Archive August 2009

A week in Saxony

August 22, 2009 in My Photos, Photography, Travels

Happy weekend folks! I already mentioned it in my last post about my trip to London & South East England that I had some trouble with my tickets last week… so here’s the story:

After coming back from London I wanted to stay in Chemnitz for two nights where my travel buddy lives. But it came different. That saxony girl made me change my booking to stay two nights longer. And then I lost my ticket… and the next cheap tickets were available after the weekend only. So I stayed in Chemnitz for a full week. The weather was great, we had a lot of fun and I got to see a lot of Saxony. (I had only been to Leipzig before)
I of course got to see Chemnitz, which is a pretty nice city… but I’d prefer Frankfurt the Castle of Augustusburg close to Chemnitz, the National Park Saxon Switzerland, the Castle of Pillnitz which is close to Dresden and of course Dresden itself. There was a city festival going on in Dresden with some bands playing (Peter Fox gave a big concert) so the streets were very full.

I didn’t take many pictures, but here are a few snapshots that show where we’ve been Read more…

London & South East England

August 18, 2009 in My Photos, Photography, Travels

Hey folks, after my Trip to Egypt a few weeks ago, I just got back from my (actual) trip to London. You can find some saving tips for London on the bottom of the post. If you just want to see the pics you can find the Set or the Slideshow on Flickr.
On this trip I also played around with the video function of my D90 for the first time.

My journey started on Friday the 7th of August at 5:30am. I took a train to Frankfurt Central Station where I had to catch an ICE heading towards Chemnitz with a change to a local train in Nuremberg. I arrived in Chemnitz at 12pm where a friend picked me up. We headed towards Altenburg Airfield (Yes, that’s field. Not port!) at about 6pm and took a RyanAir flight to London Stanstead for just 10€ incl. all taxes.
At about 21:45 London time we arrived in Stanstead and passed security after another 60 minutes. We took a bus to Victoria Station and headed towards Heathrow Airport using the District and Piccadilly Lines… Arrived at the Heathrow Terminal 1-2-3 Station at about 1am the next day… There were no busses operating at that time, so we first wanted to walk(!) to our Hotel – the Sheraton Heathrow Airport hotel. But we abandoned that idea very quickly, took a taxi and arrived at the Hotel at about 2am after 23h of being awake. “2 Adults, 1 Child. Is that correct?” Errrrr, nope!!! …

The night was short, we already got back up at 7am, because we had less than 36h for sightseeing in London. My travel buddy did such a great job (she’s already been to London several times), that even though there was a lot of maintenance work going on on the Underground, she managed to get us to all the important sights on the first day.

London Underground Maintenance Notice

Jubilee Line: Completely suspended.
District Line: Part suspended.
Circle Line: Completely suspended.
Victoria Line: Part suspended.
All other lines were operating in good service. (Heck yes and they were crowded!)
In daylight we managed to see Read more…

My highest Phone bill ever!

August 6, 2009 in Daily Life

Today I received my highest phone bill ever!

Almost 100€ just for roaming my 3 SMS, 2 calls with a whooping 6 minutes total and 2.5Mb (yeah Megabyte) of GPRS traffic in Egypt. You really made my day T-Mobile!

Well, nevertheless I’m really looking forward to my short-trip to London tomorrow
Take care and enjoy the last few weeks of summer.