew the significance of bears in Bern: the bear is the symbol of Bern, it is in the coat of arms of the canton. It is believed in legend that the founder of the city named it after a bear he killed.

We went round the old city after that. There were numerous fountains in the middle of the roads in the old city which used to serve as wells for people to collect water. There were a lot of interesting sights within the old city: 2 clock towers (which I had forgot the names, and their significance unknown due to lack of information), Einstein's house, shops located in the basement of the houses accessible through trapdoors in the ground, etc. We saw an Einstein soft toy (it was really cute) which we were so fascinated at but we couldn't buy it as the shop wasn't open.

For dinner I had beef tripes in tomato sauce; initially I didn't know what that was and when the waitress repeated the order I thought she was saying 'chips'. I was asking where my 'chips' came from when she realised I didn't know what was 'tripes', and explained it to me. (If you also do not know then take out a dictionary please..) As a Hongkonger deprived of that in Singapore I really welcomed that. The food came in a pot with fire constantly heating it. The sauce was really good and the tripes were at their optimal texture. Tk had some pork stuff as usual (haha I can't remember what; can't tell from the picture Yj took also), and Yj had these beef cubes with numerous sauces which cost Fr30+. He needed to disperse his francs which he had too much to spare I reckon.

We took a very long time to find our dinner place and hence it was rather late after our dinner. We went back to the hostel for a while and went out again to the Parliament to admire the fountain in front of it. It was basically the kind of fountain with numerous water jets shooting out from the ground like that one in Bugis Junction, but it was larger in scale. The fountain was spitting out jet by jet when we arrived and we were thinking that we were being cheated when it started to shoot all at one go; illuminated with blue light the fountain gave the empty plaza a rather serene atmosphere. We took numerous pictures and tried to get a good one with our hopeless skills and cameras, and some indeed turn out quite well.

Day 12: 23/04/2006 Interlaken/Geneva

Need explanation for what this is?

2 Lonely travellers...

Tk getting crazy!

We had been anticipating this day to come. According to Yj's plans, we were supposed to visit Jungfrau today. He had warned us beforehand that the train up to the mountain would be very expensive; the figure he quoted was Fr50 after discount given to Swiss Pass holders.

Jungfrau ('young lady'), together with Mönch ('monk') and Eiger (well, 'Eiger'), is one of the most popular mountains in the Swiss Alps. There is a cogwheel railway that links Interlaken with Jungfraujoch, an artificial structure which consists of viewing terraces, restaurants, exhibitions, a meteorological station and research facilities. Jungfraujoch is situated in the saddle between Jungfrau and Mönch; from there tourists can have close-up views of the two mountains and they can also embark on skiing trips down the glacier.

I left the hostel for the train station slightly earlier than Tk and Yj because I wanted to lock my luggage in the train station lockers. Tk and Yj just left theirs in the luggage room, as theirs could be locked in the hostel lockers but mine couldn't fit. On my way I took a photo of a continuous piece of cloud extending horizontally along the ridge; from my angle, the cloud seemed to be at ground level. It looked amazing.

As soon as I locked my stuff Tk and Yj appeared. We went to buy our tickets; contrary to what Yj told us, our tickets cost @Fr78.50! This is daylight robbery.

As usual we prepared lunch at the sandwich stall. I got myself a hot-dog and chicken sandwich, Tk bought a chicken sandwich only I think and Yj, our hero, bought a banana and ham/cheese sandwich. I guess he had already planned to buy more lunch at Jungfraujoch.

The train ride up took 2 hours, and we had to change at 2 places: Lauterbrunnen and Kleine Scheidegg. There was endless scenery as we entered the Alps: from slopes with pastures, farms and fast flowing streams we came into a valley, with conifer-filled slopes and cliffs lined with numerous waterfalls on both sides. As we climbed up from the valley, the dominating vegetation slowly turned into grass, and by the time we reached Kleine Scheidegg, the whole place was only rock and snow. From there, we could see the 3 mountains the most clearly: Eiger on the left, Mönch in the centre, and Jungfrau to the right. However, no nice photo was possible from there as the mountains were on the other side of the train power cables which we could not avoid. The weather was not very good also as we could see; clouds were growing and rolling over the mountains. It was really another great sight seeing clouds gathering up a mountain and spilling over it.

The last stretch of the railway was built inside the cliff face of Eiger: it was a tunnel inside the rock face leading all the way up to Jungfraujoch. Halfway through the train ride the train stopped at an opening built on the rock face; this is the place where rescue missions started and had a great viewing platform. We did not get down the train as we did not know that we can; we realised it only after the train had left the place.

(By the way, according to Tk, the train ride was 'scary': He said that the train tilted to one side at certain stretches where losing balance meant falling down a cliff. I didn't notice that at all, though.)

It was cold in Jungfraujoch; -7 deg C, compared to the ~15 deg in Interlaken. It was really cold in the tunnels leading from the main building to other places because of the absence of the sun and air-conditioning. The first place we went to was the viewing platform on Sphinx, about 100+m higher than the train station. Luckily there was this thing called a lift.

Jungfraujoch was also called 'Top of Europe', which was actually convincing as up on Sphinx, we were already above the clouds and there were also endless things we could admire. The dominant colour here was white and blue: the snow and clouds were white, pure white; the sky was just simply blue. And it was extremely bright. Needless to say, the two most prominent features were Jungfrau and Mönch on both ends; then, it would be the long, snowed-covered glacier meadering through a valley surrounded by snow-capped peaks until it disappeared behind a mountain after a bend. On the day we visited the visibility to the towns and cities below was not good due to the clouds; if not, we were supposed to be able to see all the way to Italy and France. However, to be accurate, Jungfrau is actually hardly Top of Europe; the highest peak in Europe is Mont Blanc on the Swiss-French border near Geneva.

One thing to add: soon after we left the train, Yj discovered that he left his water bottle in the train. As his water bottle actually belonged to his mother, he needed to find it. Again another search mission. As this mission didn't actually involve Tk and me, we let him. He tried finding the train and asking the counter, both didn't work; so he put that on hold temporarily.

We continued to tour around the Jundfraujoch complex. First we went out to the glacier area to trod on snow; that was the place where skiiers start their trip. There were quite a lot of skiiers, but we did not manage to see them start; there was also a group of people who went on a helicopter tour around the peaks who had landed on a platform near the exit. The snow there was unlike any snow I had encoutered. It was clean, white, soft and fluffy, really fluffy, as if it was cotton candy. Tk, excited as usual, lay on the snow and created an impression of himself in the snow. We had pictures of his heroic act.

There was also an ice palace, where they exhibited ice sculptures. According to Tk, who had been to Harbin, the ice sculptures there was not exactly impressive. However, some were really nice. I especially liked the crytals illuminated with blue light.

There was also a 'Plateau' area, which was an outdoor viewing platform. They featured a flying Swiss flag over there, and of course, people queued to take photos with it. The ground there, in contrast with the glacier area, had mostly become ice; it was really slippery and Tk had a hard time walking on it. However, he was heroic enough to walk out of the barrier and took a photo with a rock outside the barrier. Of course Yj did that too.

We went to eat after that, and I was the only person who managed to survive only on the food bought in Interlaken. As soon as we arrived at the restaurant, Yj bought Sprite with I shared, and a pasta which I didn't touch. Tk, after finishing his pathetic burger, declared that it was not enough and went to get a plate of Fr16.80 curry rice. As soon as he ate the first mouthful, he expressed great regret about getting that as he said that it was disgusting. I watched him eat with extreme effort and at the end, he gave me some of it. It was edible to me but if you agree that that thing was 'curry' and 'rice' I seriously doubt your identity as an Asian.

We missed a train and was forced to stay in Jungfraujoch for an extra hour. We passed our time by admiring at souvenirs at the souvenir shop (by the way, Yj lost his bet on the dog as it was more expensive than Fr9.90. Since cheese fondue was over I suggested something else that he should treat me but as usual he came out with all sorts of excuses). We went back to Interlaken via Grindelwald; the scenery around Lauterbrunnen was much better. As we stopped to change trains, Yj went to the information centres to attept to look for his mother's water bottle, and of course that didn't work. In the end, he bought a replacement for Fr15.

Tk and Yj went back to the hostel to collect their luggage, and since my luggage was already at the train station, I helped them get dinner from the Co-op restaurant. We took a train to Bern before continuing to Geneva. I wasn't exactly sure why we were visiting Geneva; our guide told us that we were going there to look at the Jet d'Eau (Water Fountain) and the UN. However, he had the least idea of how to get there. And better still, he had no map, and we could not get any guide or map from the train station!

Luckily at Geneva we were picked up by Hwee See's sister, Hwee Keng. She showed us around town, where we saw Jet d'Eau and the road leading towards the UN. She brought us to this restaurant in the surrounding countryside to eat roasted chicken. Despite we already had dinner on the train, we ate, and the chicken which was roasted with wood fire was rather delicious. We had a kind of red wine which was made in the region around Geneva. It was quite good, the refreshing kind; Yj bought a bottle for himself.

Day 11: 22/04/06 Luzern/Interlaken

Our room!

Along the Golden Pass Railway

Interlaken: looks familiar? So typically Swiss...

Our 5 days in Switzerland were very hectic: basically, we stayed at a different place every day and there definitely would be at least 1 train ride per day. It was really tiring towards the end and this ended only when we finally reached Vienna.

We bought cereal and milk from the hostel and ate breakfast there. Yj displayed his heroism once again: he didn't want to eat breakfast as he insisted that he was not hungry. Well, if I did that during my family's overseas trips, I would definitely suffer as my family won't stop for food just because one person wanted to act hero during normal meal times.

The day was warm, so I just wore my windbreaker and left my thick coat together with my backpack in the train station. It turned out to be a grave mistake: the wind was freezing as I was on the boat when we cruised the lake! My windbreaker was completely useless, and the sun did not help much. Tk lent me one of his layers to ease my suffering and I was really grateful towards that.

The cruise was around 2 hours and we had to change a boat at Weggis. There were numerous resort towns surrouding the lake bordered by the Alps. The combination of mountains and the lake was beautiful, and I saw for the first time Alpine pastures, where there were patches of grassland at the foothills of the mountains bordered by trees. That was one of my favourite things throughout the journey.

After the cruise we were to take the Golden Pass line, another listed scenic route, to Interlaken, a city in the middle of the Alps. As we bought lunch, Yj's insistance on uniqueness almost caused us to miss the train. (Yj's Story No.2)

We reached the train station rather late and we had no choice but to buy food to eat on the train. There was a MacDonald's nearby and we decided to settle for that. Tk bought 2 burgers and I got myself a meal (which cost Fr10.90!). Yj bought 1 burger only. When we reached the train station, it was only around 7 minutes to the train's departure. However, Yj said that he needed to buy another sandwich from the sandwich stall (apparently his burger was not enough as he didn't eat breakfast as well). Before we could stop him, he had rushed to the stall and started to queue behind 3/4 persons!

As it was not possible to stop him from buying we told him that we would wait for him at the platform. As we were waiting, we got more and more restless and Tk was almost fuming. He couldn't believe that he still had to not buy enough at Macs and join the queue at the stall when we were in such a hurry. We considered all sorts of options, including one where we just board the train and leave him to wait for the next one. At 2 minutes before departure, Yj appeared on the platform, WALKING towards us in a seemingly RELAXED manner. It was simply unbelievable.

We were on our way to Interlaken anyway. As the train entered the mountains, the scenery got more and more astounding. From lowland the trained climbed up to cross a mountain pass, and on the way we had views of emerald lakes, majestic mountains, green Alpine pastures and farms, cattle and horses, etc.; it was just like those we saw in postcards. The stretch near Interlaken along Brienzersee was the most beautiful. The train ride was something that should not be missed if you were in Switzerland.

At Interlaken Yj led the way to the hostel using his crude map printed from the Internet. He was never a good navigator, which the following incident proved it vividly: (Yj's story No.3）

On our way to the hostel we came to this cross-junction where a sign pointed towards the hostel. It was not exactly clear, as if you stand beneath it to check it pointed into a house instead of a road. I saw from the direction we were coming from that it pointed into a particular road. Yj, who was the leader, insisted that it pointed at another road which he claimed 'the map said so'. I knew that from the general direction we walked it was nost likely wrong but after some useless persuation and insistance I gave in since he was the leader. Tk said it pointed into the house which I agreed; anyway, we both followed Yj.

Facts proved me right: the road Yj took led to the road which goes to the train station. I couldn't take it anymore; I took the map from him and asked him to follow me. And soon we were at the hostel.

After we settled down we were supposed to go and take a funicular up some mountain top so that we could see the whole Interlaken. By the way, as the name suggested, Interlaken was between 2 lakes, Brienzersee and Thunsee, and was surrounded 360 degrees by the Alps. However as we started walking we decided not to get to the funicular and we went onto a small hill nearby for a walk.

As we were walking we kept making fun of Yj. He had already accumulated enough incidents for us to legitimately make fun of him. I purposely taught him how to navigate as part of that, and I didn't know how much he learnt. And of course, we kept pestering him to treat cheese fondue for the night (which we had ordered through the hostel reception). Anyway, he kept insisting that it wasn't his fault that he took the wrong road and it was actually due to a 'difference in perception'. He just had a 'different' perception, not a 'wrong' perception. I never accepted that; I never accept excuses from people who refuses to admit mistakes. All these typical Yj's acts would lead to even more interesting stories later in the trip. (Yj's Story Nos. 4, 5, 6....)

The hill was a disappointment: we was not able to see Interlaken holistically as it was all tree covered. There was one point, though, we were able to see quite a bit of Thunsee, and this was when we saw rainclouds rolling over the Alps coming towards us. We left the hill immediately, and fortunately enough the rain did not get heavy. As the rain started, it lasted: except for one or two days, all our subsequent days rained until we were in Budapest.

At night we ate cheese fondue at the hostel; it was not as nice as we imagined. The wine in the cheese steamboat was too strong. And we made a mistake by ordering 3 perons' worth of fondue: it was really very filling and got rather boring after a while. However, when the liquid cheese were all gone, the crust left behind was delicious. We didn't make Yj treat of course.

There was a table tennis table at the dining area and Tk was excited to see it: I think he has not picked up a bet since his DHS days. We played for a while before dinner, and continued after the fondue and beer. A kid from god-knows-where came in and we played with him; he seemed to be playing with anyone that was at the table.

The hostel was alright but there was a serious problem with the common bathrooms' doors: they can't be locked! When we use it we have to pull the door towards us tight to prevent any intruders. Luckily the showers didn't have that problem.

Day 10: 21/04/06 Konstanz/Luzern

Konstanz/Constance


Luzern


Luzern: Chapel Bridge

As I mentioned, the hotel provided breakfast for us every morning. The hotel's breakfast was worth mentioning: though it was almost the same for both our days there, it was wholesome: large pieces of ham and cheese, 2 or 3 pieces of bread, all kinds of jam, coffee/tea, fruit juice, and on the 2nd morning, scrambled egg. We were delighted at the sight of the eggs; it had been one whole week without eggs already.

Before we left in the morning, we paid a visit to the 2 shops featured in the first post about Triberg. Tk didn't get to visit the shops the day before because of Yj's outstanding keys, and he needed to buy his cukcoo clock before he leave. He got the clock and got it posted back to Munich, and also his All You Need Is Love, which he lugged along.

We continued on the Black Forest Railway towards Konstanz, where we could change another train for Switzerland. Our original plan was to go through Freiburg and Basel, and it was my idea to change it to Konstanz as I thought there would be better scenery.

The railway provided us with more views of the Black Forest. Tk and Yj tried to stay awake, and I think Tk did manage to stay awake for quite some time. I am quite sure that they were awake when we were near Konstanz as all were trying to take photos of the lake along the railway...

Konstanz (or Constance) is a lakeside resort city by the Bondersee (Lake Constance). Bondersee is shared by Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and Konstanz is at the German side. The River Rhine exited Bondersee at Konstanz, beginning its journey towards the Netherlands from here. When we were there, Konstanz was very beautiful: the sky was brightly blue and cloudless, flowers were blooming in the parks, the lake was shimmering under the bright sunlight. The picture was simply astounding. We had lunch (as usual) on one of the benches in the park facing the lake, and we enjoyed that very much.

We passed through customs at the train station and boarded a train bound for Zurich. We were supposed to get to Luzern and that was where we would start our Switzerland leg.

Yj was the guide on the ground. However, there was a problem: he didn't bring his travel guide along with him! The only papers he had were those about the hostels. Hence, we did not have any information about the cities that we were going at all, not even maps! Well, both Tk and me depended entirely on Yj to research on Switzerland (as he had been there before) and lead us and we did not have any information too (which was a mistake made by us as well..). Hence, the first thing we did when we arrived at Luzern was to get information from the Tourist Information counter. Luckily they provided us with quite detailed guides and maps.

After we arrived at the hostel we asked for recommendations for dinner before we started touring the city with the guide given by the Tourist Information. Our hostel was located by the lake; just walk out of the door and we would be at a park by the lake. We strolled along the park and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. Similar to Konstanz, Luzern is also at the tip of a lake; the difference is that Luzern is slightly more urban than Konstanz and surrounding the lake are the snow-capped mountains of the Alps. In Konstanz I sensed space, lots and lots of space; in Luzern I saw nature and man complementing each other, integrating to form a perfect landscape.

Near the train station at the pier I found a cute soft toy dog which cost Fr9.90. At that time we were still not exposed to Switzerland's crazy prices yet; Tk and Yj felt that it was expensive but I nevertheless bought it for my sister ignoring their comments. Yj tried to place a bet: he said if he could find the same dog cheaper somewhere else, I ought to treat him cheese fondue. Now he's at it.

We went round the city using the guide. We went to the Domkirche, which we could not enter because there was service going on, then we went to the Lion of Luzern, which was sulptured to commemorate the bravery of the Swiss who served King Louis XVI of France during the French Revolution. It was commented by Mark Twain as 'the most moving sculpture in Europe'. When we were there, however, it was covered by scaffolding: it was under restoration. Damn.

At the old city we walked along the shopping district and started to sense the craziness of Swiss price: a Brezen could cost Fr5-6.00! We were amazed to see Bata there, and STA travel as well: STA travel seemed to be very easily accessible everywhere. Except Singapore.

There was an interesting sculpture which depicted a man/woman naked opening his mouth looking strange. Somebody stuck a straw into the genitals of the sculpture and initially, we wanted Yj to place his mouth near the straw so that we could take a photo. Of course, he refused but he posed with it nevertheless.

The most famous sight in Luzern was the Chapel Bridge. It was one wooden covered bridge with a tower in the middle, which bear the style of the 14th century (something like the Heidelberg fortress). I believe it had recently suffered fire as most of its paintings in the bridge was lost and some frames looked black and some very new. There was no way to prove that as we had no proper travel guide..

For dinner we ate at this restaurant called 'Pigeon'. I had some rather nice Swiss style pasta with beef and cheese, and Tk, whom couldn't eat beef, had pork cutlet stuffed with cheese and ham which he complained throughout the journey. He said that the pork taste/smell was too strong (?!). Nevertheless there was one thing we agreed: the dinner was extremely expensive! I paid ~Fr30 for my pasta and wine, and Tk close to Fr40!

Yj did something at the restaurant which made both of us very embarrassed again, after the Italian restaurant incident. It was something to do with the waiter also, which we had forgotten. Anyway, Yj's mannerism in restaurants was something we used to throw darts at also: he must always be the unique one, and he would always be the slowest to make up his mind and had no quirms about making the waiter wait for him. There would be Yj's story No.2 (food related) coming up very soon.

Day 9: 20/04/06 Triberg/Part 2: YJ's Story No. 1

Yj realised he lost his keys after this shot...


Squirrels: they were sooo cute!

Black Forest Cake: This was after all those trekking up/down hills in search for our hero's keys


Hmm... self-explanatory

As we were about to leave the hilltop, Yj suddenly looked very panicky. He lost a bunch of keys! The keys contained the keys to his backpack (meaning all his stuff) and critically, the keys to Hwee See's place!! He claimed that he kept it in the same pocket as he kept his camera, with nothing securing it to himself. That claim increased the chance of him actually dropping it and hence, not taking any chance, we decided to comb the whole area for it.

We combed the whole hilltop in vain. As the lost of the keys to Hwee See's place could devastate the credibility of all 3 of us (not just Yj of course), we did not dare to give up. We decided to retrace the whole path we walked, which meant going back to the cukcoo clock house, the pond and the playground, the panaroma walk and the bench, the waterfall, detouring back to the top of the waterfall, and back to town. Basically, that was everything from 9am to 2:30pm!!

We had no choice but walk. To be frank I was feeling quite agitated at that time; who on earth who has common sense would place such an important thing so carelessly in a pocket which one accesses so often?! Furthermore there was a money pouch secured to his waist which he could use! I knew from 2 years of experience from army that the best thing to do now was to keep quiet and solve the problem. That was what I tried to do.

As expected we could not find it along the way; it seemed that the detour up to the top of the waterfall was inevitable. So we went, with Yj the frightened in front, and Tk and me behind. At that moment of time both of us were tired, and we were out of water!! It was not possible to sustain on just 500ml when you kept walking from 9 to 4. On our way up we kept talking about something, which I forgot what; and we hoped that we could find water on top.

Lcukily along the way we still saw interesting things: families with kids feeding squirrels peanuts. The squirrels were sooooo cute!! That was especially the case when they started chewing on the peanuts with both arms holding the peanut to its mouth with their eyes wide open. They were unlike any squirrel I had seen.

Anyway, we got to the top, as usual no key was found. There was no source of water so we had no choice but to persevere (for who and what?!). On our way down we kept disturbing Yj, like preparing SMSes to threaten to send back to Singapore so that his mum would know (my mum knows his), making him treat black forest cake then cheese fondue, etc.. He was rather defensive, as he always was. I wondered who lost the keys. Maybe I should have kept it.

We aborted our operation and, hoping that we would be able to find it inside the hotel room. Anyway, as we decided not to care anymore, we went to eat black forest cake (not treated by anyone of course), which was not very good (our taste for cakes now was kind of difficult to please nowadays...). I bought a mushroom smokehouse from the souvenir shop after that.

When we returned to the hotel room, Yj could not believe his luck: THE KEY WAS ON THE FLOOR, ON HIS PADLOCK, IN FRONT OF THE DOOR. We felt relieved, of course, as our credibility was not at stake anymore and all explanations were saved. However, that still couldn't resolve the fact that because of his carelessness, we brisk-walked 1 whole morning's worth of strolling without enough water! All right, I can forgive, but definitely cannot forget. How memorable this thing was. It became a point of reference after that.

We had dinner at a kebab restaurant; cheap food was what we prefer. The black forest cake previously was really expensive. Anyway, other than this incident, our stay in Triberg was an enjoyable one; we would be off to Switzerland the next morning.

Day 9: 20/04/06 Triberg

Nice?


Moderate (Unglamarous) heroism


Extreme heroism


Hero taking a break

This was an extremely interesting day in retrospect; it was the day our first major legendary story took place. However, when that legendary story was still in present-continuous tense, Tk and me were both cursing and swearing...

It was a sunny day, perfect for hiking; from the hotel, we had received information about the waterfall and the cukcoo clock house, and we had received a card for free admissions to the waterfall area. So we set off at 9+ towards the waterfall which was not far from town.

The waterfall was not massive but very long; it came down in cascades, and at every stage it looked different. Tk and Yj were very excited; Tk had seemed to forget about his traumatic experience at Neuschwanstein and kept wanting me to help him take pictures of him climbing out to the rocks in the waterfall and SQUATTING on a tree stump above the water. That photo of him looked really stupid. Yj, as usual, was the hero; he climbed all the way out to a rock face far away from the path above the water. I tried to stop their (to me) crazy acts but at that time adrenaline lost to reasoning; even my black forest cake lure was useless. Just to add: I never climbed to take a picture even once during the trip, but they did it numerous times. By the way it was just nice: I would be the cameraman :)

We took a detour by the road (with a bit of bashing through the forest) to the top of the waterfall as the path leading up directly was closed due to ice. At the top Yj, at that time still not exactly healthy, sat at a bench to rest and look after out things when I went out alone to hunt for a nice spot. Beyond the waterfall the river was much calmer; it meandered past a few houses surrounded by a hill and pastures. Although the grass was not green yet (still yellow) the place was wonderful. I went on to the top of the hill and found a construction yard, a disappointment indeed; and the view from there was not exactly magnificant. The only surprise I got there was the discovery of an undisturbed slope covered with snow; it was perfect for skiing but not walking.

Tk and Yj left for the hill after I came back, and we went down and headed towards the next town where the huge cukcoo clock was. We stopped for lunch on a bench on another panaroma walk with excellent scenery; an enjoyable lunch indeed as this time it was not cold anymore!

We passed by a small pond and a small playgraound where Tk and Yj got excited again; they slid down the slide with a photo taken for Tk. I don't seem to respond as much to all these external stimuli (e.g. playground/rock faces/waterfall etc.); does that mean that I am old already?!

We had to pay to go into the courtyard to see the front of the whole cukcoo clock house (no joke, it was the size of a farmhouse whereby the front of it was a souvenir shop). We didn't pay, so we only saw it from outside. It was good enough. We were there at 1:30pm, so we only saw it cukcoo once. Well, not exactly something you need to see again.

We walked further on following the blue diamonds; we intended to turn back at 2:30. The blue diamonds actually indicated routes that linked to the main hiking trail through the Black Forest, which was hundred-over kms long. We tried climbing up some side paths to get a good view, and on one we found a grass-slope which led to a vast open hilltop with the best scenery we had ever seen till then. From there we could see Triberg and its neighbouring villages, rolling hills covered by conifers, and a wind turbine (sustainable energy is common in Europe; wind turbines and solar panels are common sights) striding on the hill opposite ours. It was a really comfortable place with warm sunshine, cool breeze, vast fields, minimal noise and excellent view. We took quite some pictures; but sadly the place does not look as impressive on photo. You must be there before you can experience it. Of course, though, we found an even better spot somewhere else; I would log it down when I reached there.

**Log continues in next post: Day 9: 20/04/06 Triberg/Part 2: Yj's Story no. 1

Day 8: 19/04/06 Triberg

Along the Black Forest Railway


Triberg


Easter eggs on trees!


What the hell?!

We marched again this morning to get back to the train station so that we can move on to our next destination. According to Tk's plans, we were supposed to take a train to Freiburg, a city in the middle of the Black Forest, which has been very much influenced by the French. However, after scrutinizing the travel guide, Tk realised that there was a hotel in Triberg which cost us only 20euros per night with breakfast included. Since his original 21-bed dorm cost almost the same, we decided to skip Freiburg and go straight to Triberg, which is a town embedded in the Black Forest famous for its cukcoo clocks.

We had some problems checking out in the morning. The pub was not open when we wanted to leave, so we were forced to wait for the guy to come back. Well, my 20euros was with him!

We were cheated by the travel guide again: it told Tk that there was a direct train from Freiburg to Triberg. Hence, we went all the way to Freiburg, only to realise that there wasn't any! We went to the information counter to ask for directions. In the end, we got to back-track to Offenburg where we could change to the Black Forest Railway to reach Triberg. Luckily we were using Railpasses.

The Black Forest Railway (Offenburg - Konstanz) was listed in the Railpass Guide as one of the most scenic routes in Europe. In the Black Forest the dominating landscape was low hills and valleys covered with conifers. Every now and then there would be pastures and farms filling the landscape. The conifers were predominantly dark green, hence the term Schwarzwald (Black Woods) was given to the area.

Both Tk and Yj fell asleep on the train; when I told them there was nice scenery along the way they were both blaming me for not waking them up. Well, who asked you to fall asleep in the first place... At least I woke you up in time to get off at the right stop :)

There was no map of Triberg provided by the guide, so we took a photo of the map at the train station and referred to that. The description of the way to the hotel was very scary according to the travel guide, especially after our Heidelberg experience; however, propably becaused we had been prepared by the Ultimate March, the walk to the hotel was not as tiring as expected.

The hotel was run by a family; the lady who served us was friendly and really helpful. The rooms were really neat, comfortable and spacious; the only bad thing about that was the little ledge above the beds which Tk knocked onto numerous times. Pillows were another complaint; they never seemed high enough no matter how we folded it. However that was a problem throughout Europe. I don't remember the name of the hotel, but if you were to go to Triberg, ask us for directions. Rate in 2006: 68euros/night for a triple, breakfast included.

There was nothing much to see in the town itself; as it was already close to the evening we decided to just walk around the town and see what was interesting. We went into this shop filled with all kinds of woodcraft and cukcoo clocks owned by an elderly couple where Tk saw his perfect cukcoo clock; by the way that was an important item on his shopping list. He decided to buy it the next day. In another shop he saw a soft toy which said 'All You Need Is Love' on a heart held by 2 dragons; and he was considering to buy it for one of his DOTA friends to make up for the 'An Idiot Who Came To Heidelberg And All He Bought Was This Shirt' shirt he missed. I wouldn't know Tk was such a shopping king until I went on this trip with him.

We walked to another side of town and went along a small stretch of a panorama walk before turning back. We were able to see the whole town of Triberg from the path and even the hills far away on the other side. It was nice but we didn't went on for long, as we needed food; we went back to the hotel for dinner after hunting all over the town for cheap and decent food (which we failed). During dinner we met this guy from Shanghai who was working in Triberg temporarily; he had been there since Feburary and was learning some technology in order to help a German company set up operations in China. We talked over dinner and, being a long-time customer which the family had bonded emotionally with, he was given free dinner (I didn't see him pay for his pasta...). As we conversed using English most of the time among ourselves, the conversation with this PRC-Chinese guy exposed Yj's weakness in expression in Chinese. That would be another interesting topic I would elaborate later as this trip continued.

Explanation of the Idea 'Grand-junior'

Grand-junior: (n.) a termed coined to refer to any anonymous person Yj might be secretly/openly admiring. Use with caution: Yj might react negatively to the usage of the term, i.e. indulge in self-denial and refusal to accept that it is a general term but a specific one.

Grand-junior is used when Yj needs to go on MSN to chat especially before 7pm Central European Time (or before 2am Singapore time) or when he needs to buy interesting presents (e.g. angel*) for an anonymous person (e.g. cousin who is 10 years old**).

History: It was suggested by him that a specific (note Grand-junior is general) Grand-junior, whom he does not know the name, goes online at this time. It was also suggested by him that this specific Grand-junior was 2 years younger than him in his CCA. It was also a fact that this specific Grand-junior required encouragement from Yj for her Driving Test via SMS when he was in Heidelberg, Germany.

*/**: Refer to post/posts around Vienna/Budapest (2 weeks later)

Day 7: 18/04/06 Heidelberg

View from Schloss Heidelberg


An alchemist's apparatus


Student Prison: Looks more like a pub to me?!

We didn't have a very good day as it was cold! We went to the castle Schloss Heidelberg in the morning; it was a fortress built in the 14th century and was subsequently destroyed during a war with the French; the fortress we see today consist of a mosaic of 14th century original and partially blown up towers with more recent add-ons.

It was quiet on the streets; however, once we got up the fortress, tonnes of aunties and uncles from Japan, Korea, China (absolutely no Singapore) and other parts of the western world came into view. We were quite surprised (after a few cities we got used to it) and later Tk read that the sight of the fortress from below was comparable to the Parthenon in Athens. So we see.

We bought a combined ticket which granted us access to the cellar with a very huge (211,726L)wine barrel the princes used to store wine (there could even be a platform on top of it). There were a few significant facades facing the courtyard, it wasn't exceptionally interesting. More interesting was the pharmacy museum housed at the basement of one of the buildings. It described to quite some detail about the development of medicine in the west and on display was quite a lot of interesting artefacts. The distillators and boilers the alchemists used to use looked cool. And to pharmacy students: like the doctors, you have an oath to follow too. (Germany: oath of Nuremberg, c. 1350)

We had our sandwich (it was small and not enough...) and biscuits for lunch in a garden facing the city; it was when the coldness was at its ultimate strength boosted by the wind. It started our trend of finding a spot in every city/town which had a very good view to stop for lunch.

In the afternoon we went back to the hostel for a good nap (first and last... precious...). We were tired for no apparent reason...

We visited the university after we woke up; the small museum has rich content but it was ALL in German; we have to guess what those 2 interesting experimental set-ups were. We visited the old hall where they hold their ceremonies. The most interesting feature of the university was the students' prison; in the past, the university had jurisdiction over the university students and the students were not punished by civil law. Instead, the university imprison their students in this small little house, where little restriction was actually in place. There were intereting grafitti all over the walls (e.g. an octopus, all kinds of crap stories, naming their cell Palais Royal etc.); you can imagine it could be few times more wild than our army camp bunks.

Yj needed to use a computer to talk to his grand-junior so we went to find an Internet Cafe before dinner He was really glad with that and kept MSNing (to his grand-junior I suppose). Tk and me took advantage of the rather cheap facilities and that's where we communicated with Singapore first time after Munich. And since then, grand-junior and Internet Cafe became Yj's trademark.

P/S.: If anyone is interested in Medical History, I recommend this book The Mysteries Within by Sherwin B. Nuland. It tells a lot of interesting stories and illustrated the ancient ideas towards medicine/pharmacy/understanding of human body very well. As usual, if anyone wants to borrow from me, I have the Traditional Chinese version :)

Day 6: 17/04/06 Heidelberg

A cherry tree shedding its petals: extremely impressive!


Schloss Heidelberg at night

View along the river

We bid goodbye to Munich in the morning and we officially began our journey. Our first stop was Heidelberg, a city in Western Germany.

We were told by Hwee See that spring had already reached Heidelberg, and Tk, the flower hunter, was especially eager. We woke up rather late and took a late morning train. We bought our lunch at the same train-station sandwich stall we bought breakfast on our Fussen day. (Btw thanks Tk for the correction :) )

The train ride was rather uneventful. We passed by this beautiful hill city Stuttgart, of which Tk said the residents built the city on the hills by cutting into it, making terraces. We crossed the Danube at Ulm (and in fact our trip is north of the Danube only for 4 days), and at this time we were still extremely fascinated by rolling hills of green pastures and kept taking pictures. And the trees and cable posts were really a big nuisance.

When we reached Heidelberg, Tk took us upon the ULTIMATE route march. Our hostel was in the old city, and the train station was in the new city. Tk took out the map from his guide, and it seemed close enough on the map. After 15 minuets we found that the map was deceiving, as we were only about halfway to the juncture between the old city and the new city! The best thing was, Tk told us that the hostel was at 223 Hauptstrasse. Hauptstrasse was extremely long (now we knew that the distances on the map was truncated), and the map did not state what number the street started from. We hoped earnestly that it started from 200+ but, to our dismay, it started at No.1! In the end, when we reached the hostel, we were extremely shacked out; we walked for close to an hour with all our stuff on us!

The hostel was the kind that was attached to a pub; the reception (it could hardly be called reception; we nearly thought we had to walk again) at No.223 was the pub, and the rooms were at No.221. It was at EUR 20/night (almost the most expensive; without sheets and no bathroom in the room some more), nothing included; but the good thing was we were given a 6 bed dorm all to ourselves as there was no one else around (I wonder who would carry his stuff and walk for so long). We could hang things all over the place.

Heidelberg was a beautiful city; the old city was situated in the valley of Nektar, where the castle and the old university was situated. Lots of philosophers and literature masters had visited or stayed in Heidelberg before. Therefore in Heidelberg there is this 'Philosopher's Walk' in which the guidebooks said that famous people like Goethe, etc. used to stroll along and get themselves inspired. The path was on the hillside by the river and getting up there was another vigorous cardiovascular exercise. The 70cents Gelato (better than the Munich one I feel) we had before the climb did not help at all.

On the hillside there was quite some trees with flowers, making the whole hillside rather colourful. However, as the sun was weak, the brilliance was not there. At least the trees were green here.. We strolled along the path and enjoyed the scenery. We were able to see the whole of Heidelberg from the path; we even spotted a nuclear power plant far away on the new city's side.

We hunted for a good and cheap restaurant half the evening. We followed the guidebook and visited the recommendations one by one, and finally at a courtyard with one sole cherry blossom tree which kept shedding petals (it was an extremely spectacular sight! Imagine there was one whole row of cherry blossoms shedding at the same time... wow...) we found a restaurant not listed. The food was not bad, as we had rice (Tk enjoyed his spicy rice dish very much; the restaurant became the point of reference). I had Irish coffee too (which Yj didn't because he was traumatised by his very expensive plain water he ordered, and Tk chose his favourite almond coffee); it was a strange mix. Probably one might find it less strange when drunk with his lover, but, be rest assured the whiskey inside was not romantic at all.

We sat at the restaurant (by the way it was called Havana) till late; we had a long talk about religion and the meaning of religion to us. During the discussion Yj experienced his first combined attack from us by insisting on a point (it was a secular point; Tk and mine's was more pro-religion) that both of us could not agree using his confusing and incomprehensible arguments. Furthermore, he could continue to insist on putting his point forward with the SAME statement after we had rebutted it, making us feel that he had not understood or heard our arguments at all. Tk was almost going to give up on him. These situations happened numerous times during out trip and I would describe those more interesting ones (e.g. grandjunior/angel etc.)