Cologne

From Prague, we caught a 13 hour night sleeper train to Cologne. We stayed in a 4 bed couchette which is a little compartment with 4 beds/padded benches. We each had pillows, sheets and a blanket. We were quite excited for our little sleep over and after our picnic dinner of bread cheese and pickles we settled into our bunks. To say we had a restful nights sleep would be lying, being woken up a couple of times by the loud noise of carriages being removed at certain stops. But it was still a fun experience and saved us a night’s accommodation.

so much room for activities

but arvi didn't want to play

night sky from the train

a spot of reading

time for bed

When we were arrived at our hostel around 8:30am we were pleasantly surprised to find that we were able to check into our empty room right away! So we went for a 3 hour nap to catch up on our lack of sleep from the previous night.

The weather in Cologne was much noticeably colder and rainy.  We took this opportunity to catch up on sleep, read and relax a bit as we were both beginning to feel a little run down again. Most days we slept in, spent a couple of hours sightseeing and then relaxed in the hostel for the rest of the afternoon. We did a lot of cooking seeing our hostel had a great kitchen and there was a huge, cheap supermarket on our street. We cooked up some awesome meals like chicken schnitzel sandwiches, fish burgers and Asian noodles. 

the sky is darkening 

cloudy skys

While Cologne is more modern than most of the cities we have been to, there are still parts of the old town scattered around the city.  Probably the most impressive landmark was the grand cathedral, situated in the middle of the city, right near the main train station. No matter how many of these huge gothic style cathedrals we see, I am still amazed by their size and design. While exploring the city we stumbled across other pieces of the old city wall, found a park full of sculptures, walked along the famous Rhine river and crossed the main bridge which is covered in lover’s padlocks.

Cologne Cathedral

Cologne Cathedral

a head sculpture

along the Rhine river

in the fisherman's quarter

sculpture park

across the Rhine river

running 

yet another bridge with 1000's of locks

We also decided to visit the Gestapo museum. This was a building where many people were imprisoned during their interrogation during Nazi rule, anywhere from a couple of days to months. The most interesting thing was seeing the cells where the ‘traitors’ were kept in cramped, unhygienic conditions and reading translations of the writings and drawings etched into the walls. I found it surprising that the Gestapo let the prisoners write their thoughts and messages to family on the walls without punishment; it really gives a great insight into their experiences in the building.  

the messages left

Now we leave Germany for a while to explore Belgium and The Netherlands.

             -Leah          

Prague 2nd time round

Back to Prague for some cheap beer and cheap food. We stayed in a different area, Zizkov (district III)  that is known for its casinos, cheap bars and prostitutes. 

We enjoyed the bars. 

Having seen the sights in the old town of Prague before it was easy for me to navigate. Although, visiting second hand stores around Ziskov was a bit of a trek, up and down the hilly area.

Old Town Square. No snow

Little babies crawling up the TV tower

We didn’t have time to visit the nearby town of Kutna Hora first time round so we made the hour train ride to explore its sights.

A fine looking little town that draws a lot of tourists for its attractions but still holds its central Bohemian charm.

We visited The Sedlec Ossuary also known as the Bone chapel. This place is something else. The chapel houses over 40,000 human skeletons arranged into mounds, a chandelier, a coat of arms and other decorative arrangements around the walls. It’s pretty scary stuff to see all these bones slowly disintegrating. There are plans for restorations later in the year. We enjoyed lunch in a sunny beer garden just off the main square with delicious Czech lunch specials and beer. After lunch we visited the St Barbara’s church that is grand in stature and free on Sundays so we looked inside at its greatness. We walked around the town a bit more and treated ourselves to an ice-cream before making our way back to the train station and home to Prague.

Bones

one of the four mounds of human bones

a coat of arms made out of bones

a chandelier with every bone in the body

lunch in the sun

St Barbara's Church

inside St Barbara's

waiting for the train

We walked around Prague’s Old Town to see the sights again in a different season. It was a change from our visit in February when we had 20 cm of snow the first day. All the summer stalls and outdoor settings set up plus the extra 8000 tourists made our experience quite different. The old town square was still beautiful with delicious smelling food stalls erected around the outside and some summer markets set up in the surrounding streets. I’ve got a photographic memory of where we ate a great Czech dinner the first time round so we went back there for some more delicious food one lunchtime.

old town square

back in Krcma

We also went back to the John Lennon wall to see if our names were still on the wall. Our hopes weren’t high after seeing all the new graffiti sprayed over the top and we couldn’t find our spot again.

Leah looking for our names

Now for the night train, destination Cologne.

arvi

Help X in Czech Republic.

chilling on some hay

During Leah’s hours of research before we left Australia, she came across Help X. It’s a volunteering website where host families put you up and feed you in exchange for your help around their home for around 6 hours a day. You can do a wide variety of jobs; gardening, wood chopping, fruit picking, teaching English. We found a great place to try out in the Czech countryside. We both got excited at the prospect of working 10 days on a goat farm where the host family makes bread and cheese. 

Our journey to the tiny town of Lozice was beautiful with cute little towns, rolling hills and some forests. The bus driver who drove us into the town was quite funny. He was waiting for his last run of the day and Leah and I were his only passengers so he pumped up the radio and found some English pop music along with some Czech tunes for our journey.

our bus ride to Lozice

Vladimir, Denisa and their 4 kids welcomed us, fed us and made us feel at home. They live on a small farm in a big old stone house that used to be used for grain milling and bread making, complete with a huge built in old school bread oven. It’s a charming farm with big barn full of hay, a full vegetable patch that’s like a supermarket, a sweat lodge frame for sweat lodge parties, a couple of plum trees (of which we ate lots of), an old, nearly blind dog called Sistra (meaning sister in Czech), a couple of cats with kittens and about a dozen goats that supply the milk for cheese making. Along with selling their goat cheese and bread, they also hire out a huge room on the top floor to yoga and ti-chi groups or for weekend conferences. We stayed on this top floor, which sleeps 18 people has its own kitchen and bathroom. The meals that Denisa cooked us were so tasty and healthy. Denisa likes to cook organically with her own produce with a strong Indian influence (from their time travelling India). As you can probably guess, it’s not a meat-heavy diet but we did eat one of their old goats in burger form, and it actually tasted good!

about 12 plums a day plus some amazing plum slice Denisa made

34 loafs off to market

the house

the kittens

'hey sheep how did you get in here?'

They have been doing Help X maybe twice a year for a couple of years and love having people from all walks of life stay with them. We joined two Taiwanese girls who had already done Help X in France and Italy. The girls only lasted 4 days (we think they left early because the work was too hard for them). The first few days Vladimir had us helping with stocking up wood for the winter. It was good, hard, hands on work. We were moving, stacking, chopping and I hopped on the chainsaw too. Every evening we were very stiff and sore, even more so the next morning. Leah went a bit to hard with the axe splitting wood the first day and couldn’t back up her first day heroics the next day (and had the blisters to prove it).

chopping

our wood stacking

and the hard work result

The next task that Leah and I were given was in an old stone house probably used as a barn or tool shed long ago. I say long ago because it is meant to be over 150 years old and the floor that we were working on was over 300 years old!
Our job was to clean and re-grout the floor. This involved lots of hard work picking, flicking and cleaning old dirt that had been imbedded in between the stones making up the floor. Then we’d fill the gaps with cement to try and level off the floor to make it easy to sweep clean. Just like tiling. Well, sort of. It took a long time, around 5 days to complete but we were all happy with the end effect. Vladimir and Denisa run bread and cheese-making workshops for school children and the room that we were fixing is for the kids to mill the grain and learn how bread is made.

the 'before'  floor

look how fast Leah is working!

finishing touches

On our day off Vladimir recommended some nearby towns and offered us some bikes to ride. We got about 1km down the road when the wheel of my bike buckled and came off. Luckily it was an old bike (their grandmothers) and we were able to borrow another one instead. All up it was a 30km round trip, visiting some castles, palaces, a town fair and enjoying a well-deserved beer. My highlight of the trip was by far the ride through the countryside, along country roads, through little towns and forest hiking trails. I just loved going fast down the occasional hill.
Leah’s highlight was seeing some deer. Behind the palace in Nove Hrady, in the surrounding grounds are a few little museums, a maze and a big paddock with a heard of deer. We were able to walk through the paddock and got really close to some big stags rubbing their antlers in between the trees.

3km away in Luže there is a palace on the hill.

through some forest

we thought about buying this palace in Nove Hrady

enjoying a raspberry slushy in the palace gardens

then I got lost in a maze

Leah stalking the deer

close up shot for Ian

Leah was excited and nervous

We czech’d out a few places the locals go on the weekend, stopping for a beer at a biker pub where lots of families have a day out and bikers take a pit stop to refuel (by fuel I mean beer and by bikers I mean cyclists). We dropped in at the Luže town fair where we caught a traditional Czech band and a local rock band performing. The traditional band must have been playing all the hits because all the oldies around us were singing and foot tapping along. It was quite funny to see the older crowd disperse when the rock band replaced them, playing a very different genre of music. Leah was impressed because they played a cover of ‘Zombie’ by The Cranberries.

beers at the country pub, on the hill because there was no free tables.

traditional Czech tunes

Our first experience with Help X was a great one and it was great to have a base for 10 days, without having to worry about meals, accommodation and travelling. We would definitely do it again down the track and recommend it to anyone travelling for an extended period of time.

sunrise on our last morning run (well Leah ran I cruised on the bike)

arvi