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y u never intro ze beautiful charles bridge n ze bustling o town square? ...
charles bridge rooks bestest in ze quiet of ze nite or on a misty morning ...
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Eastern Europe - Go Before Its Gone ~~
- Thread starter theblackhole
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charles bridge rooks bestest in ze quiet of ze nite or on a misty morning ...
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Can anyone come up with a itinieary for "Europe By Rail"?
Thank you guys for keeping this section alive. 3 more days and I'll be back in action
http://www.raileurope.co.uk/Default.aspx?tabid=2870
http://www.ricksteves.com/rail/itinplan.htm
http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9781848485532?redirected=true&gclid=CITQvPbL-7UCFYohpQodhScANQ
There is a EUROPEAN TRAINS TIME-TABLE book, but now with internet, you can use the German DB website.
German train conductors are very good, they will advise you of connection information, right down to the correct car segment to board the train.
European trains have a habit of splitting and shunting to another trains, so make sure you are in the cabin that goes to your destination.
Also, if I do not have Interrail or Eurail pass, I sometimes buy separate tickets for different segments of the journey in order to save on peak hour fees. Eg, A train goes from Point A to my final destination C, and I know the train pass thru point B, and I will be reaching C during peak hours, I will buy a ticket for point A - B (which is on the way) on non-peak ticket, and B - C on peak ticket. This usually work out cheaper than getting a peak A-C ticket.
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Konnichiwa is now offically replaced with 你好.
If your hotel restaurant ran out of hot water, blame the PRC Chinese. Each of them has a bottle of chinese tea to brew, except the Hangzhou tourists who use cold water to brew their tea.
One way to fund a PRC European trip is to buy up all the branded goods and bring back to sell.
China import tax is too expensive.
Prague is another top pickpocket destination !!!!
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yes charles bridge - beautiful, quiet, unique ...professional buskers...romantic, spiritual, religious...simply great!!!
yes, the equally fantastic and wonderful town square....just walk, walk, walk and walk....you feel like hugging everyone and kissing them " oh what a beautiful morning!!!"....
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Nice.
Any pictures of trams you took when you were there? Can't talk about Prague without talking trams.
Czech used to produce trams for the eastern europe, then green-eyed Croatia beat them to produce some really nice modern low-floor trams but they lost the contract to build for Prague.
Now, Czech themselves caught up and produced some of the quietest smooth riding trams in the world. No surprise, Prague has the largest tram network in the world.
Have tram will get around
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The Bridge Of Sighs in Venice..
The Bridge of Sighs (Italian: Ponte dei Sospiri) is a bridge located in Venice, northern Italy. The enclosed bridge is made of white limestone and has windows with stone bars. It passes over the Rio di Palazzo and connects the New Prison to the interrogation rooms in the Doge's Palace. It was designed by Antoni Contino (whose uncle Antonio da Ponte had designed the Rialto Bridge), and was built in 1602.
The view from the Bridge of Sighs was the last view of Venice that convicts saw before their imprisonment. The bridge name, given by Lord Byron in the 19th century, comes from the suggestion that prisoners would sigh at their final view of beautiful Venice through the window before being taken down to their cells. In reality, the days of inquisitions and summary executions were over by the time the bridge was built and the cells under the palace roof were occupied mostly by small-time criminals. In addition, little could be seen from inside the Bridge due to the stone grills covering the windows.
A local legend says that lovers will be granted eternal love and bliss if they kiss on a gondola at sunset under the Bridge Of Sighs.
The Bridge of Sighs (Italian: Ponte dei Sospiri) is a bridge located in Venice, northern Italy. The enclosed bridge is made of white limestone and has windows with stone bars. It passes over the Rio di Palazzo and connects the New Prison to the interrogation rooms in the Doge's Palace. It was designed by Antoni Contino (whose uncle Antonio da Ponte had designed the Rialto Bridge), and was built in 1602.
The view from the Bridge of Sighs was the last view of Venice that convicts saw before their imprisonment. The bridge name, given by Lord Byron in the 19th century, comes from the suggestion that prisoners would sigh at their final view of beautiful Venice through the window before being taken down to their cells. In reality, the days of inquisitions and summary executions were over by the time the bridge was built and the cells under the palace roof were occupied mostly by small-time criminals. In addition, little could be seen from inside the Bridge due to the stone grills covering the windows.
A local legend says that lovers will be granted eternal love and bliss if they kiss on a gondola at sunset under the Bridge Of Sighs.
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area with 2.4 million inhabitants.
Dresden has a long history as the capital and royal residence for the Electors and Kings of Saxony, who for centuries furnished the city with cultural and artistic splendour. The city was known as the Jewel Box, because of its baroque and rococo city centre. A controversial Allied aerial bombing towards the end of World War II killed 25,000 civilians and destroyed the entire city centre. The impact of the bombing and 40 years of urban development during the East German communist era have considerably changed the face of the city. Some restoration work has helped to reconstruct parts of the historic inner city, including the Katholische Hofkirche, the Semper Oper and the Dresdner Frauenkirche. Since the German reunification in 1990, Dresden has regained importance as one of the cultural, educational, political and economic centres of Germany and Europe.
Dresden has a long history as the capital and royal residence for the Electors and Kings of Saxony, who for centuries furnished the city with cultural and artistic splendour. The city was known as the Jewel Box, because of its baroque and rococo city centre. A controversial Allied aerial bombing towards the end of World War II killed 25,000 civilians and destroyed the entire city centre. The impact of the bombing and 40 years of urban development during the East German communist era have considerably changed the face of the city. Some restoration work has helped to reconstruct parts of the historic inner city, including the Katholische Hofkirche, the Semper Oper and the Dresdner Frauenkirche. Since the German reunification in 1990, Dresden has regained importance as one of the cultural, educational, political and economic centres of Germany and Europe.
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anyting about berlin? ...
Schloss Cecilienhof
The Potsdam Declaration or the Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender is a statement that called for the Surrender of the Empire of Japan during World War II. On July 26, 1945, United States President Harry S. Truman, United Kingdom Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Chairman of the Nationalist Government of China Chiang Kai-shek issued the document, which outlined the terms of surrender for the Empire of Japan as agreed upon at the Potsdam Conference. This ultimatum stated that, if Japan did not surrender, it would face "prompt and utter destruction" although the document did not make any mention of atomic weapons.
This is the house where the leaders met and the atomic bombs were unleashed on Japan's two cities....
Schloss Cecilienhof is a palace in the northern part of the Neuer Garten park in Potsdam, Germany, close to the Jungfernsee lake. It has been part of the Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990.
Cecilienhof was the last palace built by the Hohenzollern family. Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany had it erected for his son, Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany, and the crown prince's wife Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. The house was designed by Paul Schultze-Naumburg to look like an English Tudor country house and built between 1914 and 1917. Its design was based on a house called 'Bidston Court' (later 'Hillbark') on the Wirral Peninsula. which in turn was inspired by Little Moreton Hall.The interior was furnished according to plans by Paul Troost, who originally had designed steamship décors.
The brick and oak timberframe building, including six courtyards and 55 carved brick chimney tops, should have been completed in 1915, but construction was delayed due to the outbreak of World War I and Crown Prince Wilhelm and Cecilie could not move in until August 1917. Wilhelm followed his father into exile one year later, while Cecilie stayed at the palace until she fled from the approaching Red Army in February 1945.
Cecilienhof was the location of the Potsdam Conference between 17 July and 2 August 1945. The rooms had been largely refurnished to match the taste of the participants. Winston Churchill, later Clement Attlee, Joseph Stalin and Harry S. Truman met at the round table in the great hall. On 26 July 1945, Churchill and Truman issued the Potsdam Declaration defining the terms for Japanese surrender, while Truman had already given order to prepare the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The conference room where the Three Giants met to decide on the fate of Japan was preserved...together with the chairs too!!!
Today Cecilienhof is a museum as well as a hotel. Queen Elizabeth II visited Cecilienhof on 3 November 2004. On 30 May 2007, the palace was used for the G8 foreign ministers summit.
The Potsdam Declaration or the Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender is a statement that called for the Surrender of the Empire of Japan during World War II. On July 26, 1945, United States President Harry S. Truman, United Kingdom Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Chairman of the Nationalist Government of China Chiang Kai-shek issued the document, which outlined the terms of surrender for the Empire of Japan as agreed upon at the Potsdam Conference. This ultimatum stated that, if Japan did not surrender, it would face "prompt and utter destruction" although the document did not make any mention of atomic weapons.
This is the house where the leaders met and the atomic bombs were unleashed on Japan's two cities....
Schloss Cecilienhof is a palace in the northern part of the Neuer Garten park in Potsdam, Germany, close to the Jungfernsee lake. It has been part of the Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990.
Cecilienhof was the last palace built by the Hohenzollern family. Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany had it erected for his son, Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany, and the crown prince's wife Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. The house was designed by Paul Schultze-Naumburg to look like an English Tudor country house and built between 1914 and 1917. Its design was based on a house called 'Bidston Court' (later 'Hillbark') on the Wirral Peninsula. which in turn was inspired by Little Moreton Hall.The interior was furnished according to plans by Paul Troost, who originally had designed steamship décors.
The brick and oak timberframe building, including six courtyards and 55 carved brick chimney tops, should have been completed in 1915, but construction was delayed due to the outbreak of World War I and Crown Prince Wilhelm and Cecilie could not move in until August 1917. Wilhelm followed his father into exile one year later, while Cecilie stayed at the palace until she fled from the approaching Red Army in February 1945.
Cecilienhof was the location of the Potsdam Conference between 17 July and 2 August 1945. The rooms had been largely refurnished to match the taste of the participants. Winston Churchill, later Clement Attlee, Joseph Stalin and Harry S. Truman met at the round table in the great hall. On 26 July 1945, Churchill and Truman issued the Potsdam Declaration defining the terms for Japanese surrender, while Truman had already given order to prepare the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The conference room where the Three Giants met to decide on the fate of Japan was preserved...together with the chairs too!!!
Today Cecilienhof is a museum as well as a hotel. Queen Elizabeth II visited Cecilienhof on 3 November 2004. On 30 May 2007, the palace was used for the G8 foreign ministers summit.
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HaHA...remember the infamous KISS on the Berlin Wall....One of the most famous paintings on the Berlin Wall, which depicted the kiss between East German leader Erich Honecker and his Soviet counterpart Leonid Brezhnev ....the painting was still there when I was there...hope it still remains today....and of course the wall is now a great painting scroll...........
Haha..this KISS struck me...so passionate and so garang....the main attraction on the wall!!!
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Another MUST VISIT - UNESCO Wieliczka Salt Mine.... SALT played a very important part in the history of Poland.....
The salt mine at Wieliczka, near Krakow in southern Poland, is a World Heritage Site. This mine has been worked continuously since Medieval times and consists over 200 km of underground passages, connecting more than 2000 excavation chambers. The miners have carved magnificent underground rooms and sculptures with the Miocene salt. Also visit, The Great Cathedral, a large chamber carved entirely within salt, including floor, walls, ceiling, and decorations. Here the chandeliers are also made with salt crystals, which are really matchless.
Over the centuries, miners have established a tradition of carving sculptures out of the native rock salt. As a result, the mine contains entire underground churches, altars, bas-reliefs, and dozens of large statues. It also houses an underground museum and has a number of special purpose chambers such as a sanatorium for people suffering from respiratory ailments. The largest of the chapels, the Chapel of the Blessed King, is located 101 meters below the surface, it is over 50 meters long, 15 meters wide, 12 meters high, with a volume of 10,000 cubic meters. It receives up to a million visitors yearly, most of them during the warmer summer months. So take a tour to Salt Mine at Wieliczka and appreciate the man-made beauty of this wonderland called Poland.
Chandeliers of pure salt crystals...
This salt mine has been converted into a massive tourist attraction!!!
The salt mine at Wieliczka, near Krakow in southern Poland, is a World Heritage Site. This mine has been worked continuously since Medieval times and consists over 200 km of underground passages, connecting more than 2000 excavation chambers. The miners have carved magnificent underground rooms and sculptures with the Miocene salt. Also visit, The Great Cathedral, a large chamber carved entirely within salt, including floor, walls, ceiling, and decorations. Here the chandeliers are also made with salt crystals, which are really matchless.
Over the centuries, miners have established a tradition of carving sculptures out of the native rock salt. As a result, the mine contains entire underground churches, altars, bas-reliefs, and dozens of large statues. It also houses an underground museum and has a number of special purpose chambers such as a sanatorium for people suffering from respiratory ailments. The largest of the chapels, the Chapel of the Blessed King, is located 101 meters below the surface, it is over 50 meters long, 15 meters wide, 12 meters high, with a volume of 10,000 cubic meters. It receives up to a million visitors yearly, most of them during the warmer summer months. So take a tour to Salt Mine at Wieliczka and appreciate the man-made beauty of this wonderland called Poland.
Chandeliers of pure salt crystals...
This salt mine has been converted into a massive tourist attraction!!!
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Auschwitz - This is a really morbid place to visit. You can smell Death in the air. You can feel the anguished wandering souls - whose lives had been cut short prematurely.....The tragedy of the Holocaust....The enormity of the crime against humanity...The horrid tales and the torture chambers....The gas chambers and the mass murder.....Even the Polish guide sobbed while telling us the story of the people who were led to these concentration camps and systematically exterminated....
Auschwitz I
The Auschwitz concentration camp complex was the largest of its kind established by the Nazi regime. It included three main camps, all of which deployed incarcerated prisoners at forced labor. One of them also functioned for an extended period as a killing center. The camps were located approximately 37 miles west of Krakow, near the prewar German-Polish border in Upper Silesia, an area that Nazi Germany annexed in 1939 after invading and conquering Poland. The SS authorities established three main camps near the Polish city of Oswiecim: Auschwitz I in May 1940; Auschwitz II (also called Auschwitz-Birkenau) in early 1942; and Auschwitz III (also called Auschwitz-Monowitz) in October 1942.
Auschwitz I, the main camp, was the first camp established near Oswiecim. Construction began in May 1940 in an abandoned Polish army artillery barracks, located in a suburb of the city. The SS authorities continuously deployed prisoners at forced labor to expand the physical contours of the camp. During the first year of the camp’s existence, the SS and police cleared a zone of approximately 40 square kilometers (15.44 square miles) as a “development zone” reserved for the exclusive use of the camp. The first prisoners at Auschwitz included German prisoners transferred from Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany, where they had been incarcerated as repeat criminal offenders, and Polish political prisoners from Lodz via Dachau concentration camp and from Tarnow in Krakow District.
Similar to most German concentration camps, Auschwitz I was constructed to serve three purposes: 1) to incarcerate real and perceived enemies of the Nazi regime and the German occupation authorities in Poland for an indefinite period of time; 2) to have available a supply of forced laborers for deployment in SS-owned, construction-related enterprises (and, later, armaments and other war-related production); and 3) to serve as a site to physically eliminate small, targeted groups of the population whose death was determined by the SS and police authorities to be essential to the security of Nazi Germany. Like most other concentration camps, Auschwitz I had a gas chamber and crematorium. Initially, SS engineers constructed an improvised gas chamber in the basement of the prison block, Block 11. Later a larger, permanent gas chamber was constructed as part of the original crematorium in a separate building outside the prisoner compound.
...the gas chamber...
Auschwitz I
The Auschwitz concentration camp complex was the largest of its kind established by the Nazi regime. It included three main camps, all of which deployed incarcerated prisoners at forced labor. One of them also functioned for an extended period as a killing center. The camps were located approximately 37 miles west of Krakow, near the prewar German-Polish border in Upper Silesia, an area that Nazi Germany annexed in 1939 after invading and conquering Poland. The SS authorities established three main camps near the Polish city of Oswiecim: Auschwitz I in May 1940; Auschwitz II (also called Auschwitz-Birkenau) in early 1942; and Auschwitz III (also called Auschwitz-Monowitz) in October 1942.
Auschwitz I, the main camp, was the first camp established near Oswiecim. Construction began in May 1940 in an abandoned Polish army artillery barracks, located in a suburb of the city. The SS authorities continuously deployed prisoners at forced labor to expand the physical contours of the camp. During the first year of the camp’s existence, the SS and police cleared a zone of approximately 40 square kilometers (15.44 square miles) as a “development zone” reserved for the exclusive use of the camp. The first prisoners at Auschwitz included German prisoners transferred from Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Germany, where they had been incarcerated as repeat criminal offenders, and Polish political prisoners from Lodz via Dachau concentration camp and from Tarnow in Krakow District.
Similar to most German concentration camps, Auschwitz I was constructed to serve three purposes: 1) to incarcerate real and perceived enemies of the Nazi regime and the German occupation authorities in Poland for an indefinite period of time; 2) to have available a supply of forced laborers for deployment in SS-owned, construction-related enterprises (and, later, armaments and other war-related production); and 3) to serve as a site to physically eliminate small, targeted groups of the population whose death was determined by the SS and police authorities to be essential to the security of Nazi Germany. Like most other concentration camps, Auschwitz I had a gas chamber and crematorium. Initially, SS engineers constructed an improvised gas chamber in the basement of the prison block, Block 11. Later a larger, permanent gas chamber was constructed as part of the original crematorium in a separate building outside the prisoner compound.
...the gas chamber...
A very well preserved museum of the holocaust...some claimed it is a global propaganda.....some claimed it had been exploited....but the sufferings, the deaths and the anguish were real.....
...the executive wall...many were shot dead here....
...electric barbed wire around the camp....escape is instant death....
...the executive wall...many were shot dead here....
...electric barbed wire around the camp....escape is instant death....
, cause I read all the info here bridestopsites.com/ about local traditions, place and of course nice ladies.
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