Trip to Vienna and Bratislava

In the extended weekend between Jan 31st and Feb 3rd I went to Vienna, to see the famous architecture of the Austrian capital.

I arrived in Vienna Thursday evening, checking into a rather basic hotel outside the ring.

Friday morning, I started off by going to see the Hundertwasser Haus, a colorful, artsy apartment block built as a protest against boring concrete tower blocks.I continued on to the center of Vienna, walking along the Kärtner strasse and seeing the Stephansdom and the opera building on the way. I watched the Hofburg palace complex from the outside, and made a quick stop at the "Schmetterlinghaus" to photograph some butterflies.They had some really big, tropical butterflies in there, but in order to keep the environment similar to the butterflies' natural habitat,they kept it fairly hot and humid in there (which shows up on some of my pictures).

I walked around in the center for a couple of hours, getting to see the major sights and a lot of the pretty buildings in Vienna. I spent a couple of hours walking around in the Museum of Natural History, which was fun, as it has probably been fifteen years or so since the last time I was in one. Especially fun to see a BIG chunk of salt crystals from Wieliczka, the mine I visited in September last year.

I finished off the day by doing some shopping, buying stuff like the Austrian rum - "STROH" and the famous Sacher-torte. The Stroh is for my collection of vile booze that will break anyone that gets too cocky during a session of heavy drinking. I seem to remember that the taste is quite overpowering.

In the evening, I had the feeling I had seen most of what I wanted to see in Vienna, so on a whim I decided to go to Bratislava the next day. This is not that difficult from Vienna, since it is only an hour away by train. The Slovak Republic is in Schengen as well, so I didn't have to worry about visas to go there either. The only problems were that they didn't use the Euro, so I would need to get some Slovak korunas, and I didn't have a map or a guide book. I found a big book store and bought a travel guide which included a really crappy map. The only problem was that it was in German. My German isn't that great, as I have not spoken much German since I had it in school when I was 17. In that respect, this was good exercise, and I spent an hour or so trying to piece together what the main attractions of Bratislava were.

Early in the morning on Saturday, I got on the train to Bratislava. The ATM at the station in Bratislava accepted my Dutch bank card, so there was no problem getting korunas. At the station in Bratislava I bought a "Kolbasa" for breakfast - a red sausage dripping red grease - it tasted different from what I expected, with a very smoky aftertaste. Since I had no proper map, I decided to follow road signs to "historic center". I walked in a very long half-circle until I managed to get to the city center. It was fairly cold and raining a lot at this time, and I struggled to find a shop where they sold umbrellas. It was hard to find anyone that spoke any English or German, but I managed to buy an umbrella, and I managed to get served in a cafe.

Finally, I found the historic center and the Castle. The castle itself was not that spectacular, although you have a very good view from the castle of most of the city.

I walked back to the train station and got on the train back to Vienna. There were trains going back every hour, so getting to and from Bratislava was fairly easy. I felt tired on the train back, having walked for almost seven hours straight. I was pretty pleased with myself going back to Vienna, having been adventurous enough to go over the border without speaking any of the local language. I still have a bunch of Slovak Korunas, though. Having to exchange currency sucks...

Back in Vienna, I looked at the Belvedere palace, and walked over to see the Karlskirche. The Karlskirche looked really spectacular from the outside, the inside wasn't all that interesting. (Perhaps I have seen too many churches in the last year to be impressed...). I also walked over to see the food marked, the Naschmarkt.

Sunday I took the metro to the outskirts of Vienna to visit the Schönbrunn palace. I found it to be not that impressive. The most interesting rooms were in the east wing, where you needed an extra ticket to enter. Being an imperial palace, I thought it sucked. The Dolmabahce palace in Istanbul for instance is way more impressive. Supposedly the palace gardens are nice, but this was February, so there wasn't much to see.

I finished my stay by visiting the Museumsquartier and having a sachertorte and some coffee at a cafe.

Overall, I found Vienna to be fairly boring. There were lots of nice buildings and supposedly lots of pretty parks. Only...the parks are not that pretty in February.

Pictures are here (Vienna) and here (Bratislava).

Berlin

Long weekend in Berlin from 16 Nov 07 to 19 Nov 07

I arrived late in the afternoon Friday, taking the airport shuttle from Tegel to my hotel at Alexanderplatz. The bus ride into town was very long and uncomfortable. I spent over an hour on the bus, and the bus was extremely crowded. I dumped my luggage at the hotel, and went out in search of some food before turning in. The weather was fairly cold, around 0 degrees Celsius, and it was windy. I walked along the "Unter den Linden" which was supposed to be one of the main touristy streets in Berlin according to my travel-guide. All I saw was lots of closed museums and old buildings. As I couldn't find a restaurant that was open, I decided to go back to Alexanderplatz and grab some junk food. I was quite cold at this point, so I decided to try to use the S-Bahn to get back. I spent almost 45 minutes waiting for a S-Bahn train that didn't show up. Turns out they were on strike. The annoying thing was that the loudspeakers in the station were still announcing the trains, so it took a while before I understood that further waiting would be fruitless. In retrospect I should probably have done some more research on which areas the restaurants were.

Saturday I had designated to be a shopping-day. I had decided to go visit the "Kaufhaus des Westens", which is biggest warehouse in Europe. I found it very nice, especially the delicacy section. I spent the rest of the day shopping on the KurfürstenDamm and at Potsdamer Platz. At Potsdamer Platz there was a snow slope advertising skiing areas in Austria, complete with Glühwein-stands.

Museum-wise I visited the Dali exhibition and Berlin museum (The story of Berlin). The Dali museum was very nice, much better than the one in Paris. The Berlin museum was also well worth the visit, lots of effort had been put into the exhibition.

I had designated Sunday to be my main touristy day for this trip. I started off by visiting the Pergamon museum. It contained archaeological artifacts from German expeditions to the Middle East. I was mostly impressed by the Ishtar gate and all of the Babylonian stuff (hadn't seen such things "in the stone" before..).

I walked over to the Brandenburger Tor - more or less the symbol of the reunited city. I continued past the memorials of people that had been shot trying to escape the DDR over to the Reichstag. There was a one hour line to get in, due to security inspections of everyone entering. Once I got in, I took the elevator up to the roof. On top of the roof there is a glass dome where you have a nice view of the city.

Next stop was the Checkpoint Charlie and the Mauermuseum next to it. There were some nice exhibits at the Mauermuseum, but the museum itself was really crowded.
Afterwards I walked over to the Jewish museum. The Jewish museum is located in a oddly shaped building, so much so that the building itself is the main exhibit. There's crooked angles everywhere, and the building is supposed to resemble a broken star of David.

On my way back to the hotel I had dinner at a Bavarian restaurant, where I finally tried the famous Schweinhaxe. I had heard from friends earlier how the waiters would try to kill you with meat. Turns out their explanations were not exaggerated - there was no way I was able to eat even half of it. They also served me proper Lövenbrau, which was very nice.

In the evening, in order to be touristy and get the full Berlin experience, I had the green beer - Berliner weisse mit schüss. Which was...interesting.

Monday morning, I started off fighting with my suitcase to make it accept all the stuff I had bought on my shopping spree on Saturday. Luckily, I managed to fit it all, but I was worried about whether the zippers would pop in transit.

This morning I went further east in Berlin, to see the longest preserved piece of the Berlin Wall -the East Side Gallery. Only a small part of it was preserved, and many of the pieces had been worn away. Also, scum had tagged over some of the pieces. Still, it was interesting to see what was left of the wall.

I took the U-bahn back to Mitte, and visited the "Topographie des Terrors"-exhibition, detailing the atrocities committed by the Gestapo and the execution commands during WW2.

Next I went to the Ku'Damm and visited the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gedäcthnis-Kirche - a monumental church damaged by bombing raids during WW2. Part of it is old and bomb-damaged, part of it rebuilt and very modern, with very special stained-glass windows and a strange altar.

I had a few hours to kill before going to the airport, so I decided to visit the famous Zoo and aquarium.

After a quick lunch I picked up my suitcase and went to the airport. It was a long bus ride to get there, but at least I had a seat this time. If I go back to Berlin, I will certainly be using a taxi rather than endure more hours of the TXL-shuttle.
Arriving at the airport, I had another surprise waiting: It was impossible to check in until 1.5 hours before the plane leaves. I was there two hours before, so I had to lug my suitcase around while waiting for them to open up the check-in. It was also hard to find places to sit, because of the layout of the airport. I managed to get a chair at a Starbucks. I sat there wondering how such a big city could be so amateurish in how they arrange their airports and airport links. Probably it has to do with the fact that they have three small airports rather than a big one, owing to the history of the place.

Overall:
Berlin was very good for shopping, there wasn't that many museums there. Signposting in general was bad, you had really look around to find direction signs in the U-bahn stations. I was also surprised by the sucky airport and communications to and from the airport.

Pictures are here

Paris

Since we had November 1st off from work (love those "Official Holidays"), I decided to go to Paris for the long weekend. I had never been to Paris before, so I was planning on doing all those touristy things.

I took the Thalys-train to the station called "Gare du Nord". The train ride itself was fairly unpleasant, very crowded and some kid puked a few seats away, so the whole carriage was smelling of puke and kids were screaming at the top of their lungs. That's what I get for traveling monkey-class, I guess, but since the train ride was already more expensive than flying, I wasn't too keen on forking out extra cash for an upgrade.

I was staying at a hotel called "Hotel Magenta" which was close to the Gare de l'Est railway station. This was not a very nice neighborhood. Every few hundred meters you would see hobos, and there were the occasional puddles of puke and urine along the sidewalk. The upside was that it was not very far from the metro station, and it wasn't too expensive.

I dumped my luggage at the hotel and took the metro to Notre Dame. I went inside the church and visited the treasury, where they had some nice artifacts. The afternoon I spent walking around in the Latin quarter.

In the evening walked around in Montmartre. I ended up walking past Moulin Rouge into the Pigalle neighborhood, which is not a nice place to walk alone as a guy. There were lots of people hassling me,and at one point an old woman grabbed my arm and tried to pull me into a club. Uncool.

Friday morning I decided to get the Eiffel Tower out of the way. I went over there by metro and found my place in line. An hour and a half later I was finally at the elevators. They closed off the top level because of overcrowding, so I could only get up to the second level. The whole site was very crowded, and you were walking in a line the whole time. It was a relief to get back down to the ground and away from the crowds.

Next, I walked over to The army museum and the dome church. The dome church is the burial place for some of France's war heroes, and at the center of the church you can find the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte. The army museum was very interesting, and well maintained. It had a very big collection of suits of armor, and some very interesting Great War-stuff.

I proceeded to walk through the touristy areas, the Champs-Elysees, Place de la Concorde, and the Rue Saint Honore. I made the mistake of having lunch at a cafe in this area. They had a very rude waiter who was very focused on clearing tables. He was almost tossing out people when they had finished their meals. I had never seen anything like this before. Eating in the most touristy areas is maybe not the best thing to do in Paris.

In the evening I went back to the Latin quarter and had dinner at a very bad Greek restaurant. I had bad food and bad wine, and spent forever waiting to pay my bill. Just another reminder to stay away from touristy areas, I guess...


Saturday I got up early to try to beat the crowds to the more popular places. I started out by going to the Sainte-Chapelle. There were no lines so early in the morning, so I could just walk straight into it. It was the most beautiful church I have ever been in.

Later I queued for an hour to get up to the roof of the Notre Dame. The lines are long because they don't let that many people up at the same time, which means that you actually get to see something once you get up there. I really liked the gargoyle viewing platform. The roof had a really great view of Paris, much better in my opinion than the view from the Eiffel Tower. There were also many interesting gargoyles up there. This was definitely my favorite spot in the city.

Next I took the metro to Montparnasse and had lunch at a very nice cafe. I received excellent service and they had very good food. I decided against going down into the catacombs that day as there were very long lines - several hundred meters.
Instead I took the metro to Arc du Triomphe. I walked up to the roof and watched the "Star" of roads beaming out from the arch. Of course there was a line to get up there, but it moved really fast, so I think I only waited for twenty minutes or so.


After the arch, I went by metro to Montmartre. I watched the crowds and walked around for a bit in the small streets. I visited the Dali museum, but it was not that nice. It sort of felt like those movie score cd's which say "music from and inspired by" with one or two tracks from the movie, and the rest just generic crap they threw in to fill up the album. Not worth the time or the entrance fee of 10 euro.

I took the metro back again to Arc the Triomphe and walked down the Champs-Elysees, doing some shopping on the way.

In the evening I walked around for a few hours in the Marais district and Les Halles. I ended up having dinner at this cafe with really pretty waitresses and really crappy food. Again I had a bad experience eating in the touristy areas...

I took the metro to Bastille, found a nice bar and had some nice drinks while watching the nightlife. Bastille looked like a lively area.

Sunday morning I took the metro to Catacombs, and managed to get there before a huge line had formed. The catacombs were pretty creepy - corridors full of skulls and femurs stacked to head-height forming walls and monuments.

After exiting the catacombs, I walked around Montparnasse to Pantheon. I went inside, and visited the crypt, where the famous French thinkers and statesmen are buried. I had lunch near the Jardin du Luxembourg.

Since I still had a few hours to kill, I went to the museum called "Metiers en Arts". It was an engineering museum, and would probably have been more interesting if I had been more geeky.

In the afternoon I took the Thalys back to The Hague. This time one of the toilets malfunctioned, smelling up the carriage. Good thing the train ride was only three and a half hours or so.

In general I liked Paris, and I will return, although I think I will go by plane the next time...
Pictures are here

Krakow

I went to Krakow with Lukasz in the weekend of the 21st of September to the 24th of September.

We flew with Sky-Europe from Amsterdam. The only remarkable thing from the flight was the amazing speed of the delivery of the English version of the in-flight messages. The words came at us like they were coming out of a fire hose, and it was utterly incomprehensible. It would probably have been better with a taped version of the messages.

We stayed at the Lemon Hostel in the center of Krakow. Very cheap, the room looked decent enough, although the walls were paper-thin. They also had some windows above the doors that would rattle like crazy every time someone was walking in the hallway outside. Across the hall from us were some really loud Greeks that would spend forever every morning getting up, chattering incessantly in very loud voices. This made it hard to get any sleep, as we would be partying every night until 3 or so, and the Greeks would start shouting around 8 in the morning.

We met up with one of Lukasz' friends, Paulina, and her boyfriend, Kuba. We walked through the main streets of Krakow, and then into a narrow alley, up some dark stairs, past some scary-looking dude with camouflage pants and a shaved head and suddenly we were inside this cool pub. We sat there talking and drinking for a couple of hours and met up with Sylwia, another one of Lukasz' friends.

We went to some other club(hard to remember those Polish club-names) and started dancing and doing vodka-shots. After a couple of hours Lukasz, Paulina and Kuba went to another club. A few shots later, the cherry vodka started to go to my head, so I found it best to leave for the hostel. Lukasz had given me the keys to the hostel and written down the address on notes stuffed in two different pockets. He had also sent me a SMS with the address. Obviously he was very worried about my navigational skills. What he does not know is that I have super-human navigational skills when I am properly drunk. It's kind of like a homing pigeon always knowing the way back. I walked back towards the hostel, and stopped to sample the local kebab. I always have less of a hangover if I snack on my way home, and this time I had the distinct feeling I might need a hangover-cure. Suddenly I received a SMS from Lukasz. I browsed through the SMS with my left hand, keeping a tight grip on the kebab with my right for balance when I heard someone screaming my name. Turns out, the club that Lukasz and the others had been in was right next to the kebab-shop, so we practically ran into each other on the way back. I wasn't the only one being drunk at this point, as the others tried to board a taxi to drive us the two blocks we had left to the hostel.

The next morning we had breakfast at a nice cafe called "Dynia" (If I remember correctly). The others tricked me into trying a Polish specialty for curing hangovers: a tall glass of beer mixed with Sprite. I'm not sure it helped all that much...

We started the day by walking around the city center up to the castle at Wavel. We went into the cathedral and down into the crypt to watch the graves of the famous Polish kings. We also went up into the tower to look at the Zygmunt bell, the biggest church bell in Poland, which is only sounded when significant events happen in Polish history.


We had a quick lunch at the market before going to Kazimierz - formerly the Jewish part of town, now mainly the entertainment-part of town. We had a stopover at a nice pub, downed some beers before going to an very nice Italian restaurant. From there we walked around until we found Sylwia's place. She was having a housewarming-party and naturally there were lots of vodka shots involved. After a few hours everyone went to a gay disco close to where Sylwia lived called Disco Plastic. We had the place almost to ourselves. It had a very nice party atmosphere with people dancing on the bar counter and lots of happy people drinking and dancing. We kept on dancing until four in the morning.


Sunday morning we woke up to the sound of the noisy greeks starting at 8 in the morning. We had breakfast at the same place, including the glass of beer and Sprite. It tasted better this day, maybe my hangover was worse?


We took a local train to visit the salt mines at Wieliczka. A miner guide took us down into the ground through a series of wooden stairs. We followed a very touristy route, complete with garden gnomes, salt statues and some hobo pretending to be the mountain king. "Stay away from my salt! Stop licking the walls!"

They also had a cathedral underground complete with a salt statue of John Paul II (The REAL pope according to my Polish hosts, not "that German guy"). The tour ended up in the gift shop - we had to queue up for the lifts up to the top floor to get back into the daylight. At the top we had to wait in a room for ten minutes before we could go outside without anyone telling us the reason why. Maybe they expected us to tip them or something?

We took a minibus shuttle back to Krakow and went to a very nice restaurant close to the market. The restaurant was serving traditional Polish cuisine and had many interesting dishes that I had not seen before. Here we also met up with Paulina's room mate Dominika. After a very nice meal, we went to a couple of pubs before ending up at a very cool club called Spokój. This club had a nice selection of booze, decent clientèle , 70's interior design and decent music (except for playing way too much U2). We met up with Sylwia after a while. Lukasz and I had a very nice time, drinking, talking and feeling the smoothness of the juice. We had a master plan of going to bed at 22.00 in order to get some sleep as we would have to get up at 04.00 to make our flight back to Amsterdam. With the pleasant company, and the drinking, we were having too much fun to be able to pull ourselves back to the hostel. None of us wanted to leave , and we ended up drinking until 01.00.

The flight back was painful, and in the evening I was really trashed, but it was totally worth it. Krakow to me was lots of nice clubs, gorgeous women, extremely cheap booze and decent food. It is definitely a city I want to go back to at some point.

My pictures

Lukasz' pictures

Barcelooonah!

I traveled to Barcelona the weekend of Thursday 6 September to Sun 9 September.

The trip started with a delayed flight, making me come in late to Barcelona. The flight itself was pretty unpleasant, as I had some kid grabbing my shirt from behind , screaming like crazy, and kicking my chair. Gotta love the Dutch approach to raising children...just letting them do whatever they feel like and never yelling at them...no matter how much they piss off their surroundings...

The hotel was very easy to find, as I stayed on the Plaza Catalunia. My room was on the top floor, so the noise outside was not a problem. I walked down the famous La Rambla before turning in, watching different street-hustlers try to con tourists out of their money. There were human statues everywhere, with great variety of acts. Human statues are one of the most annoying thing about European big cities. Sometimes they draw crowds of people, clogging up the street. As a Polish friend of mine said "Easiest thing in the world! They just stand around all day doing nothing...Why should I pay them for doing nothing?"

Friday I got up early, grabbed a quick breakfast at a cafe, and jumped on a open-air bus tour. This was a two and a half hour affair, with stops along the main sights. The ticket was valid for a day, so I could jump on and off as I felt like. This was convenient as there was a new bus stopping every ten minutes at each of the major sights. I got off at the Parc Guell.



The Parc Guell is a park in the outskirts of Barcelona, designed by Gaudi when he was in his "nature"-period. It was a very nice park, with oddly shaped bridges and artificial caves. There was a very good view of the city from the top of the park.

After 11, the park started to get very crowded as the groups of tourists started swarming in. I hopped on the sightseeing-bus again, and continued the tour, going all the way around Barcelona.


After doing the full round-trip with the bus, I entered the famous Casa Mila , or "La Pedrera" ("The Stone Quarry"). This is probably the most famous building Gaudi ever made, and it looks very different. It also houses the Gaudi museum, which was pretty OK. The main thing to see is the roof, as it has the weirdest chimneys and decorations.

After visiting the Casa Mila , I went into the Casa Batillo, walked up the stairs, looked at the chimneys, and that was pretty much it. Not exactly a bargain, at 11 euros.

I spent the rest of the day walking around getting acquainted with the Barrio Gotic. I found the Barcelona Cathedral there, and spent some time looking at that, and getting my gargoyle fix.

In the evening, I had decided to go shopping for clothes. I wandered into the "El Corte Ingles"- department store that was right next to the Placa Catalunia. I didn't really find much I wanted, except for kitchen stuff that would not fit my suitcase.



Saturday I started out by using the metro go to the Gaudi Cathedral. The Gaudi Cathedral (or the Sagrada Familia) is a very special, modern church still being built in the center of Barcelona. This building is a work in progress...so it feels very much like visiting a construction site. They had closed off the stairs to get to the top of the towers, so one had to use the lift to get up. Naturally there was a loong line. They put up small signs telling average time to the lift, and I noticed there was a line up to the "60 minutes"-mark, so I didn't bother to stand in line for the lift.

Later i used the metro to get to the Parc de la Ciutadella. I found it very easy to navigate the metro, but it felt like a sauna in the stations. Funny how the trains were air-conditioned , but the stations were not. There was some sort of concert going on in the park, so they closed off half of it, the part with the fountains and the monuments, so there wasn't all that much to see.
I walked back through the Barrio Gotic, stopping at the church called Santa Maria del Mar which was reputedly the most pretty church in Barcelona.

In the evening I did some more shopping for clothes in the street next to catalunia plaza, visited the Maremagnum department store and the aquarium.


The city was very different on Saturday evening, compared to the earlier nights I had been there. The streets were full of people. It was very crowded, even by Dutch standards. On the square in front of the cathedral people were dancing, both traditional dances and more modern stuff. It was nice seeing probably a hundred people dancing in the traditional Catalan way on the square in big circles.

I had to walk around for a long time before I found a cervezeria which wasn´t full. The good thing was that the cervezeria I found had a very good selection of beer. They even had Paulaner! I was sitting on a sidewalk between two very busy streets, so it was very noisy and polluted, both from traffic and Spanish people smoking on tables very close to me. I probably lost a few weeks of my life from just sitting in the pollution. This was not near the tourist areas, so no-one spoke English and my Spanish is limited to things like "quenta costa cerveza?" and "Uno cerveza, por favor"...but through some inventive sign language, I managed to get some bratwurst and beer from them? I ended up sitting there for hours sipping beer, as they had Lövenbrau, which I had not drunk since leaving Norway...

Oh, and there was a traffic collision right next to the restaurant while I was sitting there..and the amazing thing was that the police were there like 30 seconds later. Amazing!

Sunday morning I got up around nine and walked around in the Barrio Gotic. The streets were empty, and everything seemed to be closed. I decided to go up to the Montjuïc hill, to look at the castle, and some of the museums up there. I took the cable car to get up to the castle, and from the cable car you had an amazing view of the city. From the top of the castle itself, the view was very nice. I visited the museum inside the castle, and this museum had a large collection of medieval weapons. It also had a number of photographs of army units taken in the 1890's which were very interesting. Lots of very intense guys posing for the camera. Slightly different from the haphazard snapshots we do today in the age of the digital camera.


I took the cable car back down the hill, and visited the surrealist art museum "Fundacio Miro". After a short while, I found out I didn't really like any of the stuff they had there, so I left. ( I like modern art, but mostly the freaky stuff...it should not be boring )

All the other museums were closed off for some reason, so I was left with having to take the metro back into the town center to get some dinner. It was hard to find a table, so I ended up having dinner at a shady-looking restaurant in the Barrio Gotic. The food was bad and service was almost non-existent, but that's probably what I deserve for eating in the touristy part of the city.

I decided to leave early for the airport, to see if I could find something in the tax-free before going home. This was a mistake, as the shops at the airport were very expensive. Some of the standard clothes-brands were twice the price of what I would pay if I had been shopping in Holland, so in the end I just picked up a bottle of Guatemalan rum and flew back to Holland.

Overall, Barcelona was noisy, smelly, crowded and expensive(compared to Holland anyway, not Norway). I must say..from the cities I have visited this summer, I liked Venice more...

Pictures are here

Scotland

On the weekend of August 31st to September 2nd, I traveled to Scotland, to see the Highlands, and travel on the famous West Highland Line.

This trip started out bad even before I left home, as I had a lot of trouble ordering train tickets from the website of firstscotrail.co.uk. At first, they refused to sell me tickets for picking up at the railway station, as I did not have a valid UK address. After a bit of googling to find a valid UK zipcode to keep the webshop happy, they refused to accept my credit card. I found out that they tried to validate the card using my full name...and the dutch cards are usually made out to firstletter dot lastname. The problem was - there was no way to change my billing name, so I had to change the first name on my account to "F.". The problems were not over, though. Somehow, they had cached the failed order, and now they charged me for TWO trips. To make things even better...in order to cancel my first ticket, they would charge me half the ticket price. I sent them an angry letter, and they promised to refund me the whole amount. We'll see if they make good on their promise...freakin' webmonkeys!

As if this wasn't enough, I had a lot of trouble booking hotel rooms as well. They had no online booking, only "response forms" accessible from the web. I filled out a couple of these and never heard anything more from them...so eventually I had to start calling around. visitscotland.co.uk has some sort of booking agency that can arrange accommodation in most of Scotland. Trouble was that whenever they offered me something, when I accepted, the room would be no longer available. After three failed attempts to book a hotel room, I had to accept a room at a B&B in a private home. I was a bit skeptical at first, because there was very little information about the property. The good thing was that it was very cheap, just 22 pounds per night.

I landed in Edinburgh and took the Airlink shuttle to Waverley station, where I picked up my train tickets at the ticket machines. Since I had a couple of hours to kill before my train left for Glasgow, I walked up to "The Royal Mile" and walked to the castle. I had been to the castle once before, but I was 11 at the time, so I didn't remember all that much of my previous trip. The castle is on the smaller side, but you have great views over Edinburgh, as the castle is situated on a hill above the city itself.

The ticket inspection system on the train between Edinburgh and Glasgow would put the ticket inspectors on the dutch trams to shame. My ticket was checked on entry to the platform, by a guy on the train and on exit in Glasgow. Three times for a journey of 45 minutes!

From Glasgow I boarded the diesel train going up the West Highland Line. The diesel train was noisy and slow, and there was nothing interesting to look at until a couple of hours had passed, and we started going past lochs and steep hills. I was amazed, by the way, that they sold whisky from the trolleys on the train...so you could sip whisky while looking at the grand view of the Scottish mountains. What I could see of the Scottish mountains, anyway. The sides of the railway track were somewhat overgrown, so at times it felt like we were going through a green tunnel. After a couple of hours it turned dark as well, so I missed out on seeing the area around Glencoe on my way up to Fort William.

The B&B I was staying at had given me quite detailed location information, so it was easy to find the house. The room at the B&B was fairly OK, good size and comfortable bed. The landlord had a shower in the hall, so it wasn't as spartan as I had feared. In the morning the guy running the place cooked up an enormous breakfast for me: Bacon, eggs, sausages, bread, potato cakes and black and white pudding. Very good value for the price I was paying. I walked down to the train station and boarded the local train to Mallaig on the coast. This is supposed to be "The most scenic train ride of the British isles". Unfortunately, the weather was rainy and foggy, so I didn't see that much on my way to Mallaig. On the way back, though, most of the fog had lifted, so I got to see the beautiful landscape that they used as backdrops in the "Harry Potter"-movies, among others.




Coming back into Fort William, I discovered why it had been so hard to get a room. This weekend was the "Nevis-weekend", so they were hosting a race for people to run up to the top of Ben Nevis and back down again. There were a number of hiking stores in the town, and they had a lot of good equipment for hiking in wet and cold weather. I bought myself a pair of waterproof, windproof gloves.

They also had a number of whisky-shops, and I managed to find something I had been looking for for years: a bottle of Port Ellen whisky. I had looked for this before in specialist whisky shops in London, so it was funny that I found one in a touristy whisky shop in a small town up in the highlands.

Sunday I traveled back by train the same way I came. The good thing now was that it was daytime, so I was able to see Ben Nevis, Glencoe, Rannoch, and all the other stuff I missed on the way up there. After a few hours most of the interesting stuff had passed, and then it was just another boring train ride. I spent far too much time traveling on Sunday, so I was very tired when I finally came back to The Hague.

I think the west highlands could be very good for hiking. I saw a lot of nice mountains over there, although it would probably be good to have a car for going from place to place. Didn't seem like there were too many trains up there. The roads were narrow up there, with lots of single carriageway roads. They also drive on the wrong side of the road, so I think it could be stressful to drive up there.

Pictures are here.

Road trip back to Norway

For my summer vacation this year, I decided to go back home to Norway for three weeks. I had two major goals during this vacation - meet up with friends and family who I had not seen for a long time, and try to do some hiking in the mountains. As I live in a flat country, I need to look at mountains from time to time. I figured it would be easier to get around if I had a car, so I decided to drive home.

I had packed everything I needed for the trip on the evening of Fri the 27th of July, and got up early on the 28th, had a quick breakfast and walked out to the car. I turned the ignition...and the friggin GPS wouldn't start. The damn thing had turned into a brick overnight! I had checked the route the evening before, checked battery levels and everything looked good. Now the thing was just not starting up. This TomTom-gps had crashed on me once before, and then I had to wait for a whole month for Mediamarkt to send it in for servicing. I feared the same thing had happened again, and I was not very happy with the prospect of driving to Norway using only paper maps. Luckily, I had discussed the TomTom unit with a colleague the day before, and he had told me that they had a habit of freezing up. You could, in some cases, bring them back to life with a reset to factory settings. I did some frenzied googling and found out that there was a hole for a paper clip to reset the thing in case it had gotten confused. Only... I didn't have a paper clip. Seriously, who keeps paper clips around their house anyway? I rummaged through most of my tools before finding a set of screwdrivers small enough to fit the hole. Luckily, the reset function brought the unit back to life, and I could start my road trip, one hour late. Damn you, modern technology!

The trip through Holland and Germany was fairly uneventful, except for that I picked the wrong weekend to start my vacation. Large parts of Germany were starting their vacation period that weekend, so I ended up being stuck in line for the ferry at Puttgarden for three hours. I spent the evening driving around the countryside of Lolland, Denmark to try to find a place to sleep.

The next morning I drove through the rest of Denmark in a couple of hours before crossing Storebæltsbroen - the second longest bridge in the world. It was weird driving over the bridge and seeing really big ships on both sides of the bridge. Other than that it was a hassle-free way to get from Denmark to Sweden, and I wasn't too keen on being stuck in another ferry line. The drive through southwestern Sweden is long and boring. The roads are of good quality, compared to Germany and Denmark, but they get crappier the closer you get to Norway. In the afternoon I finally arrived at my destination - my parents cabin in Strømstad, Sweden, near the border to Norway. This is 1300 km from my home in The Hague, so it was a long drive.

I met up with my parents and my sister there, and stayed two days. Monday evening I had a nice meal with my uncle on my father's side(Arne), two of my cousins(Marianne and Sigurd) and Marianne's daughter(Sara).

Tuesday the 31st of July I drove to Kongsberg to meet my friend Jan Kristian, dropping of my sister in Oslo on the way. The next few days we went hiking in the Blefjell area north-west of Kongsberg, walking on top of Blenuten in the process. Originally we had planned to go to one of the big peaks of Rondane, but due to bad weather we decided to go to Blefjell instead. It was a nice trip, although slightly windy. Pictures are here.

After a couple of days in Kongsberg, I drove to Lillehammer to stay at my parents' house. I spent a day visiting my grandparents, shopping and preparing equipment. During the weekend I also met up with my brother, who had just returned from climbing the Matterhorn .

Sunday the 5th of August, the weather forecast looked good, for the first time in days, so I decided to try hiking to one of the easier big peaks of Rondane . After driving for two and a half hours to get to the plateau below the peaks, I found out the weather forecast was wrong. The cloud cover was low, and you couldn't see the peaks. I started walking uphill anyway, thinking that the skies might clear up in a couple of hours. It turned out they didn't. The fog only got thicker, the wind started picking up, and it started to rain heavily. Since I couldn't see anything, and there was no sign of the fog lifting I decided to turn back, three hours up the mountain. Turning back and walking back to the car for hours on loose slippery rock through rain, wind and fog was no fun, but there really was no point trying to climb the mountain in this weather.


On Monday the weather forecast was better than the day before, so I decided to go to the mountains again, this time to Jotunheimen . I had bought a new book about Jotunheimen while dropping off my sister in Oslo, and this mentioned a mountain close to the roads with a good view of the southern part of Jotunheimen. I drove up there and found out the cloud cover was just as low as the day before, but it was still higher up than the mountain I was going to, Synshorn. I parked my car at the bottom of the mountain and hiked up to the top of the mountain in only an hour. The viewpoint at the top was very nice, and the hike up was really easy, so it was a nice trip. I drove a different way back, taking the scenic route over the mountain back to Lillehammer. Pictures are here .



Tuesday the 7th I spent visiting my uncle and aunt(Liv and Jarle) and preparing to go to Trondheim to visit my friend Håkon Humberset. I got a tip from my uncle about it being faster to drive across the mountain plateau near Ringebu if I wanted to go to Trondheim. This was also the route my GPS unit picked...it turned out it was almost 20 kilometers shorter than the regular route through Dombås. I had never driven this route before, so it was a nice experience. Part of the way I had a great view of some of the big peaks of Rondane, so it was very scenic compared to the regular route.


I met up with Håkon in Trondheim, and we planned a big hiking trip into the Trollheimen area. The next morning we drove towards Surnadal, to park my car down at the Kårvatn car park in Todalen. On the first day we crossed the mountain pass at Bjøråskaret to get to Innerdalen. We walked into fairly thick fog near the top, but this was not all that much cause for concern, as I had brought my Garmin GPS unit with me, so we always found our way back to the path. What was more worrying was the amount of snow we were seeing around us, and just below the top of the pass our fears came true: We had to cross a steep snow flank to get across. We were carrying heavy backpacks and we were not carrying ice axes, so if we were to slip, there was a big chance we would slip forcefully all the way into the rocks below and injure ourselves. We walked really carefully up the flank, and fifteen minutes later we had crossed, without incident. The wind was picking up, but the fog was only getting thicker, robbing us of the magnificient view we were supposed to have into Innerdalen from the top of Bjøråskaret. The way down from the pass took a lot longer than we planned for. At the top the trail degenerated into steep piles of rock, and the rocks were very slippery, so we were very careful going down. On the way up to the mountain pass, we had climbed about 900m of elevation spread out over 12 km. Going down now into Innerdalen, we were descending about 800m of elevation in just 2 kilometers, so the path was really steep in places. Not being able to see anything because of the fog was also starting to sap our morale, and the trip was getting a lot longer than we planned for. Eventually, after seven hours of hiking, we found Innerdalshytta, were we spent the night.




The next morning the weather was totally different. The clouds had lifted and the sun was shining, giving us a great view of Innerdalen. We walked the length of Innerdalen, up to Innerdalsporten, over Medskaret and down the road to the Bårdsgården farmhouse. The hike was a bit wetter than we planned for, and we had to make some detours around some of the worst marshes, due to Håkon having brought hiking shoes rather than hiking boots (which is a problem with wet soil). I really liked the first part of the hike. Great view, nice weather, not very strenuous. The three-hour walk down the road to the farmhouse on the other hand was grueling, especially since we knew we had to go back the same way the next day. The placement of the cabin was really bad, and this contributed a lot to our decision to change to a three-day trip rather than a four-day trip. Håkon had developed blisters on his back from the backpack, and he was having a real problem carrying a backpack, so we decided to repack in the morning, stuff all clothes and unneeded equipment in his backpack and leave it at the cabin. We would then go to the car and drive all the way around to the other side of the mountain range to pick up the backpack. We were in a bad mood in the evening, as we were tired and there were no showers available, as the ones that were there were coin-operated, and we didn't have the right type of coins.


Saturday we got up really early and walked along the road up to the trail head. just before hitting the trail, the fog rolled in again, leaving us hiking in the fog. To add to the problems, the trail didn't go where the map said it should go, so the gps wasn't all that useful. The trail markings were fresh, though and easy to follow, so there were no big problems in finding our way. The path was very overgrown in places and it was very muddy down next to the river. We tried to avoid the worst mudholes, but in some areas there were nowhere else to go. I sank in to my knees in some places. Luckily my boots and hiking pants held up, so I had dry feet the entire trip. We had a very long drive back to Trondheim, taking a detour over a very crappy mountain road to pick up Håkon's backpack.


I left Trondheim early on Sunday in order to meet up with my uncle and aunt (Steinar and Liv) and my cousin Ingrid. I spent Monday meeting up with family and resting after the trip. The trip to Trollheimen had been fairly tiring, and I was limping for several days after all the bumps from jumping from rock to rock with a heavy backpack. I decided to put my other hiking plans on hold and do road trips instead. On Tuesday the 14th I drove north from Lillehammer, going to see the wild and mountainous northern part of western Norway. I drove through Lom, up to Grotli, to drive the old road over Strynefjell, which is a road now only used by tourists. This was a very narrow, winding mountain road way up in the mountains. I built up a healthy hatred of camper vans up there, as it is difficult to pass them when they come the other way. I had to position my car at the very edge of the road and in some places you ran the risk of sliding off the road, so the drive was somewhat stressful. It's probably better outside the main tourist season when you don't meet so many other cars.


I took the new road through the tunnels back towards Geiranger, and took a detour towards Dalsnibba. This is a mountain which has a great panoramic view of the area around Geiranger, and there is a nice viewing platform at the top. To get up there you have to drive a winding, steep road. The road is missing guardrails in some places, so it feels exposed, but the road itself is quite wide, compared to gamle strynefjellsvei . There could be a problem if you meet a bus in a hairpin bend, though.

I drove down all the hairpin bends to Geiranger, stopping to see the view from Flydalsjuvet on the way. Luckily there was a room available at Hotell Union, so I didn't have to spend a lot of time finding a place to sleep. I spent the evening walking around Geiranger. Geiranger is one of the top tourist destinations of Norway, and is classified as a Unesco World Heritage Site. There's nothing there except camping sites and souvenir shops, so spending more than a day there would be boring. Pictures are here.
The next day I left to take the scenic drive over the mountains towards Trollstigen.


I found this drive very interesting. Lots of nice mountains to look at on the way. It was pretty crowded around Trollstigen, though, with busloads of tourists going up and down the narrow road. I found that Trollstigen wasn't as narrow as the rumors would have it. The only problem was that it had a lot of traffic, with buses going up and down all the time, so I spent some time waiting for buses to clear the hairpin bends. I went back through Romsdalen, making a quick stop at Trollveggen . The weather was really bad, heavy rains and near gale-force winds, so driving back was tiring.

The next day I drove down to Kongsberg to meet up with Egil Rugland and Stein Gjøen, two friends from back when I was working for Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace. We had a nice dinner, and talked the whole evening. Friday I drove to Oslo and took the ferry towards Kiel. I traveled on the Color Fantasy (not as good as it sounds). Saturday I arrived in Kiel, and drove the 6,5 hours back to The Hague.

To sum up, I managed to do most of the things I planned, so it was a good vacation. There was a lot of driving, though. In three weeks I drove 5200km. Good thing the car held up...