Europe 2019

July - September 2019

This trip has been in the making for several years, with the stars finally aligning to make it possible, and the first payment made 18 months ago. Read more

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Traveler Europe 2019
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- Aug 6, 2019, 8:00am
- ⛅ 20 °C
- Altitude: 97 m
- Croatia Zagreb County Mičevec Zagreb Airport 45.73524, 16.0622945°44’7” N 16°3’44” E
Day 16
Time to fly
August 6, 2019 in Croatia ⋅ ⛅ 20 °C
Look! Up in the air! Is it a bird, is it a plane? Yes, it's a plane, an A380 but it's not ours. It's Etihad Airways Paris to Dubai, flying over Zagreb. Ours is just a tiny jet way out on the tarmac, we need a bus to get there. At least it's a step up from the propeller plane of our last flight.

Farewell Zagreb. Next stop Copenhagen.

After that, we have another short flight powered by propellers (we may all have to pedal to keep it in the air), and when we finally head for home, it's our turn for an A380.Read more
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- Aug 6, 2019, 11:00pm
- ⛅ 18 °C
- Altitude: 5 m
- Denmark Capital Region Copenhagen municipality Sundbyvester Amager Fælled 55.65218, 12.5939455°39’8” N 12°35’38” E
Day 16
Copenhagen
August 6, 2019 in Denmark ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C
The first things you notice about Copenhagen-
There are nicely separated bike lanes on almost all the roads.
There are cyclists in the bike lanes everywhere.
There are bikes everywhere.
Nearly all women, I mean people, are blonde.
People are taller here.
It's expensive.

Of, course, we had to drop by the palace to say gday to Princess Mary but sadly, she wasn't home.Read more
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- Aug 9, 2019, 12:00pm
- ⛅ 21 °C
- Altitude: 7 m
- Sweden Skåne Malmo Malmö Central Station 55.60941, 13.0016855°36’34” N 13°0’6” E
Day 19
Lunch in Malmo
August 9, 2019 in Sweden ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C
It's only a short trip across The Bridge so why not?

The bridge linking Denmark with Sweden starts as an underwater tunnel so as not to interfere with air traffic at Copenhagen airport next door. It emerges into an island and then goes over the shipping lane before landing in Sweden on the outskirts of Malmo. The top deck is roadway with the railway beneath. The Bridge is a Danish/Swedish crime series you can find on SBS.

Next to the bridge is a massive wind farm. Perhaps we should be telling them a massive smoke belching coal power station is far more aesthetic.Read more
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- Aug 10, 2019
- ⛅ 22 °C
- Altitude: 18 m
- Germany Hamburg Hohenfelde Alster 53.56279, 10.0189653°33’46” N 10°1’8” E
Day 20
Anyone for a Hamburger?
August 10, 2019 in Germany ⋅ ⛅ 22 °C
Next stop Hamburg.

Booking the train trip was rather confusing for an amateur due to track construction work so we opted to fly. After a propeller plane across the Alps to Zagreb, a small jet to Hamburg and now another propeller plane to Hamburg, all parking a bus trip away from the terminal building, I am looking forward to getting back to real aeroplanes. Our next plane will be a bit bigger - an A380.

There are things you must do in Hamburg, including:
Reeperbahn in St Pauli, famous for its nightclubs where the Beatles played in their formative years, and its other "night" clubs.
Curried sausages.
Its biggest tourist attraction- Miniatur Wunderland.

And things well worth doing, such as:
Relax a bit watching the boats on Alster Lakes while the live jazz band plays at the cafe.
See the uglier side of war (it's all ugly, some of it really ugly). Hamburg was almost completely blown off the planet in the last days of WW2.Read more
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- Aug 12, 2019
- ⛅ 21 °C
- Altitude: 12 m
- Germany Hamburg HafenCity Sandtorhafen 53.54391, 9.9886253°32’38” N 9°59’19” E
Day 22
The real reason for Hamburg
August 12, 2019 in Germany ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C
Okay, I confess. The real reason for visiting Hamburg was one of Germany's biggest tourist attractions, Miniatur Wunderland - the world's biggest model railway.

They have scenes based on locations in Hamburg, other parts of Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and USA, with Monaco and Provence, France under construction.

Whilst there are many railway, town and countryside scenes excellently modelled, one of the big highlights is the airport where planes leave their terminal, taxi to the runway and then take off, disappearing into the sky, while other planes descend from the sky, onto the runway and taxi to the terminal.

They have just announced they are building a bridge across a canal (a real one) to extend Wunderland to another old warehouse across the canal. There, they will be doing scenes of South America.Read more
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- Aug 13, 2019
- 🌧 15 °C
- Altitude: 32 m
- Germany Hamburg Neustadt St. Michaelis ("Michel")53.54823, 9.9790553°32’54” N 9°58’45” E
Day 23
Hamburg 3
August 13, 2019 in Germany ⋅ 🌧 15 °C
As well as the Beatles trail, model trains and planes and sausages, Hamburg has some other strange food, some buildings that survived the WW2 blitz and some restored.

It also has good bike paths for getting around town on 2 wheels and plenty of people doing just that. What I liked best about the bike lanes in Hamburg is there always seems to be one there when you need it - at intersections and other dangerous places. This is the direct opposite to Melbourne where they disappear when you need it most, dumping you into a car lane to fend for yourself when it is most dangerous.Read more
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- Aug 14, 2019
- ⛅ 18 °C
- Altitude: Sea level
- Netherlands North Holland Gemeente Haarlemmermeer Amsterdam Airport Schiphol 52.3093, 4.7620852°18’33” N 4°45’43” E
Day 24
Europe by rail
August 14, 2019 in the Netherlands ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C
This is our first, multi-leg rail trip in Europe, quite a logistical challenge for a beginner. 4 legs, three changes. How long do you need for changes? How hard is it to find the right platform? How do I find my carriage? How do I make sense of signs and announcements that are in foreign languages? What if a train is late and we miss the next connection? Arrrrgh!

Cross your fingers and pray. I have put my faith in my travel God, I mean travel consultant, the man in seat 61 (seat61.com). I have used this site once before, though for simple trips. So far, every thing has fallen into place just as he said it would.

Just before leaving Croatia, I received an email (because I registered like the man in seat 61 said to) from the German railway, in German of course, saying my journey has been changed. ARRRGH!!!

Luckily that was sorted out once I reached Hamburg. Apparently there is track maintenance work in the Netherlands so trains can't get through to Amsterdam.

So now we have 5 legs and 4 train changes.

First leg, a high speed German ICE train from Hamburg. Finding our carriage was easy, finding our seat was more challenging. It turned out we had a 6-seat compartment to ourselves. How did we score this? Is it really ours? I think we got special privileges booking as seniors, though our compartment filled at the next stop, the only stop before our change point. I had noticed on the train carriage map on the platform (where you find out whereabouts on the platform your carriage will be, just like the man in seat61 said) that our carriage had provisions for people with special requirements. I hadn't expected that included us.

First stop is Osnabruck, to switch to the slower, IC train from Berlin, on its way to Amersfoort, NL. The change was easily handled in well under the 18 minutes we had. The train arrived a few minutes late and away we went.

The train stopped for what seemed quite a long while at Bad Bentheim This was the last stop before leaving Germany, into the Netherlands. I figured out when we reached Amersfoort that they had replaced the red German loco with a yellow and blue Dutch one for the Dutch part of the leg.

Confidence grew after the first successful change, knowing that it would be easier from there on, and indeed it all fell into place nicely.

We have several more train trips in the month ahead. This first trip was the most complex so the rest should be easy peasy, but I will still cross my fingers and pray and follow directions from seat61.com.Read more
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- Aug 15, 2019
- 🌧 20 °C
- Altitude: Sea level
- Netherlands North Holland Gemeente Amsterdam De Wallen 52.37346, 4.8990952°22’24” N 4°53’57” E
Day 25
Amsterdam is .....
August 15, 2019 in the Netherlands ⋅ 🌧 20 °C
Amsterdam is.... well, Amsterdam.

They have some rather different museums to other cities.
A cow museum, a torture museum (Zagreb also has one of these), a sex museum, a prostitution museum (sorry, no pictures), an erotic museum (sorry again) and a hash, marijuana and hemp museum. No, we didn't visit any of them.

There are shops that sell special cakes and have burly bouncers at the door. At the street market and other places, they sell cannabis ice cream, lollipops and jelly beans. I have no idea whatsoever what they do with cannabis condoms.

The ladies in their undies in the little shop windows are not modelling lingerie.

Then there's the, umm, toy shops.

This is Amsterdam.Read more
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- Aug 16, 2019 UTC
- ⛅ 20 °C
- Altitude: 4 m
- Netherlands North Holland Gemeente Amsterdam De Wallen Rembrandtplein 52.36599, 4.896652°21’58” N 4°53’48” E
Day 26
Amsterdam is also ...
August 16, 2019 in the Netherlands ⋅ ⛅ 20 °C
Amsterdam is also a city of culture and beauty with a mix of modern lifestyle.

Of all the famous paintings in all the famous museums and galleries to which I've been, which admittedly isn't many, the one painting that has left a permanent impression on me is Rembrandt's Night Watch. Below the statue of Rembrandt pictured here (I hope he's impressed by the arty farty, laid back angle I've used), are statues depicting his Night Watch scene.

The Netherlands has a lot of bikes, I'm sure more bikes than people, including all the tourists.

Amsterdam and other parts of the Netherlands have a lot of canals.

Both the above are aided by Holland not having any hills.

It's easy to find a good drink in Amsterdam as long as it's not coffee you drink.Read more
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- Aug 17, 2019
- ☁️ 19 °C
- Altitude: Sea level
- Netherlands South Holland Leiden Galgewater 52.16135, 4.4819952°9’41” N 4°28’55” E
Day 27
Lovely Leiden
August 17, 2019 in the Netherlands ⋅ ☁️ 19 °C
Leiden was a pleasant surprise. A smaller town between Amsterdam and The Hauge, it is very pretty, very Dutch, very old yet very modern.

Everybody rides bikes everywhere. Whether going to the station, going to the supermarket, going to work, going out for dinner or just going out with friends, you go out on your bike.

Except for one meal that was a poor choice, our meals here were very good, some of our best so far.

We even found a hill in Leiden, perhaps the biggest hill in Holland, though it was man-made about 900 years ago, I say about because it took about 100 years to build, and then they built a castle on it.Read more
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