Berlin, Germany

From the Harz we had a trouble-free run in to Berlin although we did delay ourselves nearly an hour due to an unfortunate unintended ausfahrt early on, resulting in a not unenjoyable drive through rolling German farmland while finding our way back onto the autobahn.  After one final challenge, Berlin traffic on a Friday afternoon, we found the city-centre Avis agency and dropped off the mini Merc we’d picked up in Dresden.  It’s always a relief to return a hire car unscathed after driving through unfamiliar territory on the wrong side of the road.  From there we caught a tram to our hotel on Frankfurter Allee in the grungy suburb of Friedrichshain where graffiti seems still to be socially acceptable.

On Saturday we walked through the Brandenburg Gate, surrounded at the time by tents set up for the Gay Pride Day celebrations, and on past the Reichstag, the enormous German parliament building that’s been through a lot in its time.  Not surprisingly, many of Berlin’s tourist attractions are related to its World War II and subsequent Cold War histories.  We walked over the cleared block once the location of the Nazi Gestapo and SS Headquarters, and spent a long time in the excellent, though exhausting and unsettling, Topographie des Terrors Museum, now located on the site.  Suitably outraged at what we’d seen and read there, we went straight around the corner to Hitler’s bunker, but apparently he heard we were on the way and shot himself.  We ended our day with a wander through the strange, excellent Holocaust Memorial, a grid of 2,700 differently shaped dark concrete columns set on two hectares of sloping ground.      

Berlin became a divided city in 1961 after the communist-controlled east saw the need to erect a wall to prevent its own citizens from fleeing to the west, nearly three million of whom had already voted with their feet.  The wall finally came down in November 1989 – it doesn’t seem that long ago does it?  Only a few small sections remain as historical monuments – the longest is the so-called East Side Gallery that was adorned with paintings in the months after the Wall was breached.  We walked the 1.3 km length of the Gallery on Sunday after wandering through a flea market set up on a disused graffiti-covered industrial site near the Spree River.  A few kilometres on is well-known “Checkpoint Charlie”, one of the crossing points in the days of divided Berlin, and scene of a tense Cold War standoff between Soviet and US army tanks in October 1961.

We ended our time in Berlin on Tuesday night at Friedrichstadt Palast where we saw the sold-out blockbuster show Yma that wouldn’t have been out of place in Las Vegas.  It ran hot and cold but there were some excellent segments, all performed on an amazingly versatile stage.   

Zellerfeld, Harz Mountains, Germany

Four hours on the autobahn north of Bamberg brought us to the Hartz Mountains in Lower Saxony, in the heart of Germany.  The mountains cover an area 90 km long and 30 km wide and straddle what was previously the border between East and West Germany.  Mining for copper, silver and lead began here more than a thousand years ago with one of the principal mining centres being the twin town of Clausthal-Zellerfeld.  But this is just one of many small towns in the Harz region now cocooned within spruce forests and inter-connected by winding forest roads.  Two of the towns, Goslar and Quedlinburg, have been World Heritage listed due to their magnificent historical old town centres, their ancient “half-timbered” houses, and their nationally significant castles and palaces dating from the era when current day Germany was a collection of separate principalities ruled by Kings and Princes.

We based ourselves in the old-fashioned resort town of Bad Grund and spent a few days touring around the Harz.  We had a particular interest in Zellerfeld and returned there several times.  In the late 1840s the local mining industry fell on hard economic times; its underground mines had reached such depths that the costs of production were high and uncompetitive, at a time when world oversupply had depressed metal prices.  Zellerfeld was then within the Kingdom of Hanover and the Hanoverian authorities encouraged and assisted mining families to leave the Harz and emigrate overseas, particularly to South Australia.  One of those families was Heinrich and Friederike Spohr and their seven children.  It was obviously a huge, emotionally wrenching time in their lives – they knew when they set out that they would never see Zellerfeld or the Harz again, and their welfare in the new world was far from assured. But it was certainly good for me that they did make the voyage, for had they not, I would never have been born.  Heinrich and Friederike were my great-great grandparents.  Along with 260 other emigrants, the family set sail from Hamburg on 5 October 1854 on the sailing ship Johann Cesar and arrived at Port Adelaide 84 days later on 1 January 1855.

We spent a couple of hours inspecting the excellent Zellerfeld mining museum (“Oberharzer Bergwerksmuseum”), and on our last day in the Harz, chanced upon the Thursday night famers’ market underway in Zellerfeld as we passed through on our way back to Bad Grand after spending the day in Quedlinburg.  We stopped for awhile to mingle with the friendly Zellerfeld crowd and to try the roast pork and herb rolls, beer and apple strudel while listening to the enthusiastic nostalgia band performing in front of the museum.

Bamberg, Bavaria, Germany

Saturday morning in Dresden we picked up a Merc A160 and hit the Autobahn.  There were no speed limits but even this was too slow for many of the drivers who drove like there was no tomorrow, which for one or two of them I suspect there won’t be.  We were happy to let ourselves become “stuck” behind the slower vehicles in the inner lanes and move along at a more sedate 120.  Early on it seemed like there were many towns in Germany named ‘Ausfahrt’, but then we realized that must be German for ‘Exit’.  The road surface and signage were excellent, leading to a pleasant atmosphere inside the car, and we never once found ourselves Ausfahrting when we shouldn’t have.

We left the Autobahn after about three hours and motored into the perfect little medieval town of Bamberg in Bavaria, about 300 km south-west of Dresden.  The town centre is World Heritage listed, and deservedly so we thought.  The imposing ecclesiastical buildings and old palace are all in good repair, despite being centuries old.  The Cathedral of St Peter and St George dates from 1012 AD and contains the tomb of Clemens II, the Pope in Rome in 1046/47.  Although not German, he loved Bamberg and wanted to be buried here.

The streets of Bamberg are beautiful too, with neat characterful terrace houses decorated with window boxes full of colourful early summer flowers.  We spent the afternoon wandering around the town centre, looking around and in the buildings, before getting lost on the way back to our hotel with the result that our walk back was a few kilometres longer than it should have been.  But in the winding, elegant streets of Bamberg that didn’t matter. 

Dresden, Saxony, Germany

Leaving Prague wasn’t as straightforward as we expected.  We’d bought train tickets to Dresden, Germany, a few days before but when we arrived at the Prague railway station on Thursday morning we discovered a train strike had been called and all trains for the day were cancelled!  This wasn’t what we wanted to hear – it was warm and humid and we were lugging backpacks.  We spent the morning looking for alternatives and finally at the international bus station secured the last two tickets on a bus from Budapest scheduled to stop in Prague at 5pm on its way to Berlin via Dresden.  That gave us time for one last wander through Prague’s fantastic old town centre before returning to the bus station and ultimately getting into Dresden at 9.30pm, by which time we were both more than ready for a shower and lie down.

The famous baroque centre of Dresden was controversially destroyed by Allied bombing in the final months of World War II, but extensive rebuilding in the decades since has restored much of the city centre to its former magnificence.  We started our day in Dresden with a walk through the 1728 fortress Zwinger, then past the Semperoper (Opera House) to the Schloss, a huge palace now containing museums.  We inspected only one of the latter; Grunes Gewolbe (the Green Vault) filled with one of the world’s finest collections of jewel-encrusted objects including the world’s largest green diamond.  Outside we walked along the impressive Furstenzug, a 102 metre long tiled mural depicting a royal procession, before inspecting the interior of the Church of Our Lady, one of Germany’s greatest protestant churches.  Out the front there’s a large statue of Martin Luther.

There was quite a crowd of tourists in Dresden and we joined many of them for lunch along the cafe-lined streets running along the Elbe River that cuts Dresden in two, the old town centre to the south, the new town to the north.

Prague, Czech Republic

All the hype is justified – Prague is perhaps the most beautiful city in the world.  Our five days here rushed by as we went back and forth across the Vltava River to see the sights and experience some of what Prague has to offer.  We saw the usual tourist attractions like the enormous Castle complex that towers over the city, the fantastic old town square, and block after block of ornate, well-preserved buildings.   And there’s no shortage of things to do after dark too.  We saw a hot blues band in the grungy Pop Museum, the classy Prague Big Band at the Reduta Jazz Club, the show Black Box at the Image black light Theatre, and a classical music concert at the Spanish Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter.  Perhaps the best of the museums was the Convent of St Agnes dating from the 13th century, now housing the Czech National Gallery’s fabulous collection of Bohemian and Central European medieval art from the 13th to mid-16th centuries. 

Olomouc, Moravia, Czech Republic

These days centuries-old Olomouc in eastern Czech Republic is a laidback city of 100,000, home to the country’s second-oldest university and with an old town centre that rivals that in the capital Prague.  No matter in what direction you look, it’s beautiful – there’s none of the usual city ugliness to be seen.

Once a major religious centre, the city is dotted with huge cathedrals and seminaries from which art treasures up to 800 years old have been collected for safe-keeping and displayed at the magnificent Archdiocesan Museum located in what was the early 12th century Premysl Palace in Vaclavske Square.  The senior religious officials of old weren’t your usual modest suburban clerics; rather, they were affluent, powerful men, well-connected to the country’s royalty and no doubt with a well-developed sense of their own importance.  That much is clear from the painting hung in the museum depicting the celebratory arrival of Cardinal Ferdinand Julius Troyer von Troyerstein in Olomouc in 1783.  In the picture below, Cardinal Troyer is the man in the ostentatious gold coach passing Holy Trinity Column and headed towards the Town Hall.  Troyer’s Coach itself has been beautifully preserved and is displayed in the museum too.

We spent two days wandering around the attractive streets and winding alleyways leading off the town square, stopping here and there for a few minutes to listen to a few of the good street musicians.  On the first day we stood with umbrellas in the drizzle awaiting the performance of the small figures that emerge hourly from the Town Hall’s astronomical clock.  Later we poked our noses into a few of the cathedrals but tarried longer in St Moritz Cathedral to listen to an organ recital that by chance was underway as we walked past.  It was a big, powerful organ that’s used every September for an International Organ Festival and the organist was really putting it through its paces; only the audience’s gripping of the pews prevented the organ, and cathedral, from taking off.

In September 1767, eleven year old child prodigy Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was brought to Olomouc by his parents hoping to avoid the smallpox epidemic in Vienna.  But the journey was in vain: Mozart had already caught the potentially fatal infection and became seriously ill in Olomouc.  Hearing about it, Dean Leopold Podstatsky insisted that the Mozart family check out of the smoky Black Eagle Inn where they were staying and move into his own, much more upmarket residence.  The young Mozart was treated by the Bishop’s personal physician and after several weeks made a full recovery.  Part of that residence is now a restaurant, Hanacka Hospoda, with a reputation for its excellent Moravian meals.  We had dinner there on Friday, our last night in wonderful Olomouc.

By the way, although recuperating from a near-fatal dose of smallpox, 11 year old Mozart found the energy and motivation to make up a tune while he was laid up in Olomouc.   Mozart’s 6th Symphony!!!  Does the kid irritate you a bit too?

Wroclaw, Silesia, Poland

Like Krakow, Wroclaw boasts a beautiful town square that packs in the tourists, but unlike Krakow’s, it’s a re-creation after the near-total destruction of World War 2.  Before 1945 this was the German town of Breslau, but post-war border realignment resulted in the city becoming Polish territory.  The German residents were expelled and the city renamed Wroclaw; it was then re-populated with Polish people dispossessed by the Russians who had taken Polish territory in the East.

The town centre itself is reason enough to visit Wroclaw but we saw another sight which definitely makes the city a must-see destination if you’re in this part of the country.  When the dispossessed Polish people came from the East after the War, they brought with them a massive painting, the Panorama of Raclawicka, depicting the 1794 defeat of Russian forces by the Polish peasant army.  Measuring 114 metres long and 15 metres high, the 360 degree painting was finally displayed in 1985, following decades of refusal by the communist authorities for it to be seen by the public (given that it involved a Russian defeat at the hands of the Poles).  It’s now beautifully installed in a purpose-built circular hall in Wroclaw and to say that it’s stunning is perhaps an understatement.  Photographs don’t do it justice – you need to be there to appreciate the feeling of immersion in the countryside surrounded by the battle.  We’ve seen nothing more impactful on our trip.  Definitely don’t miss this if you visit Wroclaw.       

One of the striking images travelling through Poland is the sight of the cemeteries.  Everywhere they’re covered with fresh, bright flowers – hence a profusion of flower markets as well.