Travels
Czech Republic – Final conclusion
What has started as a 10 day road-trip from eastern Germany trough the Czech Republic, Austria and maybe Switzerland back to western Germany ended after just two days in Prague. On the first day we visited Karlovy Vary and drove to Prague on day two. But in Prague some ************* have smashed a windows and broke into our car and stole every single piece of clothing I own, my girlfriend’s laptop, my tripod, the car radio, ball pens, old shoes, some coverings, the drink holder…
We called the Czech police. They didn’t care, they didn’t come. They didn’t let us file a charge. 2500€ lost. No insurance will cover it. The car was that damaged, we had to abort the trip. Not that I wanted to continue, without any clothing.
I didn’t like the Czech people in the first place. They were rude, they all didn’t give a crap about anything. Several times my tripod has almost been knocked over. Every time we had a question the officials pretended they didn’t speak English or German or whatever.
I write this post just to put it all behind. Karlovy Vary and Prague are nice cities, I’ve been there the second time now (this time just to take photos), but they won’t see me again. Ever.
Fuck the Czech! – Road Trip is Over!
Sorry, but I have to be rude today. I just need to write it down.
Fuck you Prague, fuck you Czech! Fuck you all! I have never seen people being that unhelpful and disinterested.
My girlfriend and I went to Prague for a night and this morning we wanted to leave to Vienna, Austria. But no, we didn’t do that. The parking situation in Prague and the entire Czech Republic is horrible, so we parked in a side street a few hundred meters from our so called “Hotel” where we had to pay the parking meter every two hours. Not just that the Hotel (Old Time Hotel) was horrible (dirty, ants, …), between 01:00AM where we last checked our car and 09:00AM when we came back, one of the windows have been smashed and every single piece of clothing I own has been stolen. Everything. About 2000€ worth of clothing. Not to mention my girlfriends Laptop. And don’t tell me we should have taken it out! We put all visible things in the hotel and stored the rest in the trunk. You also wouldn’t have carried your stuff that far to the Hotel for just one night! I think they came for the radio – a cheapish built-in one that comes from the manufacturer. They have even taken the coverings in the car. WTF?! And the charging cable for the navigation system, that we had a hard time getting out of fucking Prague.
We must have been standing there for like 15minutes. I was yelling and smashing everything. There were several people around us, no one came. We called the police. And then we waited in the rain and waited and waited with all the stuff we had taken to the hotel room (4 additional bags!). No one came. No Police. No one came to help, no one cared. They all pretended they didn’t speak English or German.
Three hours later a policeman finally came, but pretended he doesn’t speak a fucking single word of English, or German, or even Polanski! In the end he sent us home, telling us we should file a charge at home. Great!
Back home I wanted to buy at least some underwear and clean shirts, when the car’s engine also broke. And it was raining cats & dogs…
Holiday canceled. Good night.
Summer Vacation 2010
It’s hot here in Germany. The sky is blue and the sun is shining… Actually the plan was to go on a road trip on the US Westcoast… California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona… u know. But due to time problems my girlfriend and I are making a road-trip trough Europe:
Starting in Saxony, heading east towards Kalovy Vary, then Prague, then southern to Vienna and finally trough the Alps as far as we get until I’ll be back in Frankfurt on August, 1.
That’s the plan at least 
Take care and enjoy the summer. I thin I’ll post from time to time.
Things went wrong in Hamburg
Last weekend my girlfriend and I spontaneously decided to visit Hamburg. We only did a quick research and then knew what we wanted to see: the Port of Hamburg, the old Elbe tunnel, the Warehouse District, the Fish auction hall, the old Town hall, the Jungfernstieg at the Binnenalster and the famous churches. Not to forget Reeperbahn! That’s the theorie…
I find cities look best when it’s lights are already turned on, so we wanted to see the most of the sights at night.
On the first evening we wanted to see the harbor. Our hotel was close to the Central Station so we decided to simply walk. Sadly Internet on my iPhone 3G was that slow in Hamburg, that I couldn’t see my map with the photo locations, so we had to walk on our own and find some sweet spots. At the beginning we walked totally wrong and ended up in the fruit district of the harbor. We then walked along the harbor trying to get to the right points. On our way we walked right in between HafenCity and Warehouse District so that we didn’t see both. We walked up to Landungsbrücken when it was already 12am, but I wanted to see at least the old Elbe Tunnel! So we walked trough and tried to find a nice spot at the other side of the harbor, but didn’t find anything. So we walked back, decided to take a drink and then took the train back to central station and our Hotel.
The next day our schedule was pretty tight, because we didn’t get the harbor shots… we started at 10am, went to central station to get a Hamburg CARD. With the Hamburg CARD you can use all public transportation (more on that later), and you get a discount on most tourism stuff.
Our first stop was the old Town Hall which is a nice walk along Hamburg’s shopping street. But I didn’t find the old Town Hall very special, at least not in bright daylight! We then headed over to the Binnenalster and Jungfernstieg, which also looked, well… let’s say nice during daytime.
The weekend was hot, very hot! After just 3 hours we already needed a break! So we wanted to take a train down to Landungsbrücken and make a harbor tour. But there were some heavy constructions going on, so we had to take several trains, which isn’t that easy if you don’t know the city… Finally at Landungsbrücken, we got a 2€ discount off thanks to our Hamburg CARD! Awesome…… The harbor tour was very nice and we got a good overview. But still not a single good shot!
And believe it or not due to the heat on the boat, the glue which sticks the rubber grip on my Nikon D90 melted!
Since we still had a lot of sights to see we hurried up a bit and walked to St. Michaelis church, spent a lot of time looking for a supermarket to buy some water, walked back trough Warehouse District (to really see it for the first time!) and then walked back to our Hotel to take a nap
We still wanted to see the harbor, the Warehouse District, the Fish auction hall and the Reeperbahn. We started again at 8pm to take some night shots. Mobile Internet still was horribly slow, so I still couldn’t load my map! We took the train to Landungsbrücken again, then walked up to the Fish auction hall, then headed further to Dockland. When we arrived at Dockland the light was just crappy so we waited some time and discovered one thing I find totally awesome about Hamburg: The Habor ferries! They have ferries all across the harbor, with stations that look exactly like Bus stops, just on the water. And it’s even included in the Hamburg CARD! We took one, drove to it’s last stop and then drove back. Totally awesome! Back at Dockland the light was better, although I now found it to be already too dark as the nice blue sky was almost gone. I took some shots until we wanted to go to Warehouse District. It was already 12pm and the Reeperbahn was much closer so we decided to visit that first. Which again wasn’t a very good idea. It was horribly crowded, but fun to watch. When we finally came to the Warehouse District the damn lights were already turned off and the entire scene just looked boring 
We walked back to our Hotel and fell to bed at 3am…
The next morning we didn’t want to walk trough Hamburg again, so we decided to drive back and visited some friend we met last year on our Trip to Egypt… By the way: we walked about 35km that weekend!
If we had a better plan, I think our Hamburg experience would have been awesome! But even with our crappy plan the trip was great.
Rügen in Spring
In early April my girlfriend and I went (as my birthday present) to Rügen, a small Island in the Baltic Sea in the north-eastern part of Germany. Thank you! It was great, even if you didn’t expect it and we almost died . The weather wasn’t always great, but it was a lot of fun walking and shooting there together.
We arrived pretty late at about 5pm, but the ride was fun. My girlfriend had her first-time-ever on a car ferry. We checked-in and decided to visit a small town called Sellin which is famous for it’s pier later in the evening. It turned out that it wasn’t very easy to find this town. There were no signage and our navigation system didn’t know it either. But thanks to Google Maps we did find it tough.
On the second day we’ve been to the northernmost point in Germany called Kap Arkona and a very cute and old fishing village called ‘Vitt’.
The third day, which was also my birthday, the weather was much nicer and we decided to go walking. Our Hotel was very close to Jasmund National Park with it’s impressive chalk cliffs. Over a small stairway we wanted to go down to the ocean – not knowing what was going to happen. We walked and walked. Most people just turned around, but we didn’t really notice that at this time. We kept walking and walking. There should actually have been four stairways on our way, but they weren’t! It turned out that the hard winter here in Germany damaged big parts of the chalk cliffs and let avalanches of chalk and mud fall down into the ocean and the stairways with it. The nice thing about this is that the chalk colored the ocean almost turquoise and created a nice Caribbean feeling. On our way we climbed over many dried mudflows without any problem, but a few kilometers later there was one that must have been very new. I climbed at it, walked a few steps and then suddenly half of me was gone… caved into mud to my hip. I threw my camera over to my girlfriend which was still on secure ground and then somehow managed to pull myself out. Loaded with tens of kilos of mud I went into the ocean to get rid of at least some of it and then wanted to walk back the 10km to our car. But not my girlfriend. We saw a stairway at the other side of the bay, so she (much lighter that she is) somehow managed to find a way over the mud, whereas I just walked through the ocean… An hour later we were back up on the top of the cliffs. But we didn’t walk back to our car, no. We walked all the way to the Königsstuhl and then took a bus back to our car.
The last day we headed home and made a short stop in Stralsund.
Watch the Flickr Set or Flickr Slideshow
Read more…
My Winter around the Erzgebirge
Skip the post and directly view the set or watch the slideshow
I spent the last few weeks in and around the Erzgebirge (mostly Dresden and Chemnitz) in Saxony, Germany which is a real Christmas dreamland. Their Christmas Markets here are very lovely. I have been to Dresden’s Strietzelmarkt and Mittelaltermark, to Altkötzschenbroda’s very special and exclusive (only open for two weekends in December) Christmas Market and to both Christmas Markets in Chemnitz.
Some more pictures of Saxony
I have been on the road during the last few weeks. I mostly did personal stuff, but I also took some pictures on visits to the animal park Rabenstein and Lichtenwalde castle, both in Saxony and near Chemnitz. I have also been to Brunswick, Lower Saxony to visit friends I met on my Trip to Egypt earlier this year.
Both, the animal park and the castle are very nice places to visit, but see yourself:
View the set of the castle and the animal park,
or the slideshows of the castle and the animal park.
A week in Saxony
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
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 NoticeJubilee 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…
Egypt Impressions
Hey folks, I just got back from Egypt last Tuesday. Hell, this was the most interesting trip I ever made! I traveled the whole country by bus, by cab and even by ship and have seen everything from Hurghada to Luxor to Aswan and Cairo.
After arriving at Hurghada airport, I stayed at the Palm Beach Resort for a night and got transferred through the desert by bus to Luxor the next morning where I checked-in to one of the Nile cruisers, in fact the Nile Crown III. The ship left the next morning so I decided to take a coach ride with some other travelers I met at the ship.
The ship passed the Lock of Esna, where some sellers on their little boats threw clothes and other stuff on our deck for sale. I ‘accidently’ threw it back into the Nile …
Right after lunch we arrived in Edfu, where we visited the Temple of Edfu – It’s one of the biggest and best preserved Temples in Egypt.
The ship left Edfu the same day and headed towards Kom Ombo, while we passengers spent the evening at a Carabea dance night.
We arrived in Kom Ombo at around midnight, right in front of the Temple. So I decided to walk around the well lit temple a bit. You couldn’t leave the secured harbor, but nevertheless I got an impression of the locals. (I got way deeper knowledge of the Egyptians in Aswan and Luxor, but more about that later on…)
The next morning I visited Kom Ombo as part of the sightseeing package I stupidly ordered.
After we got back, the ship left Kom Ombo heading directly towards Aswan, where we already arrived at 3pm of day 4 of my 14-Day trip. The ship anchored in front of a tomb group which we decided to hike on our own later in the evening, after we got back from the sightseeing tour through Aswan. We visited the unfinished obelisk, drove across the Old Dam and visited the new High Dam which dams up the Lake Nasser reservoir.
To get to the tomb group we hired a Feluke which brought us directly to the riverside at the foot of the tomb group. The armed guards in front of a fence wanted a huge amount of backschisch (Arab for tip) to let us hike the mountain, because it was already getting dark and they needed to ‘turn the lights on’. We understood what they meant when we were back at our ship. But it was definitely worth the extra money (about 15€ per person), the guard, which now became our tour guide, unlocked tombs which are actually not open to the public.
On the next day (Day 6), I made a boat trip to a traditional Nubian Village. This trip was so worth the money, I actually wanted to do it again . Although the village became more tourism oriented during the last 5 years (according to a friend which has been to Egypt several times), it was great. We stopped at a camel flock and took a bath in the Nile behind Aswan.
Our ship left Aswan the same night, heading back towards Luxor at full speed and arrived there after an 8h stop at the Lock of Esna at around lunch.
I didn’t want to stay at the ship for the rest of the day, so I and a few other people took a cab to the Bazaar of Luxor. I’ve already been to the Bazaar in Aswan two times, but the Bazaar I visited in Luxor was definitely not tourism oriented. Everyone looked at us It was a great experience. At least until we reached the end of the Bazaar! We didn’t want to walk back through the Bazaar so we decided to walk around it, which really was a bad Idea. I think we walked through a radicals neighborhood or so, because we got surrounded and have been called names. Luckily a taxi driver came along and helped us. I directly went to bed, because we had to get up very early…
… the next day to visit the Valley of the Kings, the Hatshepsut Temple and the Memnon Colissi. We were back at the ship for lunch and spent the rest of the day on deck, while enjoying the sun.
On the 9th day we again drove through the Egyptian desert, back to our Hotel in Hurghada.
Without even having unpacked our baggage, we already took a public bus for just 70 L.E. (which is less than 10€), to go to Cairo at 8am on day 10. It really was a public bus. We were the only 4 tourists at the bus and we had to listen to the prayers at the radio for almost two hours. Not that it got silent afterwards. No, then they turned on the TV and we had to watch Arab comedy for the other five hours of our seven hour journey to Cairo. We sadly arrived two hours delayed at 5pm, rented a taxi for the whole day and hurried to the Egyptian museum, where we stayed for about 45min. To our bad it wasn’t the Egyptian museum that closes at 6pm, but the Pyramids! So when we arrived there at about 6:30pm, the guards won’t let us in anymore. Backschisch didn’t help either
So we decided to get dinner at the KFC right in front of the Pyramids and watched the Pyramids Light Show from the terrace of a restaurant.
Our bus back to Hurghada left at 11:30pm. I couldn’t even get a minute of sleep, because the Arab people are very night active. We had to watch even more Arab comedy…
… and arrived at our Hotel at 7am. I spent the day asleep at the beach.
Which was pretty much all I did the next three days: Staying at the beach and relaxing.
I went to the Bazaar in Hurghada, but Hurghada is, as soon as you leave the tourism areas, a very ugly and dirty city. Left construction sites everywhere… The Bazaar is also very small.
On day 13 we joined a snorkeling trip to the Giftun island. That was a nice finish.
On day 14 we had to check-out at 12am, but were only transferred to the airport at 4:30pm. So we spent the rest of the day at and in the pool.
When arrived at the airport, some security jerk won’t let me enter the airport building. I stupidly showed him my tickets, whereas everyone else just showed there IDs. My Check-In desk wasn’t open so I should wait outside… I asked a bunch of Englishman, that also had to wait outside and it turned out that they were already waiting for two hours! So I wanted to talk to that security guy again, but his English was really bad so he just shaked his balls and played around with his gun. To my luck his so called ‘Big Boss’ came along and after a long discussion I could enter the airport and go through the first security check to the check-in.
Take some time to watch the pictures with a small explanation or watch the Flickr Set or Slideshow with even more pictures. I’ll share some tips I got to know about saving money and dealing with the locals Egypt below.
Search this Site
Hi, my name is Chris. I am a wannabe photog, traveler & geek that is again a student and lives in Hesse, Germany. more about me...
follow me on TwitterMy flickr Fotos
Sponsoring
