Mark's Europe Trip 2002

Firstly, please forgive any weird punctuation errors in this email - German keyboards are a little different!

I'm currently sitting in a Berlin Internet Cafe (just opposite Zoo Station - fellow U2 fans will appreciate that).&nbssp; The weather outside is probably

a little below zero today. The rest of the week was a little warmer, and certainly sunnier. No snow as yet.

The flight over was pretty ordinary - no sleep at all. In fact I managed over 48 hours without sleep before I finally got to bed on Tuesday night.
Berlin is 10 hours behind Melbourne, by the way.

We've seen lots of sights, the Berlin Philharmonic last night, the Erotik Museum today (!) and are going to see the Magic Flute tonight. We
depart Berlin for Weimar on Sunday. Ill try to write more when time permits.

Thank you for your kind responses to my previous mail. I am indeed having an enjoyable time. By the way, belated birthday wishes to Bruce, Skye and
Scott!

We are now in Weimar, with an Internet cafe conveniently located at the train station across the road from our very nice hotel. Have already used
up much time responding to a request for information from our friends at McDonald's (thanks for that one guys!), so this will be a quick one.

Today we journeyed on a day trip to historic Eisenach, birthplace of J. S. Bach. Saw many relevant sites, and also the Wartburg mediaeval castle, high
on a hill overlooking the town, dating back to the eleventh century. Tomorrow will be spent having a good look around Weimar.

Berlin was excellent - got some snow on our last day there, but none anywhere since.

More again later.
Enjoy the hot weather,
Cheers,
Mark
PS Mum - please ensure that Richmond's "performances" in the Ansett Cup competition can be recorded, at least in highlight form. The cold weather
here makes me miss the footy!

Since my last email, which I believe I may have sent from Weimar (last week? Starting to lose track of the days!), we have travelled to Leipzig, a large town (maybe size of Geelong) in central Germany, and Bayreuth, a much smaller town further south, before moving on by train here to Prague.

Features of Leipzig included their train station (largest passenger terminal in Europe), more old churches (including the one in which J.S. Bach wrote and performed most of his choral works and he's also buried there), performances of La Boheme and the Gewandhaus Orchestra (oldest civic orchestra in Europe, featuring renowned trumpeter Hakan Hardenberger playing the Haydn Trumpet Concerto), cheap schnapps, and finally a good dump of snow! We also took a day trip to Dresden, bombed to hell in WWII and still rebuilding (!), but they have some superb buildings and also an Australian cafe called the Ayers Rock (few photos taken there!).

We were only in Bayreuth for two nights, but managed to see yet another of Franz Liszt's houses (the one where he died), Richard Wagner's house, and Wagner's majestic Festspielhaus, high on a hill overlooking the town, which he built to stage his epic operas. I got to sit in the tuba seat in the specially designed orchestra pit! Once again, more snow. Travelling through the white German countryside by train is a real treat.

So now we are enjoying our second evening in Prague, the magnificient capital of the Cheque Republic. The scenery is quite breathtaking. And it's so cheap - had an excellent three course meal this evening for just about A$12 (at the highly-recommended Louvre Cafe!). Steins of beer for A$1! Cheap U2 bootleg CDs here too!! And I found a very nice big four rotary valve C tuba in a music store for 90,000 kuruna - sounds a lot but converts to just over A$4,000. Very cheap for such a tuba, but doubt I'll be wanting to cart it around by trains through Hungary and Austria.

The weather here though is the coldest we've experienced so far - don't think it's made it into the positive Cs yet - and though it hasn't snowed, there is a lot of snow lying around. We're in Prague until Saturday (Australia Day celebration tomorrow!), before departing for Budapest. Tomorrow night we see Swan Lake (not my choice but might as well see the ballet at least once in my life), Thursday we see a production of Don Giovanni by marionettes (puppets!), and Friday we see the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.

Everyone in the group continues to get on well, although it's more or less dividing into the oldies and the youngies (no, I am not in the oldies group). A few of the oldies are having the odd health problem but we youngies continue to thrive (we protect ourselves against the cold with decent quantities of beer and schnapps - I'm happy [or is it ashamed?] to say thatt I've turned about half of the younger group into regular schnapps drinkers!).

Anyway once again the Internet Cafe is not far away from the hotel here so I hope to be able to check again on your kind responses to my generic email before Saturday!

Apologies firstly for my lack of emails recently, but I have been unable to access an Internet terminal since my last email from Prague, due to unavailability of such resources in Budapest and Sopron, and a lack of time here in Vienna.

Since last I wrote, we said our fond farewells to the glorious Prague, before departing for a slightly warmer (but wetter) Budapest, where I managed to get plenty of washing done (finally!). You may be interested to know that I have the largest suitcase of anyone in the group thanks to my intolerance of having to do washing!

We departed Budapest for Sopron (also in Hungary, on the Austrian border) on Monday, and then arrived here in Vienna on Tuesday. Back to the German tongue again. The Czech language in Prague was OK to understand with my knowledge of Russian, Hungarian was absolutely mystifying (it's not even related to English), and we're getting better all the time with our German.

After seeing the Vienna Boys Choir here this coming Sunday, we depart for home, returning to Melbourne on Tuesday morning.

The weather in Vienna has been a revelation - we have been shedding our thick layers amidst the sun and 10°C temperatures. The return to the Australian summer will be a shock though, from what we've been hearing.

More magnificent buildings here in Vienna, and we're also seeing a lot of protests in the streets against a neo Nazi party which looks likely to be elected here (got some great photos and video footage).

Just a final message to let you all know that I’m safely back in the country after my four week European odyssey. Since arriving home on Tuesday, I have
been sleeping, dealing with the heat and jet lag thing, unpacking, washing, taking a souvenir inventory, and attending to the processing and cataloguing
of my 24 completed rolls of film. I return to work on Monday. Thank you to those who have already rung to welcome me home. I will get in touch as soon
as I can.

Obviously many of you will want to see the photos and hear all about my impressions of the trip. I will try to address the latter of these in this email. During our 29 days away, we stayed in four countries, passed through one other, and had flight transfers in four others. We stayed in or visited the following places:
Germany – Berlin, Potsdam, Luthenstadt-Wittenburg, Weimar, Eisenach, Leipzig, Dresden, Bayreuth
Czech Republic – Prague and surrounds
Hungary – Budapest, Sopron, Fertod
Austria – Vienna and surrounds, Salzburg

The highlights are many. I will try to summarise. Berlin appealed to me largely because of its 20th Century history – the Olympic Stadium, Berlin Wall (a piece of which I now own), rebuilt Reichestag Parliament, Trabant cars, and the relevance to U2's Achtung Baby album! Although sights such as the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin Cathedral and Victory Column have also provided
spectacular memories. I also enjoyed Germany’s very flexible TV censorship standards!

Our walk through Prague after dinner on our first night there revealed a truly magical city. There was simply so much to see. I intend to return there one day during a warmer season! Locations used in INXS videos filmed in the 80s such as the Jewish cemetery and National Theatre held special significance!

Amongst our visits to the smaller towns, the medieval Wartburg castle overlooking Eisenach stands out, as does my experience in the tuba seat of Wagner’s Festspielhaus orchestra pit in Bayreuth. Palaces in places like Potsdam, Fertod and Vienna’s magnificent Schonbrunn Schloss provided an amazing insight into the lives of European royalty. The ravages of World
War II still extend throughout much of Europe, and the skyline of places like Berlin are seemingly infested with cranes. Many of the spectacular buildings were saw have actually been restored or rebuilt since being damaged in WWII.

Panoramic views of Salzburg surrounded by snow-capped mountains will live long in my memories of Austria, as will walking in Beethoven’s footsteps through the Vienna forest, not to mention walking with anti-Nazi demonstrators in Vienna (two of our group also got caught up in the riots).

Along the way there were visits to Irish, English and Australian pubs, and in addition to sampling much local cuisine, schnapps and beer, we also visited McDonald’s stores in the four countries (all in the name of research, naturally). I have vivid memories of Berlin’s McBeer, Prague’s “Pepper McBacon”, Budapest’s Sajtburger (pronounced “Shiteburger”, meaning Cheeseburger), and standing in McDonald’s in central Vienna waiting to order alongside egg-stained riot police. Prague brought us the blessed relief of a Zinger at KFC. One dinner (and an opera) in Vienna was spent enjoying the company of Gustav Mahler’s granddaughter.

I had my first experiences of serious opera and ballet (although the opera performed by puppets was hardly serious, but certainly a highlight), and gained a much deeper appreciation of classical music and composers, thanks to our lectures, museum visits and concerts by the likes of the Berlin Philharmonic, Czech Philharmonic and Leipzig’s magnificent Gewandhaus Orchestra.

I experienced temperatures lower than I ever had: -13C in one place (and today’s 38C in Melbourne was certainly a shock, I can tell you!). I frolicked in the snow and built my first ever snowman. Travelling by train through the snowbound countryside while occupying ourselves with card games was also something I am unlikely to be able to re-enact here at home.

The lowlights were insignificant, but hey there are only two, so I might as well mention them while I’m at it: plane travel – it sucks. Europe is a very long way from here. You pretty much need four weeks there to get over the flight there. Luggage also sucks, especially when you have to drag it around onto trains to get to the next town having just bought yet another bag full of souvenirs in the previous town!

I have returned home sensing that time here seems to go slower. My best guess at this is that because our time overseas was filled with so much to see and comprehend (from the buildings to the street signs to the language) that we somehow extended that part of us that absorbs all of this (uh, the brain, I guess) to capture as much of it as we could. Back here now amongst familiar sights, sounds and smells it seems that time drags because there’s just so much less to fill it. I was watching TV on Tuesday night for what I felt must have been about half an hour – it was actually only ten minutes. But then maybe it’s just the jet-lag.

I will finish off now and thank you again for your thoughtful emails while I was away – receiving them meant a lot to me. I look forward to catching up with all of you to share my photos!