By this Author: chrisvasil

Salzburg is a lovely city - lots of parks, old buildings, and statues. We spent a few hours there on the way to Munich.

Off this huge, wonderfully maintained flowery park

Is a smaller park with about 20 statues, all about as handsome as this one

We climbed halfway up the hill to the castle, only to find that to go any further we would have to pay admission (for all other cities we've visited, entrance to castle grounds is free; admission is only required to tour the inside or the museums). Still, this afforded a wonderful view of the city.

The castle

The city

We had a picnic on the river, before heading to our next stop.

Berlin was just not meant for this trip -- everything is so far apart, really a city of neighborhoods much like Toronto (but with much more sights) where a lot of time and transport is needed to experience the city or even to see the sights. We saw many beautiful buildings and of course there's a lot of history even apart from the war, but it's geographically a huge city. It also didn't help that I got the time wrong for the walking tour (so we had to do other stuff for a couple hours to wait for the next one), nor that our walking tour guide was terrible so we quit an hour in (after moving about 100m and hearing many bad jokes and long stories).

The walk guy with his hat and his saluting arm up

Alexanderplatz (a TV tower) with a church

Other buildings

Brandenburger Gate, part of the old Berlin Wall and a rallying point for most parts of the city history

Statue of the Goddess of peace atop Brandenburger Gate, brought from Berlin to Paris when Napolean conquered these parts, then brought back after the Russians beat Napolean.

The Reichstag... Surrounded by trees, so hard to get a shot that includes flags and the building, it's too big.

The Berlin Monument

The wonderful market near our hostel, where we got cheap food (a whole rotisseried chicken for 3 Euro, another meal 2 euro each). When we stopped on our way to the train station one of the shops was closing for the day, so I ask the guy how much he'd charge for the cooked meats he has left, and he says 2 euros - for 2 quarter chickens, 2lb or so of sausage loaf, 2 smoked pork knuckles, and 4 chicken wings.

Interlaken, in the scenic Jungfrau region, is the first spot on our vacations where we really regretted not having extra time (our next hostel was already booked). We arrived in the evening to catch the end of a marching band parade - and with about 20 people watching, we were able to walk alongside them.

Turning around, we can see the reflection of the sunset on the Alps. The green mountains have an altitude of about 1500m; the white one has an altitude of about 3500m.

We spent most of our day there using the train/bus pass to go to hiking/walking spots from different towns. The best trails would have been 6 hours to hike, and would have taken us to places we might have had trouble getting back from, so we didn't take any trail more than a couple hours. We'd like to go back and do it properly.

Here are a couple views

Our Amazing Race-style team picture...

Sometimes signs were lacking or confusing - like this one, where all roads lead to Gsteigwiler

A surprisingly comfortable bench, made of a few big logs. I'm also impressed with their continued neutrality.

Wild berries, a cross between raspberry and blackberry

The hostel was great - very clean, free laundry, free breakfast, common kitchen, free public transport including to neighboring towns, free swimming pools and minigolf, free 3 Euro Rolex spoon each... A bit expensive (20 euros per person per night), but great.

Scenic train from Luzern to Interlaken

Here are a few landscape pics by the Alps

Switzerland is such a beautiful country. Luzern is cut in half by a river

For this pic, taken on a covered bridge (hence the shadows) around 8am, a drunk teenager came up to us and asked if he could take our picture, assuring us he wouldn't steal the camera. Good people.

Sue's not usually such a tree-hugger, but she has her moments

The old town walls are largely intact, and we can go up some of the towers for great views

A statue on one of the lookout towers

The staircases tended to be narrow or spirally

Off the side of the town walls was a farm where one of the cows had birthed a few hours prior... The brown one was the newborn, big but with the umbilical cord still dangling.

One unique thing about Luzern is that a lot of the old squares have frescoed (fancily painted) buildings

Another is the lion rock sculpture, which Mark Twain called the most touching and sad rock sculpture in the world (which I think means more touching and sad than Mount Rushmore). Beautifully carved, and over 200 years old.