Eastward to Praha

We got a good start and headed off to the Prague; our next stop. We will make our way there and spend a week in the area. The border crossing into the Czech Republic was by no means hard, it just was just a far different process than we have seen so far. We are not sure if it was the route we took or not but although the number of small villages that we were passing through along the way were as plentiful as Germany the villages certainly looked a lot poorer. The entire infrastructure just seemed to look beat up. Also we must have passed 20 old factories in small towns that were abandoned. The landscape was rolling much like the foothills in Alberta. We didn’t have a long journey today, maybe we just didn’t get lost as much it seems but we made it to Prague quickly. The quarter where we are staying is called Brevnov. There are about 1.2 million people in the Prague area, Brevnov is about a 15minute trolley ride from the old town. The person who owns this building where we are staying kept talking about how modern his building is. It was built in 1890. It is a fairly large building where his family and 2 others live, plus the apartment where we are staying. It is directly across the road from a Benedictine Monastery that was built in 989 AD. It is the oldest Monastery in the Czech Republic, more on that later. For now we will just settle in to our new place and start to get oriented with the city.

Auf Wiedersehen

We will leave Haus Stern today. We ended off last night at one of the local Gasthous, Poechal Schtuble. It was funny when we went in around 6 pm we were the only people in there. Boy or boy can we take over a place. We have been commenting all along on how much friendlier most of the restaurants seem to be toward vegetarians than in North America from at least what we have seen so far. It looks like Livy and Sarah’s order won. They ordered something that was like a roasted vegetable filled in a baked light pastry. Neither of them got halfway through it there was so much. Somehow there was still room for the deserts though. This morning we went for a last walk around town and took a few more pictures around the rail station and picked up some fruit at the market in the square for our ride tomorrow. We finished the day off with a horse cart ride through the Arber forest. There was a property along the way where a guy has a small water turbine creating power for his “Pension” and then sells the extra that he creates back to the grid. It was raining and a bit foggy so we didn’t get many pictures today Interesting how much logging is going on in this area. Liv, Abby and Ruby played a bit of Ping Pong in the evening before we packed up to get ready to head off to the Czech Republic in the morning. Rob almost bought a Bavarian hat before we left but instead saw a Superman ball cap at the second hand store for E 1.50 so he bought that instead. Hopefully the hat doesn’t cause us trouble at the border.

Schwellhaeusl Second Attempt

Bayerischer National Park is behind were we are staying. Today all of us made the trek out to Schwellhaeusl where Jackie, Rob and Natalie tried a few days ago. We had just heard it was worth the walk. It was about 15kms return. Once again we had a great weather day. There once again is a complex series of ski and hiking paths through the forest with of course shines along the way. This one was dated 1860. When we got to the hut at the end we had some lunch and a cold drink. Our German is improving, surprising how fast a language can be picked up. We will have to remember to talk about our exciting walk home when we get back; it is just too flavorful for the blog. Once again all are safe and back at home.

Passau

We made a day trip today to a town called Passau. One of its unique features us that there are 3 rivers that meet there. Sort of like the Forks but with another river. The Danube, Inn and Ilz rivers all meet. Were trying to make it to St. Steven’s Cathedral, it was built around 1600 and has the worlds largest pipe organ (17,974 pipes!). There is an organ concert at 12 pm each afternoon that we were trying to catch. The narrow streets at 12 noon really got us good this time. This town as many others were not made for vehicles. The steep grades were also amazing. We ended up closer to the Austrian border than the church. We did manage to get on a boat though and cruise up the Danube, it was a beautiful afternoon, clear and 20C plus, like most of the great weather that we have been having. In the old town there are so many squares that we walked upon towns within a town. There was also lots of talk of the great shopping that Passau also offered. “Major shopping” Natalie certainly is not taking any of this lying down.

Thanksgiving in Germany

We almost missed it but Emily and Sarah figured it out. We kept a slow day visiting a local museum in Lam which is north up the mountain form us. We came back early and started setting up cooking for Thanksgiving dinner. Our place even smelled like Thanksgiving when we were done, the leaves have been falling here and we picked up some leaves, acorns and such to decorate our table. Sarah was really looking forward to pumpkin pie but it just wasn’t meant to be. We ended up with dessert being a plumb & apple strudel. No cooking tomorrow, we have plenty of leftovers.

Zwiesel and Schwellhaeusl

We are continuing to mix trying to get out and do/see things while just settling in to as much as the culture and just take it real easy. As much as possible we still try and wake up and not put too much pressure on ourselves to rush out if we are not traveling. There is a thick forest behind where we are staying. Rob, Jackie and Natalie took a hike up to Schwellhausel. It is a hut that originally used by forest workers that dammed up the rivers to aid in logging at the turn of the century. Now there is a small café up there (apparently) we never made it all the way up there. You cannot get there by car. Hopefully we will take another stab at it before we leave. Zwiesel is the local town just west of Eisenstein about 15 kms. We don’t have internet access in Eisenstein so Rob went in to Zwiesel at night to try and follow up on some communication that we needed to do for next week at about 6:00pm. It turned into a bit of a night, after he finished doing the internet communications at a café he found our Renault completely locked up! It was parked in an area that becomes locked up all night after 7:00 pm. After trying to get the compound unlocked he ended up getting a cab back to Eisenstein and then went back in the morning to pick up the vehicle. The German cab talk must have been pretty good with the cabbie as he didn’t charge full fare.

Gruess Gott

Gruess Gott is the Bavarian greeting. This Sunday, the Sunday before our Thanksgiving is the “Harvest Mass” at St. Johann Nepomuk Catholic Church in the village. We walked up the hill to church this morning for the 9 am Harvest mass. We got there about 8:50 but there was a procession from somewhere (likely the town square) the whole congregation seemed to be in it. It was complete with people in traditional full Bavarian dress, horns and squeezebox; the music could be heard all the way up the hill. Not being familiar with the mass it was something like blessing of the food on Holy Saturday. A fabulous choir. One funny thing that happened was that as we made our way up for communion we sort of got separated and Ruby ended up being the last person she ended up standing up with the priest at the front of this church by themselves with him bending down and whispering to her. Rob walked back up to the front to see what was up. They were having a communication problem but the priest was trying to ask Ruby if she had made her 1st communion. After mass the priest apologized to Ruby in English explaining to the congregation what had happened and was very sorry and said kind things of Ruby, he then repeated the whole thing again in German to the congregation again where everyone was smiling at Ruby. After mass there was a bake sale right outside the church where we bought some real Bavarian baking. Some sort of honey cake/torte and a berry role.