The Calm, the Culture, the Cruelty

Friday 18th September

From the CALM of Lake Bled to the CULTURE of Vienna and then to the CRUELTY of Auschwitz!

Lake Bled – this beautiful wee village in the Julian Alps in Slovenia is postcard beautiful. The lake is a beautiful clear emerald colour and has an old church on an island, a medieval castle that is clinging to a rocky cliff as well as having some magnificent mountains as backdrops – this place is truly beautiful. We hired an old wooden row boat in the shape of a swan….ah I hear you say, how romantic…and we rowed (well Brent did) over to the island and climbed the 98 steps up to the top where a lovely old church is situated and we got beautiful views out of the lake. When we have been in each different country, city or town we have always tried to taste their local delicacy – this proved to be a real treat in Bled – we had for morning tea a Kremna Snezna Rezina – this is a layer of vanilla custard topped with whipped cream and sandwiched between two layers of flakey pastry – the first half was good, the second half was sweet and sickly but we both managed to finish. After that we cycled around the lake – think that we needed to do a couple of laps, the lake is about 7km round. We also discovered that Lake Bled is really popular with the young kiwi’s with lots of Wicked Camping Cars around. It felt like it was a long time that we had heard the kiwi accent. We spent a great night with a couple we met from Australia.

Vienna - the capital city of Austria and one of the culture capitals of Europe. Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Strauss and other composers were all drawn to Vienna in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the waltz originated here so the place is alive with concerts, museums, beautiful old stone buildings with some amazing architecture of both the new and old buildings. It is also home to the Vienna Boys Choir which unfortunately only perform on Fridays and Sundays and we were there on a Monday. Never mind we did get to go to a Strauss & Mozart Concert which was held in the Kursalon where Mozart played in the 18th century. The concert was a mix of music, opera singers, ballet, waltzes, arias and duets. We both really enjoyed it. We once again did the Hop On Hop Off sightseeing bus and we stopped off for a ride in the world’s oldest ‘Ferris Wheel’ having been built in 1876, not quite the London Eye but very scenic and it really liked to move in the wind. Driving into Vienna from Italy you could almost hear the ‘Sound of Music ‘coming from the hills – very beautiful green, lush countryside. There were also kiwi’s here – we think that for the next couple of weeks we will hear quite a bit of the kiwi accent as everyone is heading towards Oktoberfest!

Auschwitz – The site of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi death/concentration camp in Oswiecim, Poland is probably one of the better known camps from WW2. The original site was built by the Polish for the use of their army but at the start of WW2 the Nazi’s took over the camp and set it up to be the largest centre for the killing of 1.5million people. We took a guided tour of the camp which took about 3 ½ hours – for this whole time I don’t think anyone of the 10 people in our group actually spoke. For us to have walked the path of so many innocent people, unknowingly for them, to their death, is something that is very hard to put into words. We have bought a couple of books and we are more than happy to share these with you and tell you personally about the place rather than writing lots about it. One part of Auschwitz is very original and you can walk into the buildings and they are as they were 65 years ago – the Birkenau part was burnt at the end of WW2 by the Nazi’s trying to destroy all evidence of what went on there. The original hospital where Doctor Mengele’s carried out his human experiments to create the true ‘Aryan’ (blonde hair and blue eyes) race still stands today. The day we were there the weather was very bleak – somehow we don’t think it would have been appropriate for the day to be sunny.

We have covered quite a few kilometres in the last week including a straight run from Austria right across the Czech Republic into Poland and are now in Ceske Budejovice in Czech Republic which is the home to Budweiser Beer – well there has been an argument between the USA and Czech’s since 1876 as they are both laying claim to have the original Budweiser – we are off now to the Budweiser Brewery to taste the local delicacy!!

From here we are heading in the direction of Prague.

Na Shledanou – good bye in Czech Republic