Hotel Myo Wenceslas

After our epic expedition from München to Praha, Hotel Myo Wenceslas was fortunately within merely strolling distance from Praha Hlavní Nádraží.

And in a world first for any hostelry marketed on www.booking.com, it is as good and better than the photos would entice us to believe.

What. A. Treat.

You can see it from the outside thanks to Google by clicking here.

And the all-you-can-eat buffet breakfast is an epicurean’s delight, with a spread of sweet and savoury victuals stretching from one end of the city to the other. And beyond. Literally.

German Unity Day

We arrived by bus in Cham to a deserted railway station.

Cham lies within the Cham-Furth lowland, which is bordered on the south by the Bavarian Forest and on the north by the Oberpfälzer Wald. The city lies on the Regen River, which joins the Danube at Regensburg.

source: https://www.alltrails.com/germany/bavaria/cham

We went for a walk - our minds trying to find an explanation for the deserted streets and closed shops - my imagination went into overdrive - zombie invasion was on the top of my list - Les Revenants  coming to the front of my mind - I could picture the town people hiding in their homes, peering behind curtains through their windows - would we be their saviours?

source: https://www.theguardian.com

But no, no zombies, we found out later everything was closed due to public holiday.

German Unity Day commemorates the German reunification in 1990 and is traditionally celebrated with a festival around Platz der Republik, Straße des 17. Juni and the Brandenburg Gate. In 2023, there will be no festival. October 3rd is the Day of German Unity and a nationwide public holiday.

Note to self - try to avoid travelling on public holidays.

Transit woes

“Aaaaaah, do you know the situation??? There is construction near the border, so your train can’t run”.

“Hmmm. So what do we do?”

“Well it’s now a twelve-and-a-half hour journey… you take a train to Munich Airport, from there you take the train to Regensburg, and then change onto another train to Schwandorf. After that, a bus to Cham, then a train to Furth im Wald, where a bus will take you across the border to Plzen, and then train to Beroun and then another train to Praha…”.

We did that, kind of, with interminable waits at the ghost town of Cham and then Furth im Wald, the latter compounded by the bus driver’s election to depart ten minutes earlier than scheduled much to the fury of some of our fellow travellers, resulting in an unscheduled bus-trip to Domazlice and a train to Plzen…

But we did meet some interesting and generous folks along the way. And spent some unexpected time in quirky destinations, where - if we were Michael Portillo - we might have thrown a pot or fashioned an instrument from some material we had excavated by hand from a mine deep below the town.

Hablar español en Alemania

Who would have thought I would have to wait to be in a beer hall at the Oktoberfest in Munich to speak Spanish with a Chilean !! Sometimes life throws the unexpected at tu but today was that day - sitting in a beer hall at the Oktoberfest a family of four joined our table - they were from Chile ! My 606 days of Duolingo Spanish jumped into overdrive !! Yo hablo español !! I couldn’t believe it !! I am so happy I love Oktoberfest, Munich and Duolingo !! I could converse in Spanish with a Chilean mother of three whose son was studying at a university in Munich !!

Me encanta español !!

Oktoberfest II

I read once upon a time that twenty-twenty cricket, itself a derivative of Test and then 60 and 50 over cricket, would eventually devolve into a zero over contest, during which both teams would emerge from the players’ race to acknowledge a stadium full of partying fans. It seems that the excellent people of Munich have managed to get the same destination without any cricket at all. And with much better costumes.

As Neil Diamond might say: so good (so good, so good, so good).

Oktoberfest

Forget Mercedes, VW, Bosch, Adidas and Aldi - they all pale into insignificance. Why (oh why) isn’t Germany exporting Fischsemmel - it would be a gold mine !

Smokey baked salmon on a fresh roll with mayonnaise and lettuce !!

€9 a go, and crackerjack value

We arrived in Munich tired and hungry so the obvious thing for us to do in our state of weariness (🤔)  was walk to Oktoberfest to have a look around and find dinner. It was easy follow the crowds. Germans certainly know how to party! I would estimate 60% were dressed in the traditional lederhosen and dirndl - beer halls were full of people, drinking beer, standing on benches and singing in unison - it was such a fun joyful vibe you couldn’t help but love them!!

Neun minuten

Nine minutes was always going to be tight. To alight from a busy train, replete with luggage, and then traverse across nine platforms even on the simplest concourse to then board another train in the space of nine minutes: tell Deutsche Bahn they’re dreaming.

And despite choofing along at speeds in excess of 300 km/h, the task became even more onerous when we departed Strasbourg with the accompanying announcement that we had suffered a coincidentally nine minute delay “due to a technical issue that had now been fixed”. The gap grew to 14 minutes by Karlsruhe and 15 by Stuttgart: ICE 517 was (we were told as we rolled into Stuttgart) unfortunately unable to wait for us.

As a result, we took our chances reservationless on ICE567, half an hour or so later, and resided in the lobby space where the doors exist and the wagons connect for the full two hour trip to Munich. It was a zoo: CrazyTown on a train.

But we made it to Munich. And to our hotel at Sendlinger-Tor. And then to Octoberfest.

Au revoir Paris

The day started well. Another early morning run in Paris this time on my own. I set out to make my way to the Louvre but the maze of streets got the better of me and I headed straight out and back past Gare de Nord and Gare de l’Est. I thoroughly enjoyed my run feeling quite brave running the dark streets of Paris on my own along with the street cleaners and many other Parisians who were starting their day or ending their night.

Back to the hotel to pack, today we leave for Munich.

Aussi Paris

Only the irrepressibly puerile would express disappointment that the Musée de Lingerie is not actually called that and has no connection at all to Victoria’s Secret: the Musée de l'Orangerie is in fact a building full of paintings, some of them by Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir.

The big attractions that would surely populate any “I’ve been to Paris” KPI checklist are Monet’s Nymphéas (Water Lillies) murals, which are surprisingly large with just four to a room, but my favourite exhibits here are comfortably Argenteuil (Monet) and Fraises (Renoir). Others that caught my eye were an angular effort by Picasso called Grande nature morte that reminds me of Lee Mingwei’s Gernika in Sand project that appeared on the floor of Brisbane’s GOMA in 2008; Paul Cézanne’s Portrait de Madame Cézanne; André Derain’s Le Joueur de mandoline; and Maurice Utrillo’s Rue du Mont-Cenis, which is notable both because the white elements in the painting ‘pop’ on account of the plaster that the artist used and because we coincidentally had run down this street earlier on during an 11 km self-consciously Strava-wanker exercise that took in Montmartre Cemetery, L’Etoile, Champs-Élysées, Place de la Concord, Opéra and Montmartre.

On a much bigger scale than the Musée de l'Orangerie, albeit for the same €12 entry fee, is the Musée d’Orsay, housed on several levels (+5 being the top floor) in an old railway station next to the Seine, and it was the scene of our afternoon, incorporating heaps of Vincent Van Gogh and some more helpings of Monet and Renoir.

Selected artworks from the Musée de l'Orangerie and the Musée d’Orsay

Notably, while surrounded by so many great works, taking a selfie in front of the inside of the great glass clock with Montmartre in the distant background seemed to be more popular with the hordes.

No Whistler’s Mother though, which after seeing that Paul had given us Mrs Cézanne this morning just takes us back to being disappointed. Perhaps it is beyond repair after the damage caused to it by Mr Bean?

Paris

A morning run with views of the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and Avenue des Champs-Élysées and we were not the only runners out there quite a few in fact along with cyclists, street cleaners - the streets were wet !! We ran past a bar which appeared to be still open from the night before there were cafe tables out on the pavement with people drinking and chatting - drinking beers not coffees.

A day spent out on the rues de Paris, visits to two museums to see the amazing water lilies and many other fantastic paintings along with the crowds - museums are popular in Paris !! No reason to ask why !

On a break between museums we took a leisurely stroll along the Seine to Notre Dame rebuilding works are on going but it seems according to the Friends of Notre Dame de Paris website that significant progress has been made in the restoration of Notre-Dame Cathedral. Almost 1,000 workers are involved in the efforts, both on-site and in workshops across France. Scaffolding is being removed in phases, and the Grand Organ, stained-glass windows, and wrought iron railings have undergone restoration. Key structural elements like vaults and buttress walls have been repaired or replaced. The timber framework for the nave and choir is being prepared in workshops for future installation. The reconstruction of the iconic spire has also commenced. Overall, the progress report indicates steady advancement towards the cathedral’s complete restoration.

Our total day was 34 717 steps - that explains why we are exhausted !

Day one cont’d

Flight EK075 prolongs our day further by delivering us further west at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle, but can’t keep pace with the rotating earth: it’s gone 8 pm local time when rubber touches asphalt, and close to 10 pm by the time both our bags, apparently separated in transit, have been spewed into the chaos of the carousel.

It’s a short journey à pied to the driverless shuttle which takes us two stops to the Roissypole RER train station and a short wait for the trip to Gare du Nord. Which is hummingly busy. We then take Metro line 4 to Marcadet–Poissonniers, and change once for a one stop trip on Metro line 12 to Jules Joffrin in Montmartre.

Around 11 pm local time, we are checked in, around 34 elapsed hours after we departed home.

2nd leg

Glitz, glamour, lots of everything and ten dollar cups of coffee, we arrive after at Dubai airport after our 14hr flight. Transiting through Dubai airport is an eye opener - it is an airport on steroids. After lifts, escalators and stairs we find our departure gate boarding an Airbus 380-800 to Paris. The Airbus 380 is the world’s largest passenger airliner, it has two full length decks with wide body dimensions - it certainly felt spacious. The highlight of the flight was the landing which was smoooooth, I was impressed. After landing, time started to slowdown, and I realised how tired I was: it was a long trip getting out of the plane, out of the airport, onto the train and then the metro, but finally we made it out into the streets of Paris. We are here and it is lovely.

Day one - stasis

Travelling back in time, departed Brisbane at 2:50am travelled for 14 hours arrived Dubai 11:30am. Brisbane airport at 2am in the morning was a ghost town except for the 300 odd passengers boarding the Emirates Boeing 777 - a long range, twin engine, widebody commercial airliner. Fun Fact : It is the world’s largest twinject plane **Correct at time of publishing. It has a range from 5000 - 9000 nautical miles approx. Just in case anyone asks ! Our flight was surprisingly comfortable, event free (thank goodness) and dare I say - relaxing. There is is something to be said for travelling at ungodly hours.

Europa 2023

What started out as a simple road safety case study progressed to presentation of a poster at the XXVII World Road Congress in Prague; a Marathon in Budapest; Oktoberfest in Munich; Monet’s waterlilies at the Musee de l’Orangerie; a bike ride down the Danube from Vienna to Bratislava; a remembrance at Auschwitz; a train ride across the bridge from Copenhagen to Malmo; a study of active transport in the Netherlands; a crossing of the North Sea; and trains, trains and more trains across England to visit our much loved families, all ending with a Singapore Sling in Raffles Bar before boarding a flight back home. This is that story…

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