Salzburg

Have just recently arrived in Salzburg - again a beautiful city and nice weather as well! Went to Hallstadt, which has the world's oldest salt mine and Rob has proved the piece of rock we got from there really is salt by dissolving, filtering and evaporating it so we have our very own rock salt.

We camped in snow in Hallstadt - kids loved it, but it took us a couple of days to dry out the boots after they played in the snow all afternoon.

Heading to Slovenia next. More mountains and snow - kids reckon it's the best!

A few photos of the van, Potsdam, Berlin

Yes, another internet cafe with Wifi - Prague is so civilised! Just had delicious Goulash Soup to justify my presence in the cafe and now trying to upload a few photos to show a tiny snapshot of where we have been.

There are a couple more of the van to satisfy the interest of those who wonder how we can possibly all fit in comfortably. This first one is Breanna doing her diary with the computer nerds in the background! Breanna is the most disciplined of all of us with the diary, and is putting the rest of us to shame!

The next is a rest day in Potsdam. Beautiful weather at a campsite by the river and after completing four loads of washing (hogging all the campsite washing machines), had a very pleasant day relaxing in the sun. Washing proving to be a challenge as there are virtually no laundromats and quite a few of the campsites don't have laundries either! Just spent quite some time today in Prague handwashing as much as possible and leaving it to dry in the amenities, since we are almost the only campers there, it is not too much of a problem!

This one is of a mini Potsdam conference of the Gatt kids outside the Cecilienhof where the real Potsdam conference took place at the end of WWII. Potsdam is just out of Berlin and has some beautiful palaces and parks. We spent nearly two days just walking around the parks and palaces and through the lovely cafe strip in the centre of the old part of town.

Breanna and Liam taking a rest outside one of the Berlin art galleries - didn't go inside, as we were a bit museumed/palaced out!

We did really enjoy walking around Berlin though. Such an interesting place with so much history. I found it particularly interesting to visit the old area of the Berlin Wall, having been through Checkpoint Charlie into the old East Berlin several years before the wall came down. What an enormous difference now.

Read a lot about the history of the wall and some of the excapes and tragedies of the wall. Really quite hard to believe such a thing could exist and I remember the whole atmosphere of the border crossing was very intimidating and the East Berlin streets depressingly empty and lifeless.


This picture is of James and Liam standing on the double cobbled line that shows where the Berlin Wall was. It is just near the Checkpoint Charlie crossing for foreigners, which is the one I went through on a bus with an exchange student tour in 1982.

We headed down towards Dresden after that, stopping at a lovely town called Meissen on the way, with a porcelain factory and even better, a wave pool which the kids loved (and so did we!)

After that, Dresden, which was attractive, but seemed a little strange knowing that all the apparently old buildings had been only so recently rebuilt after being flattened in the war.

Now in Prague, which is certainly a beautiful city and an entry in itself, which Rob promises to write soon!

Time to sign off before wearing out our welcome at this cafe, or having to buy more food to justify our presence here!

Prague

Hi all, have finally found an internet place with wireless - and then found to my dismay that having carted my laptop around all day that I only have about 20 mins of battery life - someone left it on hibernate after watching a DVD last night and my battery drains - aargh, the joys of a cheap computer.
Weather is cold in Prague, but still dry (mostly!). Got some hail and yesterday the kids got to play in the snow in the hills - best part of the trip they reckon.

Have been via Dulmen to Wolfsburg (VW headquarters), Berlin, Meissen and Dresden on our way to Prague. Loved being in Germany and reviving my German - has come back reasonably well and it was great to be able to understand signs and talk to people. (Not that Rob takes any notice of the traffic signs!! Too busy concentrating on keeping the van on the correct side of the road and not hitting the curb.

We are gradually settling into the tiny space of the camper - it really is well designed. Again, I am the one finding it hardest to cope with all those kids invading my personal space and making so much noise!!! - again encouraged by Rob's boisterous play with them.

ALmost out of battery, must post.

Amsterdam

Arrived in Amsterdam on 30 September, again making things complicated by arriving on different flights as I had to drive back up to Stockport to deliver Grant and Rachel's car back to them and fly out of Manchester instead of Heathrow. A slightly stressful day as I suddenly realised at 11:30 am that my insurance for the car ran out at 12 noon and I still had 3 hours driving to do! So lots of time spent on the phone on hold to the insurance company by both me and Grant and finally after an hour and a half at a roadside stop I was on my way again fully insured. So it turned out to be a fairly rushed handover to Grant and Rachel, no doubt also adding significantly to the stress in their day as well.

However, made it to the plane and successfully to the hotel in Amsterdam where we met with Paul Butler of ADAS (Australian Diver Accreditaiton Scheme. Rob spent the next day with him visiting one of the Dutch commercial diving schools and I caught up with him over the distance learning course we are running for Dive Project Managers. So after a couple of days there, we then picked up our Campervan from BW Campers. It seemed awfully small initially with all our luggage, but once we had unpacked everything, we managed to fit it all in. We left some bags with them and are now ensconced happily in our new home where we will be for the next 3 months. It's very well designed, the beds are comfortable and the only thing lacking are a few hooks in the bathroom to hang towels, wet coats etc, which we can probably fix with a few adhesive hooks.

Have found a campsite with internet access - hence the blog posting. We're near Giethoorn, which is north east of Amsterdam and is a beautiful village I visited 25 years ago with the Martin Family and decided to show to Rob and the kids.

Hope you enjoy the new photos and that the map didn't take too long to download.

Germany next. Hopefully not too long before the next posting!