Day 20: 01/05/2006 Budapest

On the left is the Royal Palace, straight ahead the Stone Chain Bridge, behind the bridge is the Parliament House.

Labour Day rally!

Vaci Utca: Tk and Yj were shopping and here I was taking picures :)

The Royal Palace, the Danube, and Stone Chain Bridge at night: nice?

Budapest was overcast and it was raining almost the whole day! The clouds were following us since we were at Innsbruck and it had rained every single day. Of course it had become Yj's fault as well :) and he wasn't too happy for that...

Today is the first day of our self-conducted Budapest city tour. First we visited Gellért Hill, a hill just next to Castle Hill with a brilliant look-out point of the city. Basically we took the Metro (MRT) to the nearest station, crossed the Danube on Elizerbeth Bridge, and walked up the hill while it started to drizzle. We tried to take a short-cut off-road while walking up, and Tk got so freaked out by the steepness of the slope that he didn't even dared to stand straight :)

At the top of the hill there was also a military museum as well as a statue of liberty (obviously it has nothing to do with NY) other than the look-out point. The statue is a very prominent landmark of Budapest; at night it was even illuminated. Anyway, the view to the city was bad, all thanks to the rain, but that didn't deter tourists like us as well as other Aunties and Uncles coming up on coach buses.

As we were walking down, we realised that the waterfall in front of the Gellért statue at the foot of the hill (Gellért was a priest who introduced Christianity to the Magyas during the 11th century and was killed by the pagans where his statue was) was a natural spring. We were very amazed as we didn't see the waterfall being turned on on our way up; nowadays humans seemed to be able to control water flowing from a natural spring even.

After that we walked along the Danube to Castle Hill. To one side of Castle Hill is the Royal Palace, which background information I have completely forgotten, despite our visit to the Budapest Historical Museum which was located inside the Royal Palace. Other than the museum, the Royal Palace houses the National Art Gallery as well.

We had some sandwich in the cafeteria outside the Art Gallery, and subsequently visited the historical museum. Content-wise the museum was not bad, but presentation was mostly in Hungarian, which was completely not decipherable, though they do have English explanations for important exhibits.

Well Castle Hill did not consist of only the Royal Palace; there were a lot of other sights as well, for example, the Vienna Gate, the Fisherman's Biston, etc. We walked one round around the Castle Hill, which was not particularly interesting, though it gave us more opportunities to take more photos of the place. And one interesting thing: as it was International Labour Day, the ruling party (or so I guess?) was having a Labour Day rally on Castle Hill, so the whole place was super crowded with people waving flags, cheering to the speaker and buying food from the vendors. We didn't join in but it sure was a kind of substitution for the General Election which we missed (not as if we can vote)...

We crossed back to Pest (by the way, Budapest consisted of 3 parts: Buda (left bank), Obuda (upper left bank) and Pest (right bank, where the city centre is)) via the famous Stone Chain Bridge, and proceeded to Vaci Utca / Vorosmarty Ter for shopping. As usual I was bored by this, though Yj saw a crystal angel with a little bell inside. This angel was expensive, but it inspired him to do something later, which I would elaborate :)

At night we went to this restaurant my guide book recommended. I ate some nice salad with chicken and ham and egg and Rose wine. It was not really expensive but not cheap too...

And yup my guidebook was in Chinese! At every single sight I would pass my guidebook around for Tk and Yj to read so that they could get some background inforamtion of the place. Tk was alright with it but Yj just simply could not appreciate it. Hmm we seriously need to do something about Chinese education, especially to students who are not SAP (Yj is not from DHS)...

Anyway after that it was interesting. From the map, we figured that we could walk back to the hostel quite easily as it was just one straight road. So we decided to walk, saving some money while enjoying the city. Yj was with us for a while, up till the point where we found a Chinese fast food stall. After that, he mentioned to us that he required urgent usage of the Internet (he claimed that he needed to settle his housing stuff, but we couldn't rule out the Grand-junior factor) so he went ahead. Tk and me were at strolling pace but he was like rushing like a mad cow ahead. We decided to try to take pictures/video of him rushing. So I ran forward like paparazzi, with my camera on my hand, and caught him rushing across the road without due care where there was no traffic light but an underpass! Too bad my photo was blurred and I deleted it.

Tk and me continued strolling along, however after a long while we still had not reached the hostel. I looked up and to my horror, the train station disappeared! I opened my map and realised that, apparently, we made a wrong exit at one of the confusing underpasses and was now on a side street leading back to the river. Well, that wasn't too bad after all, as we decided on the spot to go back to the river to look at Budapest's night scenery and take some photos (it has stopped raining by the way). So we did, went all the way back to the river, took some photos (it was difficult! We were like trying all kinds of ways to stabilise our cameras with only partial success), and took the Metro back. By the time we were back it was already around 10pm, and Yj didn't seem to be worried. Well, thanks for his complete trust in our ability to survive :)

Day 19: 30/04/2006 Vienna/Budapest

Belvedere and me :)

Tk, the handsome & romantic perfect guy

Yj very excited...

The red train on the left is from Austria, and the one on the right is Hungarian... See the difference?

This was the Sunday which I had been waiting for: Vienna Boy's Choir! All those people around me e.g. Jeff, Tk, Yj, etc had been teasing me when I suggested attending their concert but I went ahead planning for it nevertheless.

The excellent thing about the concert was: they give out free standing spaces! For backpackers like us it was just great. It was supposed to be part of a Sunday service held in the Royal Cathedral inside the Hofburg, however, the main attraction here was definitely not the priests but the Choir. They charge 30 Euros for those sitting spaces inside the Cathedral: which church on Earth would ever charge for their services?!

We set off really early in order to get a ticket. When we were there, there was already a long queue in front of the door in the Swiss Courtyard. We tried to find out whether that was the correct queue while attempting to eat our breakfast. We got in after quite some a lot of queueing, finally...

We were squeezed in a small space in the center together with other poor people who cannot afford 30 Euros. There were plenty of tourists from Asia; we were standing together with this group of young Koreans who were backpackers too I think. There was also this French couple whose view was blocked by me and asked me to give way, which I *graciously* agreed...

The service was completely in German and I did not understand a single bit. Nevertheless, it was not important as the choir's music could be understood in whatever language it might be in. Throughout the whole thing the choir was out of my view, hiding somewhere upstairs on the balcony. The singing was excellent; they have a reason to be famous. Though, it got really a bit irritating when some tourists (esp the seated ones) decided to leave halfway through the service.

We stood there until the whole thing was over; from around 8am to 11am without any support. It was kind of worse than any parade I have attended. I feel that it is worth it though.

Our train to Budapest would only leave in the afternoon so there is still plenty of time to spare. So after getting some Kebab lunch and returning to the hostel for Yj to use the Internet (for me to sleep and Tk to fiddle with the guitar hanging on the wall while waiting for our hero), we decided to venture to Belvedere, an imperial palace currently used as art galleries. On our way to Belvedere we passed by this huge memorial with greek pillars at the back and a statue with inscriptions in RUSSIAN in front. Apparently it is a memorial for the liberation of Vienna from the Nazis by the Red Army after WWII.

It was drizzling heavily (you will know what I mean when you really experience that kind of weather) by the time we got to Belvedere. The gardens were mostly under renovation and under this kind of circumstances you can't really blame us for not being impressed by its architectural design. However, we can imagine that it could really be quite beautiful when the sun is shining and when the gardens are freed of all barriers...

Alright it was time for us to move on to Budapest, so we embarked again on a 3-hour train journey across to Hungary.

On the way there was this particular place which had a SPECTACULAR amount of wind turbines: the fields were full of wind turbines in all directions and that stretch of land was at least 2 km long. Most were actually turning. I took a lot of video clips of them :) And one more thing: the reapseed flowers are blossoming in the fields! Along the way there were plenty of those fields filled with yellow flowers and it was really spectacular too.

By the time we reached Budapest it was already evening. The first impression the city gave me was that it was old and not well maintained: that could be easily seen from the train station's signboards, the building itself, and the enormous amount of people who approach you telling you that they have cheap apartments for rent. We had already booked our hostel way in advance and it was really near the train station so we just ignored them (it was common sense anyway).

Our hostel was in a residential building. After we checked in, we were given 2 access codes to gain access to the main gate and the hostel's gate. We stayed in this mixed dorm which was huge; there were already a few ladies which couldn't speak English staying inside (so I really don't know where they were from). The floor was rather dirty though, but the bathroom is fine, and most importantly there was free Internet access! And of course, it was dirt cheap: 9 Euros per night if I remembered correctly.

Hungary does not use the Euro; it was still using its national currency Forint, which 1 Euro = ~280 Ft. Yj seemed quite excited when he got hold of a 10000Ft note and requested a photo.

We had MacDonald's for dinner. MacDonald's in Hungary was cheap: in the range of 490 - 510 Ft, which was <1/2 Switzerland's price?! We ate MacDonald's 2 or 3 times during our short stay in Hungary. And after dinner, we bought quite a lot of bottled water and drinks from a minimart nearby; although they say that the tap water in Hungary could be drunk directly we just could not trust it. They might still be using the Comminists' water pipes; who knows.

Day 18: 29/04/06 Wachau

Along the valley...

Inside Stift Melk's main cathedral. According to GCS, this style is called High Baroque...

Outside Cafe Central

Inside Cafe Central: the glasses are for liqour coffee, and my cappuccino is in the small cup. Sacher's Torte is the chocolate cake in the centre.

We woke up rather early today in order to catch a train bound for Krems, the starting point of our 3 hour cruise up the Danube to Melk. Like the previous days, it was raining in the morning; we got some bread from a bakery near our hostel and brought them along as we travelled to Spittelau to catch our train.

It was a bad day to for the cruise: it was raining, and the most letally, it was cold! We could not bear waiting for the train at the platform because it was too cold; we hid in the U-Bahn station under cover while we had our breakfast.

Krems was not a big place; we walked from the train station end to the ferry terminal end in less than half an hour. We did not get to tour the town; we went directly to the ferry terminal, bought our tickets and waited there.

When we were at the ferry terminal the rain subsided a little; though the clouds continued to hang low, threatening to continue to produce more rain. By the way, most importantly, this was the first instance where we saw River Danube real, and realised that 'The Blue Danube' was probably the composer's illusion. The river was yellow; it was so full of sediments that I could not imagine it to be blue at any instant even if the sky was perfectly clear. The water was flowing really fast too.

The Wachau area was a UNESCO world heritage site and was supposed to be the most scenic stretch of River Danube. Indeed, from Krems we were able to see that the Danube flowed into a hilly area which was lined with vineyards and forest. The Wachau was one of the wine producing regions of Austria, however, I did not actually get to try it; neither were we able to see apricot blossoms which the brochures boasted and Tk eager to look out for.

The boat was basically a huge restaurant: it has no proper seat, everybody sat round restaurant tables which made you feel obliged to order something. We ordered some hot drinks each and french fries (apparently we were cold...). And of course, the most important thing was to admire the scenery and take photographs! We went to the upper deck and braved the wind and rain to take snapshots of the scenery along the way. Yj only went up once; our hero was feeling extremely cold due to some unknown reasons and preferred to stay indoors.

Other than vineyards and hills there were also several castles perched on top of hills and by the riverside. Due to the weather we were not able to see them clearly, anyway, I have forgotten all of their names and location. Nevertheless, I do remember that one of them was the place where Charles the Lionheart was held captive during the Crusades, and one of them was built by a family of outlaws as fortification.

The whole journey took 3 hours. Tk and me took turns to go upstairs to take pictures. There was not much surprise along the way, and it got pretty boring towards the end.

We reached Melk in the early afternoon. There was one very important sight in this insignificant town: Stift Melk, or the Melk Abbey. It was huge: basically ot occupied the whole hilltop which it was situated, and for several centuries it has been an Abbey which held high standards of discipline and spiritual achievement.

The tour of the abbey was not as fascinating as I would have thought. There were several halls which briefly introduced the abbey's history, their believes and what they were sorting after (a guide book actually termed that 'propaganda'... you get an idea what the exhibits were generally about). It was followed by the library and the church. The church was by far the best Baroque church I saw during the tour, closely rivalled by Assamkirche of Munich. The library was not exactly very big; I could imagine my university library to be able to beat it, let alone the one in the British Museum.

We returned to Vienna rather early and we went back to our hostel to use the Internet. That was when another Yj's story emerged:

Yj was talking to this Korean friend of his who will also be going to the same school as he did. To his horror, Yj found out from this friend that he was supposed to return his university housing forms by 1st May, which was 3 days later. Yj did not realise that there was a deadline and happily went for his vacation without settling the problem first. Well, instead of trying to rectify the problem, he started blaming the university for 'screwing up', causing him to miss the deadline. Apparently it is not his fault he suppose!

Of course he freaked out: he needed to settle his housing problem within 3 days and he had none of his documents with him in Vienna. Anyway, he could not do anything on the Internet so we decided to find a dinner place first. Since GCS had lived in Vienna for quite some time and he happened to be online, we asked him for recommendations and he told us to go to Siebenstern Brauhaus to try their ribs. So we asked for directions and went.

On our way to the restaurant, Yj was really jitterish. He kept complaining about how screwed up his school was. His complaining became so excessive that I could not take it anymore: to me, he should not be complaining in the first place because it is not possible that the school did not sent out clear instructions about housing ONLY TO HIM; if it is really the school's fault all international students should be affected. Apparently, his Korean friend knows but he doesn't! So whose fault was that? And he should be trying his best to save the situation by contacting the school, explaining circumstances and trying to get the school to accept his forms even if he is sending them in late! Complaining to us about the school would not help at all, wouldn't it?!!

I still remember vividly that I lectured him throughout our U-Bahn journey from Westbahnhof to Volkstheater, across the platform and all the way to the restaurant, telling him what should be the right attitude and the right way of solving his problem. From my viewpoint, of course.

Hmm Siebenstern was nice. It is a copy of the Bavarian beer hall and they added even more varieties of beer to it. They offer Honey Ale (something Tk has been looking for), Beer with a smoky taste (trust me it is really strange), and even Chilli beer (?!!); and of course the most famous and sought after food was their BBQ ribs. It was really good; not too salty, not dripping with sauce, and neither is it too dry. I liked it a lot. Tk didn't really seem to like it for some strange reason which I didn't comprehend :P

After dinner we decided to find a cafe to get a taste of Viennese coffee. We went to one of the most famous, Cafe Central (which is the one who fought with Sacher Hotel about the originality of the chocolate cake Sacher's Torte), at around 9pm when they are about to close. I ordered Cappuccino, Yj ordered Irish Coffee and I can't remember what Tk ordered. And we bought some cakes to share among ourselves.

The coffee there was the perfect blend for me but apparently it was not so for Tk; he still preferred (strongly) the kind he encountered in Rome the previous winter. And the cakes were alright but not exactly fantastic... Sacher's Torte's fame was actually a bit unfounded...

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.