Your ideal country/place to visit (in the next few years).
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The territory of Germany covers 357,021 square kilometers (137,847 sq mi) and is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. With 81.8 million inhabitants in 2010, it has the largest population among member states of the European Union, and it is home to the third-largest number of international migrants worldwide.
Germany is a federal parliamentary republic of sixteen states. The capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, G8, G20 and the OECD. It is a major power with the world's fourth largest economy by nominal GDP and the fifth largest in purchasing power parity. It is the second largest exporter and third largest importer of goods. In absolute terms, Germany allocates the second biggest annual budget of development aid in the world, while its military expenditure ranked seventh. The country has developed a high standard of living and established a comprehensive system of social security. It holds a key position in European affairs and maintains a multitude of close partnerships on a global level. Germany is recognised as a scientific and technological leader in several fields.
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Frankfurt is a financial global city, seat of the European Central Bank, and an international aviation hub.
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Hamburg harbour is the second-largest port in Europe...
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BASF factory in Ludwigshafen, part of the largest chemical company in the world.
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A Mercedes-Benz automobile. Germany was the world's leading exporter of goods from 2003 to 2008.
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The Reichstag in Berlin is the site of the German parliament.
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In Berlin...
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Freiberg..
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In Cologne...
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Tourist Attractions...
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My first morning in Vienna, I had a walk with the guy from Brazil to the Summer and Winter Palaces of the royal Hapsburg Empire.
Apparently the lion has mystical meanings in ancient Europe... Royal symbols I've heard...
The eagle too...
The palace courtyard...
I just love the exterior...
We then took the S-Bahn to downtown Vienna where the city centre was...
And took some photos in front of some church...
The Brazillian Jewish guy who tagged along with me...
The Vienna Symphony Orchestra's home(aka the Concert Hall)...The cute trams of Vienna...
Sudbahnhof means South Train Station... And yes, the tram was that close
Tram rolling in front of the famous Vienna Opera House, second in international recognition to that of the Paris Opera House(thanks to the Phantom of the Opera)...
Displaying what was going to be shown on that night... Die Zauberflote by W.A Mozart... The famous "The Magic Flute"... Go check it out on Youtube
...I absolutely love this opera rendition...
Roaming the streets and alleys of Vienna...
My father in Singapore told me of the Viennese tradition of lazing away at a Viennese coffee house(coffeehaus), so I decided to do the same with that Brazillian guy... A short relaxing break after walking for so much
I got this...
Cafe de MozartAnd that was Chocolate Cream alcohol
I kept it though, didn't pour it in the coffee... Still have it in my fridge
The interior of the other palace, this one in downtown Vienna, in the middle of the city square...
Looks so Napoleon-ic rite?
The back of the palace...
Last photo of the city square before we went for dinner and to watch Die Zauberflote at the Vienna Opera House... And we only paid 4 euros for a standing ticket eachIn the Opera House...
Inside the theatre itself...
*ahem* WHAT IS THIS?!After the show we went back to Hostel Ruttensteiner for our night. The Brazillian guy made his mind to travel East, to either Prague or was it Budapest, I decided to go to Salzburg, west of Vienna instead for the next day. I wished him a good trip ahead...
That was how I ended the night in Vienna...
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The next morning I woke up and was out by 7a.m local time. I took the Railjet, the hi-speed train of the Austrian Railways to Salzburg Station where I was to spend the night there...
ZOMG as it was a first come first serve thing, I went in last...
AND THAT MEANT THAT even though I paid for a second class train ticket for the Eurail thingy, I had to stand for 3hours or sit at the end of the train(the steps)... I took the latter. Man the caucasians didn't help me out even though I was carrying my backpack and etc....
Arrival at Salzburg Station...
I took the bus down to my hostel which was quite a distance from the bahnhof(train station)...
After unpacking my stuff, I decided to go for a self-tour of the beautiful city of Salzburg... On a bike
Overlooking the Salzach river...
The Hohensalzburg Castle...
Old clock tower...
And yes that is Louis VuittonI stopped by the Mozarthaus(Mozart's House) in Salzburg to see the house. I learn the piano, though Mozart wasn't my favorite composer/pianist, it doesn't hinder to go in...
The house at no. 9 Getreidegasse is the place where Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born and where he lived until the age of 17. Originally called Trabegasse (derived from Traben - to trot), its name was changed several times before it became the Grain Lane.
I paid something like 10 euros to go in...
Those were the only few photos I could take before they told me I couldn't take anymore photos.Back cycling to the hostel for the night.
I bought a lot of Mozartkugeln there(Mozart Chocolates)...
Spent something like 30Euros on them alone muahahahahahahaha~!
This was how I ended the night in Salzburg. Unfortunately I didn't have time to go to the Mirabel Palace or the von Trapp house out of Salzburg, which was portrayed in the musical "The Sound of Music"...
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That morning, I woke up late! Like late late! I really got a shock when I saw the clock... I had to rush for the 10.30a.m train for Zürich!
And I realised I had to do my washing... So despite waking up at 8a.m in the morning, I rushed through breakfast, bought some more Mozart Kugeln(Chocolates) and did my laundry(thankfully in Europe they have these things called dryers)...
I came out of the hostel at exactly 10a.m and I had to rush to the Salzburg train station, failing which I would be royally screwed as I had an onward connection to catch to Liestal in Switzerland...
I cabbed and splurged 20 Euros to Salzburg Hauptbahnhof to catch my EuroCity train to Zürich... With barely 5mins till the train departed!
An ÖBB Österreichische Bundesbahnen Austrian Federal Railways Locomotive... It is the Railjet Taurus if I am not wrong...The train churtled through the Austrian plains and further trekked down the Swiss Alps... The beautiful majestic scenary was beyond words...
My trip timing helped too... It was just before the onset of autumn... And it was really cool...
If you see carefully, the sky is so clear that you can see the contrails of planes flying at high altitudes!
Crisscross of contrails!
I was so shocked to be able to get so nice shots despite my camcorder(not even camera) was 1.3MP! That was my last shot in the train btw...The picture below, is the seat I was in, a 2nd class compartment all by myself... But it was like for 6 hours plus and only reached Zürich at around 4p.m...
That was it!I know to some of you it seems impossible to have one day solely on the road, but this was planned into the itinerary due to the long distance from Salzburg to Zürich...
During the six hours in the train, I also frequented the Bordrestaurant, or the onboard rail compartment eatery as some call it... I ordered a sumptous 3 course meal with extremely delicious green pea soup with a dab of butter, Wild Salmon with wild rice from the Austrian plains, and ended off with dessert which was hot fudge brownie with strawberry ice-cream... But the bill ended up as 70 Euros(which is more than SGD$150)! But overall it was probably the best meal of my life! The wild rice was just extraordinary!
After I alighted at Zürich Hauptbahnhof(Central Main Station), I had about 40mins to connect to another InterRegio train from Zürich Hauptbahnhof to Liestal Bahnhof, which is about 20mins by rail from another large Swiss city, Basel!
I did this so to meet my father's friends in Switzerland, and they allowed me to stay at their house with them... Nice people, the Swiss! They were German Swiss btw, but the Swiss are multi-lingual, so they know High/Low/Bavarian German, Swiss-standard German, French, Italian and English! WTF!
I arrived into Liestal at around 7p.m and was brought to their house where I ended my day! Whew!
What a long day!
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The next morning, I woke up a bit early and as it was the weekend, the couple that I was staying with asked me whether I would want to tour Basel, the nearby large town next to Liestal. I agreed and they said they would drive me around.
Basel is a largely German speaking town in the German quarter of Switzerland, and it is the third most populated city in Switzerland. The city, being located at the tri-point where the three countries(Switzerland, Germany, and France) meet, also has suburbs in the other two countries.
Basel also has its own variant of the numerous variants of Swiss German - Basel German.
My first stop that day was at the Roman "ruins" of Augusta Raurica, the oldest Roman colony on the river Rhine and the best preserved one, north of the Swiss Alps. It seriously does look like a mini-Rome, with that Roman-esque Colosseum/Amphitheatre in the picture below...
The Romans were really advanced in those Medieval times... They had specific stone graves and even had an underground spa/sauna!
I was amazed!
After viewing the ruins, the couple asked me whether I wanted to go to Basel from Augusta Raurica via the E'way, or through Germany, then France, then into Switzerland(Basel)~...I couldn't contain my joy. I agreed to the latter, and they drove me through the southern tip of Germany, through a short part of the Bavarian forest(Black Forest), then past the "border"(there is no more official border as all countries are part of the Schengen zone now) into France, then straight into Basel!
No pics sorry
The first stop in Basel City proper, was the Rathaus(City Hall of the Basel City canton). Beautiful red building, but it smelt of horse poop, disgusting...
Building was from the 1500s... Really old...
Hard to see, but it is actually a mural... On the wall!
The state entrance...
Another adjacent mural...
Then we walked down the "Orchard Road" of Basel(or Basle in German and Bale in French)...
Nothing much, since it was still in the morning!
Really beautiful architecture to be honest... Nice tram too hahah!Then we walked to the Tinguely Fountain, where the stuff in the fountain actually moved!
We then walked to the Basel Münster... And below is the interior of the Basel Münster...
It was nearing noon...
We decided to cross the Rhine that cuts through Basel... But in an unconventional way. We decided to not cross the bridges, but instead take a cable boat cross the Rhine! You'll see what it is in the following pictures!
The boat has no engines or oars! It just uses a cable to cross the Rhine. What the boatman does is shift the weight of the boat to one side, and the flowing Rhine would do the rest of the job!Then we went to the Basel Paper Mill, the first of its kind in Europe...
No mill is complete without a water wheel for power
This narrow alley is termed the Venice of Basel! Doesn't it look similar?
We ended the daytrip to Basel City there and drove back to Liestal where I enjoyed a good meal prepared by my dad's friend's wife! Woots!
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Arguably the most fruitful day of my stay in Europe, this day I decided to wake up early in the morning, and go around Switzerland on rail!
I reached the nearby train station relatively early and waited for the train which brought me to Luzern train station!
That was Platform 1, and it was to be an InterRegio train... And the train was late by 4 mins... Swiss efficiency at its finest... Precise to the minute... And trains depart by the second!Upon arriving at Luzern train station, I went out to the nearby river that divides Luzern...
Luzern was really really beautiful...Can you see the Swiss flag in between the towers for the church in the distance?
The most photographed icon in the whole of Switzerland... Presenting to you, the Chapel Bridge(Kapellbrücke), a 204 m (669 ft) long wooden bridge originally built in 1333, although much of it had to be replaced after a fire on August 18, 1993, allegedly caused by a discarded cigarette. Partway across, the bridge runs by the octagonal Water Tower(Wasserturm), a fortification from the 13th century. Inside the bridge are a series of paintings from the 17th century depicting events from Luzern's history. The Bridge with its Tower is the city's most famous landmark.
Line of pigeons on the roof of the structure!
View from the bridge itself...And the last shot of the bridge before I proceeded to my next place in Luzern...
I walked about 20mins thru the old town of Luzern to go to the most memorable piece of rock in the whole world!
The old town, in its splendour~...
The Lion Monument(German: Löwendenkmal), or the Lion of Luzern, is a sculpture in Luzern, Switzerland, designed by Bertel Thorvaldsen. It commemorates the Swiss Guards who were massacred in 1792 during the French Revolution, when revolutionaries stormed the Tuileries Palace in Paris, France. The American writer Mark Twain(1835–1910) praised the sculpture of a mortally-wounded lion as "the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world."From the early 17th century, a regiment of Swiss mercenaries had served as part of the Royal Household of France. On 6 October 1789, King Louis XVI had been forced to move with his family from the Palace of Versailles to the Tuileries Palace in Paris. In June 1791 he tried to flee abroad. In the 1792 10th of August Insurrection, revolutionaries stormed the palace. Fighting broke out spontaneously after the Royal Family had been escorted from the Tuileries to take refuge with the Legislative Assembly. The Swiss ran low on ammunition and were overwhelmed by superior numbers. A note written by the King has survived, ordering the Swiss to retire and return to their barracks, but this was only acted on after their position had become untenable.
Of the Swiss Guards defending the Tuileries, more than six hundred were killed during the fighting or massacred after surrender. An estimated two hundred more died in prison of their wounds or were killed during the September Massacres that followed. Apart from about a hundred Swiss who escaped from the Tuileries, the only survivors of the regiment were a 300 strong detachment which had been sent to Normandy a few days before August 10. The Swiss officers were mostly amongst those massacred, although Major Karl Josef von Bachmann — in command at the Tuileries — was formally tried and guillotined in September, still wearing his red uniform coat.
The initiative to create the monument was taken by Karl Pfyffer von Altishofen, an officer of the Guards who had been on leave in Lucerne at that time of the fight. He began collecting money in 1818. The monument was designed by Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen, and finally hewn in 1820–21 by Lukas Ahorn, in a former sandstone quarry near Lucerne.
The monument is dedicated Helvetiorum Fidei ac Virtuti("To the loyalty and bravery of the Swiss"). The dying lion is portrayed impaled by a spear, covering a shield bearing the fleur-de-lis of the French monarchy; beside him is another shield bearing the coat of arms of Switzerland. The inscription below the sculpture lists the names of the officers, and approximate numbers of the soldiers who died(DCCLX = 760), and survived(CCCL = 350).
The pose of the lion was copied in 1894 by Thomas M. Brady (1849–1907) for his Lion of Atlanta in the Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia.
After that, I decided to walk around the town...
Came back to the chapel with two needle-like structures...
That was the Church of St. Leodegar and is also another landmark in Luzern. It was built in parts from 1633 to 1639 on the foundation of the Roman basilica which had burnt in 1633. This church was one of the few built north of the Alps during the Thirty Years War and one of the largest and art history rich churches of the German late renaissance period.I went to the Swiss Transport Museum, but I left quickly after realising that most of the people there were just German and I, an Asian, just didn't fit in. No tourists(Asians) were spotted there... But before I left, I bought a Swissair B747-200B model aircraft from the Museum Shop!
The last view, cross the river Reuss...
Then I proceeded to the train station at Luzern, for my ride onboard the Zentralbahn narrow-gauge railway train to Interlaken!!! Accompanied by breathtaking views of mountains and rivers!
The journey...
OMG this photo is the epitome of it all!!!Then the train pulled into Interlaken Ost(East) station after a few hours~...
And the view from the other train station in Interlaken, Interlaken West, was equally breathtaking!
Truly the railroads to heaven!
The Jungfrau Mountain range! Unfortunately the weather wasn't good, and the journey up there takes a heck of a long time, so I didn't go up the Jungfraujoch sorry!
Heavenly... Really!Then, I went back to the Interlaken Ost(East) station to catch a train to Switzerland's capital, Bern!
At the station...
My InterCity train arrived into Bern quite late in the evening!
Life in the Swiss capital is quite relaxing eh?!The Russian President was in town... And so there was a bit of security round the Swiss Parliament...
The Confederation of Switzerland is known as Helvetica in Latin! Note the different flags of all the cantons of Switzerland being hung at the Parliament!Next to the Helvetican Parliament, was the Swiss Bank! The REAL AUTHENTIC ONE! They keep the gold here!
Following that I went around Bern, and walked through as it was a relatively small city...
The Zytglogge tower is a landmark medieval tower in Bern, Switzerland. Built in the early 13th century, it has served the city as guard tower, prison, clock tower, centre of urban life and civic memorial.
Despite the many redecorations and renovations it has undergone in its 800 years of existence, the Zytglogge is one of Bern's most recognisable symbols and, with its 15th-century astronomical clock, a major tourist attraction. It is a heritage site of national significance, and part of the Old City of Bern, a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site.
The city of Bern at dusk!
I then walked back to the Bern Railway Station to catch the next train back to Liestal~!
The information boards at Bern station...
My train was either an InterCity or an InterRegio train...Whatever the case, I felt claustrophobic in the 2nd class compartment, and I decided to pay a premium to upgrade myself to the 1st class compartment!
The seats! WOW!
I reached back to Liestal Bahnhof and then took a bus to the home where I was staying at. This was how I ended my 3rd night and 2nd day in Switzerland!
The next day I would take a day trip to Strasbourg in France, as it is relatively near Liestal(and Basel)!
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Today morning, I woke up a bit late, and decided to go to Strasbourg, in France, after a light breakfast at my homestay there...
Picture below taken at the Liestal Bahnhof...
See something familiar?
LOL!I took the train to Basel SBB station, where I then simply walked 5mins, and I was in French territory, in Basel SNCF!
I waited quite a while for the SNCF train to bring me to Strasbourg...
Arriving at Strasbourg...
I walked out of the station Gare de Strasbourg, and took a tram to the city centre which was like just two stops away...
I then stepped into one of the many old churches in Strasbourg...
The organ!
Oh my goodness!
Exterior of the church...Then I proceeded round the city aimlessly hahah!
From the city centre...
Look at the tram rails! Bricks to road to grass!
Then I reached the pinnacle of what Strasbourg stands for...
Strasbourg is the seat of over twenty international institutions, most famously of the Council of Europe and of the European Parliament, of which it is the official seat. Strasbourg is considered the legislative and democratic capital of the European Union, while Brussels is considered the executive and administrative capital and Luxembourg the judiciary and financial capital.
The Louise Weiss Building, more commonly known as the European Parliament in Strasbourg...Having toured most of Strasbourg, I decided to go back to Liestal, Switzerland, as it was almost 5p.m by that time...
Last two photos...
Reached back to Liestal where I enjoyed a great sumptous Asian dinner prepared by my hosts! That was to be my last night in Switzerland!
The next day I would go to Germany...
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Originally posted by Just_do_it_lah:
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The territory of Germany covers 357,021 square kilometers (137,847 sq mi) and is influenced by a temperate seasonal climate. With 81.8 million inhabitants in 2010, it has the largest population among member states of the European Union, and it is home to the third-largest number of international migrants worldwide.
Germany is a federal parliamentary republic of sixteen states. The capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, G8, G20 and the OECD. It is a major power with the world's fourth largest economy by nominal GDP and the fifth largest in purchasing power parity. It is the second largest exporter and third largest importer of goods. In absolute terms, Germany allocates the second biggest annual budget of development aid in the world, while its military expenditure ranked seventh. The country has developed a high standard of living and established a comprehensive system of social security. It holds a key position in European affairs and maintains a multitude of close partnerships on a global level. Germany is recognised as a scientific and technological leader in several fields.
Hey hey sarpot my thread in my forum where I posted my trip details leh.
Please post here and here...
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well do bro... many thanks for your support !!
i will drop by ... cheers.