Architecturally, we are yet to see a city in Europe that looks as good as Prague. Six hundred years of architecture untouched by war, and Vltava’s 2002 havoc has, thankfully, not left its mark on it.

Charles Bridge with Hradčany in the background.

My point-and-shoot camera does not do justice to this place.² There are some amazing pictures on Flickr worthy of a look—though nothing, and not even these pictures beat the experience of being there and soaking it all in.

Astronomical clock.

With the exception of the morning fog that lasted often until noon, October was a perfect time to visit, we thought, since there were fewer tourists, and the chill bearable. We found parking and driving maniacal. When it comes to driving, the Czechs drive like they’re possessed or something. And so, it made sense to go on a guided tour with a heavily accented English speaking guide, and bunch of American and Czech co-tourists.

We spent three blissful nights in Prague, experiencing the sublime, and the rich heritage to last long enough in our memories.

1. It dawned upon us that our navigator had picked-up the “shortest route,” which is not necessarily the “fastest.” In this case, it certainly wasn’t the quickest. The shortest route saved us about 100km, but took us on a state highway, which went right through the hearts of towns lined all along. As a consequence, our average speed suffered.
2. Be sure to arm yourself with one of those heavy hitters with an image stabilizer, and a pod—if you truly want to capture Prague in its senses. Prague revels in the night more than in the day.

It was after 6pm on October 20 when we entered Vienna and into the stream of returning traffic, while catching a glimpse of Schönbrunn in my peripheral vision. Reaching Fasangaße, where we had reserved an apartment for the next three nights of our stay, took a little longer.

Of all the things I’ve read about Vienna, this one sticks best. That there is enough grand imperial art and architecture here to leave the culture crowd gasping for air. But we wanted to dive-in first before re-surfacing. The next morning, with its trickle of sunshine, provided that perfect opportunity.

After buying a few 12-hour tickets from a tobacconist, the four of us boarded tram O, and headed toward Innere Stadt. Tram O stopped at Radetzkyplatz?, and before long, we noticed that we were the only four still sitting. I guess, it was a bit of a late dawn upon us that Radetzkyplatz? was tram O’s last stop. Tram N from there took us to Schwedenplatz, where we hopped on to our next.

Tram 1 traverses along Ringstraße giving you a taste of that compact and grandiose Innere Stadt to come, where most of the important sights are concentrated in: Museumsquartier, Heldenplatz, the Hofburg complex, Parlament, Friedrich-Schmidt platz, Rathaus, Stephansplatz, and Staatsoper. Tram 1 also saved us from having to walk much, with two kids in tow, who don’t really dig architecture—at least yet.

To survive after all that, you’ll need air. Twice over. It’s staggering. And we were simply blown away.

We spent our second day with a Grand Tour of the Schönbrunn Palace. And then much of our afternoon in the Haus der Musik, where we saw the ghosts of Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, and Strauss come alive.

We had our share of bitterness too. At an overflowing McD near Schottentor University, while having lunch, someone picked my jacket pocket. I had left it hanging on the back rest of my chair. My favorite camera became a casualty of that incident. Along with it I lost a 2GB CF card full of digital memories. And just when we thought we had lost only those, all our Vienna pictures on our other camera were strangely found corrupted as well. Jinxed? We’ll never know for sure.

And I swerved our Civic from the mid-lane to the truck lane.

Melk was nowhere on our radar when we started from Linz. But we were glad we took this exit. As we entered the beaten track, we got a glimpse of Stift Melk—the magnificent Benedictine abbey in true baroque style.

Stift Melk © Martin Haesemeyer, cc.

There’s something about Melk, which I can’t place on a scale of tranquility. It’s a quiet little town, but boy, it is immensely charming.

First thoughts on my mind were to wish I could spend a week here. But then we only had a couple of hours to spare.

Among other things, we much wanted to visit Ars Electronica, a fun museum dedicated to new technology. But to our luck, we found it closed for renovations.

“It is a fairy tale setting, you’ll like it” is how the owner of de Harmonie described his village, as we were renting bicycles from him. For a moment I thought he was kidding, because the only ones I had seen until now were either in the creations of Disney and Pixar, or in Albert Uderzo’s drawings.

The first known inhabitants apparently were refugees from Mediterranean regions who settled around 1200. While cultivating their lands, they found large quantities of horns of wild goats that had drowned in St. Elizabeth’s flood of 1170. They called their settlement ‘Geytenhoren’ (Goathorns)—known today as Giethoorn.

The difference between Uderzo’s little Gaulish village, and Giethoorn is that one is a lucid imagination set in 50BC, while the other is a blissful reality today. Oh, there’s another. Uderzo’s village didn’t have canals, whereas Giethoorn is abound with them. It is not known as ‘Green Venice’ or ‘Venice of the North’ for nothing.

For a place—that can easily give Venice a run for its money—there’s little publicly available information, that it is surprising. In fact, we only learned about it via the word of mouth. Like Getafix’s magic potion, this is perhaps the best kept Dutch secret getaway.

We spent a whale of time cycling, boating around a large number of interconnected waterways in an electric eco-friendly boat.

Beulakerweg 55, 8355 AB Giethoorn, NL.

In order to make my trips related posts a bit more useful, I have been updating them with addresses, which you can type in to your navigator and go. You’ll typically find these near the bottom of relevant posts. The addresses are linked to Google Maps, so you can see where you’re going before you type in that address in your navigator.

I wanted a simple GPS icon for these addresses so as to make them recognizable. I contemplated using the actual device icons, but finally decided to create my own. I used Kalsey’s excellent button maker, copy pasted the button into Paint (yes, I still do low level bitmap editing), kerned the pixeled edges, used a color that would be easily visible on my dark theme, as well as represent the screen of the GPS, and there you have it.

So here’s hoping my trips related posts are a little more usable now.

It was a decent sized branch we had jumped over. I hadn’t seen it coming. I spotted a park lane in the distance and pulled over. We still had 350km to cover on our way back from Heidelberg. Our Civic is equipped with these funny tubeless tyres; spare wheel not included. We checked for signs of damage; there were none. Sneha and I sat with our heads down—until our heavy breathing subsided, our nerves no more hyper, and our heart rates back to normal.

Sneha and I remember yet another road incident from the past—our visit to Cherating. A couple of things didn’t go well on that trip. The stingray incident was one. This following is the other.

We were driving back home, and it started raining heavy. On one of the troughs on the highway, I was trying to overtake a truck—in poor visibility, in spite of wipers functioning at maxed-out speed. On one side was the concrete wall, the truck I was overtaking was on the other.

The truck began lurching towards us, and I was half way through its length. That was when we entered the trough, only to be hit by a ton of displaced water—completely blinding us. Because of the speed of both vehicles traversing through a mass of water, the water stayed in the air for a few moments in what seemed like an eternity, and knocking the living daylights out of us. That was a close call.

Now we know what it feels like—to be stuck between a rock and a hard place.

It was here at the University of Heidelberg that in 1860, two great scientists—Gustav Kirchhoff and Robert Bunsen—developed Spectrum analysis, which later became a stepping stone for quantum mechanics.

When you arrive at a place armed with information like this, you tend to look at it in different light. The aura of such places make you feel as if you’re on a scientific pilgrimage. Yet, we managed to retain our tourist-y approach and did go out to venture into this lovely city.

Most notable are ruins of the beautiful 13th century Heidelberger Schloss high above, and overlooking the old town. It’s miserable to note that, it was destroyed by a mere bolt of lightning. (If only they had arresters then, we’d still be basking in its magnificence.) Among other things, the castle contains unusual treasures like the second largest beer keg in the world.

On the way back, we enjoyed a ride down to the Kornmarkt in the funicular railway, whose travel is almost like a vertical drop.

Heidelberger Schloss (Castle): Schloss 1, 69117 Heidelberg, DE.

University of Heidelberg: Grabengasse 1 D-69117 Heidelberg, DE.

Pristine blue waters, gushing at a soothing pace before the rapids, is a sight to behold. On our way back from Winterthur, we spent a few hours at this lovely place.

Schloss laufen Rheinfall: Lauferstrasse 8447 Dachsen, CH.