Guten morgan everybody!
We are back in Germany at the moment, after our first exciting little jaunt into Eastern Europe.
Our first night in the Czech Republic was spent parked up on the outskirts of town by a cabbage field (our second choice of accommodation for the night - in our first spot we were accosted by a strange guy in a van who wanted to know if we knew where a party was (his English was great), and then invited us to smoke weed with him. We politely declined, and then decided to find another place to sleep!)
We headed into Terezin, which had had a ghost-town feeling the night before but was busy with tourists the next day, and visited a museum which used to be part of a WW2 concentration camp. The aim of Terezin was to pacify the prisoners before sending them off to Auschwitz or similar extermination camps, so both adults and children were allowed to paint, write, play music, they even wrote their own magazine and performed plays and musicals. Reading and looking at their art work was both interesting but extremely sad. We also walked around a small fortress that was a few centuries old but used as a WW2 prison - walking around the cells gave me the same deeply uneasy feeling as I felt in Cambodia walking around the S21 genocide prison. Not a happy place.
So we decided to leave the gloom behind us and head towards Prague. Our little van suddenly seemed rather flash alongside the Czech cars rather than all the Audis and Mercedes of Germany!
Prague itself is really pretty, like everyone said it would be - it's full of beautiful 18th century buildings and nestled amongst the hills, so a really nice place to walk around and explore, despite the hordes of tourists. Prague castle was nice, perched on the side of a hill, which allowed fantastic views of the city and surrounding countryside.
Mum and Dad were there a few days before us and they said they found the people not so nice, but we didn't encounter anyone particularly rude, except for the guide in the parking area who tried to overcharge us. Two dodgy guys tried to sell Cam drugs within about 10 mins of each other (we must've been in the wrong part of town!), it felt a bit like we were back in South East Asia again!
Cesky Krumlov was the highlight of our time in the Czech Republic. It's about 3 hours drive south of Prague, near the Austrian and German borders, and is the prettiest little town ever - spotlessly clean and the cutest buildings, lovely views, nice riverside cafes and a big castle with big brown BEARS in the moat! The weather was gorgeous (finally!) which may have also added a lot to the enjoyment factor.
So, overall, we really enjoyed our Czech experience. Aside from Prague, it has a sort of underdeveloped and less commercial feel than other places. It was cheap (compared to the rest of Europe), people were on the whole nice, everyone spoke English, and lots of the public toilets were free! (unheard of in Western Europe!).
Heading back into Germany was eventful - after being farewelled by the Czech prostitutes who line the woods near the border area (in broad daylight! Not wearing much and dancing! very odd...), we had to pull over at the border and hand over our passports, then wait for ages while the guard checked stuff, then answer lots of questions, show car ownership papers and drivers license and let him look around in the back - like the Czech guard, he found it funny to find Bruce sitting in the back but it was OK, and we were finally allowed to go. Then, not long after we had pulled up in a rest area that night, a busload of rowdy, drunk, middle-aged German men pulled up for a toilet stop. Unfortunately they spied us and our British car and decided they wanted to talk to us....of course they didn't speak much more English than "Good evening!" so decided to entertain us by rocking the van, and one character was blowing on a horn (you can see him in the photo, he's the one holding our door). It was a little...hmm, disconcerting, but they left us alone after about 5 minutes so we were relieved! Then the next morning we woke to see 3 big police vans searching a van full of Romanians, and then one of them decided to come over and look at our passports....not really sure why, I think he was bored. So we've been interrogated by Germans a lot in the past few days!!
The sun's been shining in Munich too, which has been nice - it's a lovely city, gearing itself up for Oktoberfest which starts in a couple of weeks - we were originally going to try and go for a day or so but it doesn't fit in with our schedule. So we went to the Hofbrauhaus instead - a big old beer hall that's been around since the 1500s apparently, complete with Ompah band and good german fare. It was lots of fun, I even managed to drink one of those huge 1 litre glasses of beer!
Today we're planning to meander down the Romantische Strasse - the Romantic Road, which links lots of pretty little towns and is supposed to be very nice (according to my parents who cycled it nearly 30 years ago!) and head down to Austria. Hope all's going well!
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