Monthly Archives: May 2013

Our train from Paris took us to Lausanne, where we caught a regional train to Bern. This took us along a scenic route beside some UNESCO listed vineyards from the medieval times –

Medieval vineyards on the hillside

Upon arrival in Bern, our first impression was positive, that was until we arrived at our hotel. The room is very basic, which we already knew from booking online, but the lack of double glazed windows means a lot of street noise comes into our room at night, making it hard to sleep. The bathroom is in need of a renovation (and better ventilation) and our room had a very strong smell of stale smoke (this hotel unfortunately has a couple of rooms which guest are allowed to smoke in). The smell was semi-fixed by opening the windows for fresh air and the purchase of a odour neutralise box thingy. The lack of free WiFi Internet access at the hotel was also annoying. There is 1 Internet kiosk in the lobby that we can use, but the computer is probably about 6 yrs old and doesn’t handle viewing more than 3-4 tabs in Chrome at a time. There is WiFi all throughout the building but it’s a Swisscom Public Wifi Hotspot, so in order for us to use it, we needed to purchase access through Swisscom. After much deliberation, we decided it was going to be difficult and impracticable to not have access to the Internet for 6 nights, especially as we needed to look up things to do in Genevia, Zurich and booking a hotel in Italy, so we ended up purchasing a 30hrs voucher for CHF45, which is about AUD$50 (very expensive for Internet access)

Once we left the hotel, Bern presented us with a brief sunny spell in which to explore the city. The official language of Bern is German, although I suspect most people would speak English as well as a 3^rd language (Switzerland has 4 official languages – French, Italian, German and Romansh)

As I write this, I’m currently sitting in a self-service laundry just 5 mins outside Bern City Centre, waiting for our clothes to tumble dry. Out of all the self-service laundries we’ve used so far, this has been one of the easiest. There are instructions in English, machines look in good condition, and you simply put your detergent in, insert the coins and press go. It was convenient to get to via trolley-bus from the city and is right next door to a cafe (which has free WiFi)

The Laundromat is called JetWash

As Switzerland , doesn’t use the Euro, we had to work out another set of coins, and here all their coins from the 10cents to the 5 Fr coins are all silver, except for the 5cent coin which is golden in colour. Consequentially, it makes it a lot harder to work out how much money you have, especially when the ½ fr coin (eg 50 cents) is smaller than the 20/10 cent coins. On the plus side, it appears my card works here with the PIN, so this should make things easier.

(NOTE: Just to clarify, our cards have worked everywhere we’ve gone so far, but not all countries will let us use our PIN, eg UK, Paris required us to sign, whereas Switzerland, Sweden, Copenhagen all allowed us to use our PIN. This doesn’t make use stand out as much, as all European use PINs with their cards these days.)

We’ll be visiting Zurich, Geneva and Jungfraujoch whilst we’re here in Switzerland as we got a Swiss Eurail Pass and the train network here is very extensive, reliable and efficient.

Cheerio, Auf Wiedersehen, Au Revoir, Ciao, Chau

After our flight from Berlin to Paris we arrived in the ‘city of lights’ and found our hotel was literally only 30 metres from the exit of the metro station, which was a very nice surprise. Our bags and suitcases were considerably lighter as we’d posted home 13kgs of stuff in Berlin (partially because the flight had a strict 20kg limit on suitcases and partially because it was getting hard to fit everything into our bags).

Freya took the opportunity of having a lighter suitcase to purchase more stuff in Paris to fill the void and I was able to reorganise mine.

Unlike last time I visited Paris, there seems to be more people here which unfortunately meant more queues for things like the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Catacombs etc.

On our first day in Paris we visited the Sacre Coure but it was raining so we decided to come back and climbed the Dome another day. We also visited the Eiffel Tower, but decided to come back as it was cloudy, rainy and wouldn’t have been very pleasant to ascend. After a small bite to eat for dinner, we visited the Louvre as it was open late and managed to see roughly half the displayed collection, including the Mona Lisa. Even though it was about 8:30 at night, there were still hundreds of people at the Louvre, although the crowds in front of the Mona Lisa weren’t as bad as last time I visited so I was able to get a picture in front of her.

The following day, we went back to the Sacre Coure to climb the dome whilst it was sunny, which turned out to be a good idea, as we had just descended the dome, when it promptly started to storm. Whilst waiting out the storm under the roof of the Montmartre Funicular, we spied an interesting looking gift shop, and once the rain had cleared we stopped for a browse. After dinner we visited the outside of Notre Dame and saw the Eiffel Tower perform it’s light show, before heading home to bed as we needed to get up early tomorrow.

On Sunday, we took the train to Versailles
Freya enjoyed visiting the Palace but the huge tour groups of people (which I had warned her about) semi ruined the palace tour for her.

After the tour we took stroll around the gardens and were able to see the fountains working, be that for a limited time of only 1.5 hrs. I filmed the Neptune Fountain (this is the largest at Versailles and requires all the other fountains to be turned off in order to run) –

We then headed for the train station and the trip back to Paris. On our way to dinner that night, I spied a bridge just behind Notre Dame which was quite interesting and the first I’ve seen so far. I’ve included a picture of it below in the gallery.

On Monday, we visited the Eiffel Tower. When we arrived, we joined the queue and spent the next 1.5-2 hrs in the queue just to get a ticket. Once we finally got up the Eiffel Tower, we then spent the next 45 mins queueing to get the lift to the top. Anyway, once we finally made it to the top, we had a very nice view over Paris. By this time some clouds had started to move in, so it wasn’t as sunny, but the view was still alright –

On our last day in Paris it decided to rain most of the day, so we headed to the Catacombs, but the line was extremely long, so instead we headed back to Notre Dame (via the Shakespeare Book Company shop, where I purchased two books). After queuing for 5 mins in the rain, we finally got into Notre Dame. It was quite busy inside, due to the bad weather outside and the free entry. I purchased a guide book for 2 euros from a vending machine and we had a look around. Afterwards, we decided to head back to the Catacombs, however when we arrived the queue still went all the way around the block and the Catacombs were only open for another 15mins, so we had to give this a miss. As it was still too early for dinner, Freya decided she had some time left to do some last minute shopping and I payed a visit to the Grand Arc at La Defense (the modern centre of Paris) which forms the western end of the Axe Historique which is a line of monuments, buildings and thoroughfares that extends from the centre of Paris, France, to the west. The axis starts in the East at the Louvre, and continues down the Champs Elysees, through the Arc De Triomphe to La Defense –

Later on we had an early dinner and visit the Arc De Triomphe for a nice view of the sunset and Paris by night.

Freya particularly liked Paris and is already planning to come back here again in a few years time. I was pleased that I didn’t need my phrasebook nearly as much as I was expecting. Unfortunately the weather this time round wasn’t great, but we still managed to get some semi sunny days and see the sites of Paris.

We’re getting a train tomorrow from Paris to Bern ready for our travels in Switzerland (hopefully we can get some chocolate as well…)

Au Reviour

Today when leaving Berlin, I thought I’d write this small observational post, as I didn’t include this in my previous post on Berlin – Berlin is very green and has a lot of open spaces and parks but at the same time also has a lot of construction going on, as well as a lot of vacant empty plots. It has the most graffiti out of all the cities we’ve visited so far and lacks a city “centre” as such. There are also a lot of buildings that seem run down/derelict and in need of lots of TLC. A lot of this can be explained by the recent history of Berlin, but I think it makes it an interesting city, unique in our travels so far and I loved all the green parks everywhere.

On to Paris next, hopefully the weather will be nicer.

Auf Wiedersehen

I’ve been taking pictures of some of the birds I’ve seen throughout my travels so far and have uploaded them below with the locations I spotted them in. Maybe Deryk (he’s my neighbour) will be able to identify them and will leave a comment below….

Here we are in not so sunny Berlin. The weather has been cloudy for the past couple of days with some light rain today. We’re off tomorrow to Paris so hopefully some sunny weather can be expected.

I’ve found the German language has been easier to understand and pronounce than the Nordic languages of the past couple of weeks, but we’re off to Paris tomorrow, so we have our phrasebooks ready…

We’ve visited the Wall and Holocaust memorial as well as a museum called the ‘Topography Of Terrors’ which is all about the 3rd Reich and its atrocities committed during the 1930/40s. A short walk away from this museum was Checkpoint Charlie. All that remains today is the sign telling you you’re leaving the American sector, as well as a US army border booth. Across the road is a panorama theatre called “The Wall” which is a panorama of everyday life set against the backdrop of the Berlin Wall, on a fictitious autumn day in the 1980’s. This exhibition was really moving and I felt conveyed the feelings and experiences of people on each side of the Wall. It highlighted the reality of suddenly having your city and neighbourhood split in two by a concrete wall which you couldn’t cross due to certain death meeting any attempt.

On a semi-sunny afternoon we payed a visit to the Reichstag (German Parliament) and Brandenburg Gate.

This was sadly the site of my 1st scam in Europe (both this trip and last time), the details of which will not be entered into here. I was caught off-guard and will not be scammed again. I think my ‘scam-watch/scam-guard’ had been lower than it should have been due to our time in England/Scandinavia where the sorts of scams which plague mainland Europe haven’t surfaced and as such I’d let my guard down. Suffice to say this sort of put a downer on the rest of that day and a sour note on my time in Berlin, but the lesson has been learned and I’m moving on (Note: nothing was stolen and no personal harm occurred. Also this was a new scam I hadn’t heard of before)

Today we visited Museum Island to go to the Berlin Cathedral and Pergamon Museum. The inside of the Berlin Cathedral was quite spectacular and it’s the first completely round church/cathedral I’ve been in. After climbing several hundred stairs, we were greeted with a 360* view of Berlin –

Afterwards, we visited the Pergamon Musem and saw some ancient Mesopotamian artefacts, as well as some sculptures from the Roman Empire. Freya really wanted to see the Ishtar Gate (she did her Yr 11 Assignment on this).

Currently it’s raining again, and we’ve just finished packing a heap of stuff into two large DHL boxes to be posted home tomorrow as our suitcases were overflowing and our flight tomorrow has a strict 20kg limit, plus now we have more room for more stuff (Swiss chocolate perhaps….)

Our hotel here is really nice, the room is huge, it’s probably about the size of a small 1 bedroom apartment and even has its own washing machine and dryer (which we’ve used 3 times). The only downside is the Internet access is expensive, unless you use it in the lobby where you can obtain a free 1hr voucher code from reception. I’ve discovered that this code also works for the wireless connection in our hotel room so we’ve been stockpiling vouchers for use during the evenings (so far I think we’ve used about 10 vouchers).

Auf Wiedersehen