Urlaub 4 - Wien (Vienna) and Salzburg

Continuing our holiday posts...we went to Austria for a week! The land of "The Sound of Music" and Mozart. Can you hear it now..."The hills are alive...."?

Now before we go on, here's an interesting collection of signs we found in Austria. What do you think they mean? In the spirit of German driving tests, at least one of the following answers is correct, however up to all may be correct. Answer at the end of the post.
a) No smoking
b) No vehicles.
c) No dogs
d) No cyclists.
e) Bicycles may not be left unattended

So what do you do when you are in Vienna? Eat Vienna Schnitzel - of course!







The other thing to do is eat cakes. There are cake shops everywhere (called Konditorei), where we sampled a fine selection of Austrian desserts - at least 15 cakes over 7 days! Owen enjoyed helping select them, but wasn't allowed to share in eating them!

Of course you can't visit a European city and not see a church. Here is a very impressive one in the centre of the city - Stephanplatz

We did a few bus tours, though for one of them we all had a long nap. There's so many monuments, statues, historic buildings, etc that it all just washes over you and becomes a bit passe. Let's see, shall we see XYZ, or have another cake?

Vienna has been the centre of music for a long time, and it was interesting to go on a walking tour on the life of Mozart, as well as to visit the House of Music - a museum with interactive displays for the kids. One thing that they kept drumming into us - don't believe the movie Amadaus - it's got lots of historical inaccuracies.

Schonbrunn schloss is towards the edge of Vienna. A beautiful castle on huge grounds, and with a guided tour of most of the rooms - which have been set up as a museum

Salzburg, the home of the Sound of Music. This is the closest we got to a sound of music tour, thank goodness!

We visited the Salzburg fortress, which has a great view over the city. This fortress was never taken by force, and has several layers of walls built up over the years.

We also saw one of Jo's school friends Natalie, who is a musician in Salzburg.

Oh, and did you know that there are no kangaroos in Austria?

But there are digeridoos!

Despite Austria being a German speaking country, we found some strange words - mostly when we were reading the menus. The one we found most amusing was Erdapfel. Literally this means earth apple, but it's actually potato.

Answer: b, c and d. The strange thing about European traffic signs is that a red circle is the same as a red circle with a red line through it. ie not allowed. Another is that a completely empty red circle means no vehicles allowed. This can be quite confusing!

Urlaub 3 - Church weekend away, Jena, Eisenach and Wittenberg

Very briefly, some of the weekend trips we've made:

1) Church Weekend Away

This was in June, but it was still quite cold at that stage. The topic of the weekend was "In Christ", and we learnt from Philippians 3 and 4. It was good to be reminded that in Christ, we shouldn't put our confidence in the "flesh", ie in what good things we can do. Rather we should put our confidence in Jesus - who gives us his own goodness (righteousness) through his death and resurrection.

The weekend had an Australian flavour, because there were 9 aussies there - in previous years there have been none. As a result, we were teaching the children how to play touch footy (we called it touch rugby to avoid confusion) and handball.

And on of the evenings we had an aussie bush dance. We had a bit of an injury toll, though. Nathan sprained his ankle playing touch, and one of the Germans sprained her ankle during the bush dance. Just reinforced for the Germans that Australia is a really dangerous place!

2) Jena and Eisenach

In July we made another trip to Thuringer - the same state as Weimar and Erfurt (Urlaub 1).

Jena is quite famous for optical instruments, and we went to the optical museum there. Here's a photo of some old glasses.

We also happened to be there while they had some lifesized dinosaur replicas in one of the shopping centres. Owen wasn't scared at all...

Eisenach has a famous castle - Wartburg. Luther stayed in this castle when he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church, and it was there that he made his first translation of the Bible into German. It sounds ordinary now, but at the time it was quite revolutionary, because many believed that only the priests should read the Bible and that others could only learn from it through the priests. We saw some museums with some really old bibles, which was pretty cool.

Bach was also at Eisenach, and we went to a Bach museum that had lots of old instruments of his time. Here is a photo of someone filling the bellows of a really old pipe organ.

3) Wittenberg

We made a day trip to Wittenberg when Jon visited us. It's only 1 hour away by train or car, and is famous for being the place where Luther posted his "95 thesis" against indulgences which sparked the reformation. The original church door is gone - the church was destroyed by something (fire or war, can't remember now), and was replaced with this one. It's got the 95 thesis engraved in it.

Urlaub 2 - Prag (Prague)

Not long after we arrived back from our trip in Sydney we managed a long weekend in Prague.

Prague is a bit like Paris. Lots of small houses cramped against each other.

The main attraction is the cathedral and castle, which are on a hill overlooking the city. Here's a shot of the front of the cathedral. It's designed so you have to look upwards to see it - to draw your attention towards heaven. Quite impressive!

We were able to climb to the top of one of the cathedral towers. It was a very long climb up a winding, narrow staircase. It was a two way staircase but only barely wide enough. Jo was carrying Owen in her arms, and felt pressured by the people behind to keep going without a rest. 287 steps! Here's the view from the top - well earned!

Many of the buildings had pictures instead of street numbers. So you would stay at the Prancing Pony on Charles street, for example. They've put numbers on now, but some of the old pictures are still there.

The Charles bridge is one of the main tourist attractions. It's decorated with about 20 statues, and is filled with street stalls.






This one is interesting - the clock tower has a little moving display every hour. We were advised to make sure we went to see this, but not for the display itself. Rather, to see the looks of dismay and disappointment on the faces of tourists who had waited and pushed their way to the best vantage point, only to realise that something state of the art so many years ago isn't going to be able to compare to modern entertainment.

This is the "Singing fountain". The base is shaped like an inverted bell, and the water rings the bell as it hits it. This tourist attraction is very dissappointing to many people, because it gets blocked up with leaves, and nearly half the time is out of order undergoing maintenance. We were fortunate enough to hear it working, though you had to listen really hard because it's not that loud.

Strange things in Prague:
1) Sitting down next to an italian tourist couple in Prague, and chatting to them in German.
2) Asking someone for directions "Excuse me, do you speak English", and getting an aussie accent "Yeah, sure".
3) Beer is cheaper than soft drink or water. In Germany it's similar, but there is a law that says there must be a non-alcoholic drink that is cheaper than beer on the menu. They don't have that law in Prague...