Berlin

We have left the Czech republic and via Dresden, have arrived in Berlin.

The Loisium in Austria was by far the best thing I have done for ages - almost worth skipping Viernna for! And a free glass of Vino at the end (see below for the Loisium link).

Czech was good, but not really that much cheaper any more - rotten free market economies!

Dresden was good but weather hit high 30´s, so not much good for sightseeing. Lots of hanging out by fountains...

But the camping here at Berlin is on the nicest lake, so a swim this arvo (and high 20´s weather) has made things great. No surfing tho!

Will post some photos soon, cheers and love to all,
Sambo and P.

bye bye Wien

Went into Vienna but starting to get sick of the big city stuff. Sacher torte from the Sacher hotel was a nice thing to do though..

Off to Prague tomorrow, and here

Will post some pics soon.

sambo

oh, did i mention we went here and here last week? better do more photos soon.

gooden avond...

In Wien

We're in Vienna! I can get wireless internet access in the camper if I sit in the back of the camper and bow twice to >

Time is flying.

Yesterday we went to the spa from hell in the Austria, this is defintely a great industry to be in. There was a nudist are on the rooftop though. Hmmm...

Please excuse my typos, connection drops out often. You get the gist...

Thanks heaps for everyones emails!

The hills are alive.. Dah dada dummm...

uhoh, who's driving?

Our camping at the base of the thermal spa

We took a detour south into the Viennese mountains. We managed to find Bad Gastein via google. Check it out here http://www.felsentherme.com/

View from the back of the camper in Salzburg

Interesting name for a boutique store, but i dont think it would be a big hit back home...

More trick fountains at Salzburg palace.

Surpirse for the dinner guests! The palace was built by a priest who also happened to be from the Italian Borromeo dynasty (so much for the separation of church and state). I'm not sure what the psychoanalysts would have sais about this one, but it must have been funny to see all the aristocacy get wet in their fine garb a few hundred years back!

Salzburg palace and trick fountains

More champagne camping, this time in Salzburg. The campground also has a restaurant. We bowled up in shorts and tshirt expecting Pizza vs Pasta and got something deserving of a Michelin star for a quarter of the price.

We visited Innsbruck's main ski jump overlooking town. Not for all the money on earth...

More schnapps?

Yep. From up there. I used to appreciate Alicia Camplin for all the wrong reasons :)

View from the ski jump

Innsbruck is so great to visit. So well laid out and the old is blended so well with the new. As much as it has been nice to see the heritage here, we have finally hit some contemporary architechture seeded in amongst the older sights.

We visited the Alpenzoo in Innsbruck - was great fun. These cheeky goats were content to graze on the roof of their pen!

Just outside the campground is some mountain thingies, ranging from 2500m to about 4000m in height (or about 5 Ballarat altitudes - brrr).

After hoofing it all day from the Ferrari centre in Maranello, we are in Innsbruck. You cant see the bit up above the mountain because it's all snow!

Well today I managed to make it to the the shrine of automotive continuous refinement. The car is the machine that changed the world, and the Ferrari is the machine that changed cars.

I digressed.

The Ferrari visitors centre in Maranello, just outside Modena. A bit disappointing as it's mostly Formula One (merchandised on socks and jocks here just as our own bogan chocolate vs vanilla supercars series back home).

But the passenger models I saw were pretty inspiring, except for the new Enzo model, which is like a return to the god awful 80's shapes of supercars (and pretty much where lamborghini is still at - but i didnt say that).

A spare body casting painted up for the rabble folk to sit on outside...

A tribe of Austrians all arrived out of nowhere with their alpenhats. Could be any old "random hat night" in my dad's workshop :)

The good old days of Formula One. No billion dollar merchandising of tshirts here. Just a whiteknickled ride thru history...

A chance to walk around a Scaglietti. The first 4 seater family car with 500odd horsepower.

Ferrari heritage from the ugly eighties, when the designers took inspiration from hacking angles out of lumps of cheese in their knitted ties and fingerless gloves whilst listening to soft cell..

Ferrari heritage in Maranello

The central fountain from Bologna.

Bologna also has the most beautiful medievel centre with all kinds of influences from thru-out the ages.

Hmm, if you focus carefully you can make out the words 'equine' above the butchers.... Bologna is the king of food...

Oh mine god, if you eat, go to Bologna. It's not about the famous spaghetti. Any market stall here is absolutely photo quality. It's like some kind of reprisal against the insanity of the Atkins diet...

Well if you though the smart car was cool its already been invented, the Fiat500 came out decades ago. Which leads us to another cool invention - the Apecar. Based on a motorbike format with 3 wheels these are all the go at wineries (Laurel - take note!).

These little smart cars are a hit here. Australia is getting a name for iteself as a place where people own gas guzzling cars. A pity we havent taken up on the smart car more. These ones have a blokes hairy legs on one side and a high heeled uberbabe's legs on the other, so it looks quite funny to see them driving past in suits with board shorts and hairy legs!!!

YAY! I have a laptop connection! No more whacky qwertv keyboards! San Marino is a small independant state within Italy started by a stonecutter in exile some gazillion years ago. Who are we fooling, its an excuse to buy duty free booze and cop a view of the surrounding areas. Except on these days when it is bucketing down.

Innsbruck, Austria

We have had a nice day walking in Innsbruck and visiting an animal zoo (better sized than the one in Genoa!)

Last night was a bit of a disaster, we were awoken at 4.30am by a bunch of teenagers with doof doof stereos, so we got up for a walk, showered, and had breakfast. All by about 7am. Bit sleepy now!

Have heard some funny quotes in the last two days. One would be "I havent seen many americans around here". Were both puzzled as to what they might look like. Sure know how they sound though...

The other was at the internet cafe. A man was looking over another fella´s shoulder, and said "I´m just checking to see if the keyboard types English". perhaps he was expecting Kanji or Sanskrit in Austria.

Dont forget to email us and let us know what you´ve been doing, or what´s in the news at home...we are getting sick of listening to a few low key tourists in order to keep things interesting!

Time to go have a good sleep now the drunk kids have been ejected.

S&P.zzzzzzzzzzzz

Surprise! ja!

We are in Austria!

So inspirational was the visit to the ferrari visitors centre in Maranello today that we´ve legged it 350km to Innsbruck Austria.

Another country, another keyboard. Bye bye qwerty, hello qwertz!

Bye bye pizza vs pasta every single night, hello schnitzels. Where are you eggy?

There is so much to do here, but we think we´ve stumbled across another local 3day long weekend, so we´ll see. Paula has this slightly absent look on her face, may have something to do with the Swarovski centre being our next stop. Time to hide the Amex card.

Must go and scoff a schnitzel (kezboard equivalent = schnityel) and schnapps.

Ciao!
uh oh, was just getting good at basic italian.

Ok, we have some photos!

Here's what we've been doing for the last two weeks. Theres a lot of photos, so apologies for anyone on dial up connections.

Heres what the outside world looks like...

Sambo.

Medieval gate in Assisi.

Gorgeous little backstreets in Assisi.

The original church of St Francis in Assisi. A beautiful hilltop town at night without the tourist hordes (okay, thats a little hypocritical i realise).

Matera was a hill town carved out of the rockface (see way down below for the story).

Southest corner of Italy feels more like the middle east desert than Italy. Guess its not far away.

Patriotic bumper stickers.

At 11pm last night fireworks just started happening from in front of our cliff campsite. Magical with the castle and ocean as a backdrop.

Taken from inside the camper at Sorrento, at the edge of the Amalfi coast.

Ancient greek tomstone from Paestum signifying diving into the unkown afterlife.

Ancient Paestum greek site predating Roman settlement of italy.

Entrance to the Paestum site. Nice house if you can swing it! Across the road is a buffalo mozzarella farm. Guess it's pizza tonight then.

This was our campsite on the beach next to the ancient greek ruins of Paestum.

Pizza or pasta is the choice every night. On this night its pizza. Low carb diets? Not here!

Pompeii was so much bigger than I expected. A big city. Feral dogs loose everywhere made you fell very sad. At ten euros admission each (15 aussie dollars) someone really ought to put a program together to help the poor things. Very sad indeed.

The house of Pan unearthed at Pompeii.

The swiss guards from the Vatican. I'm not too sure they feel very tough in those pantaloons.

Another piece of Bernini's genius from inside St Peter's basilica.

Camping in a place the size of a football field on the outskirts of rome when these guys pull up dead next to us and erect a tent at 11.30 pm on the night before the photo was taken. Happy? Bet not!