Germany to Austria - Driving from Nuremberg to Vienna

It's hard to believe how much time has gone by since I last posted about my travels in Germany, Austria, and Denmark. Life can sometimes get so busy, that the months and seasons pass without me even noticing. 

When I last left off, we had just driven from Berlin to Nuremberg making a few little stops along the way. The next morning, we rose and continued driving into Austria, and clear across the county until we reached Vienna.

After a comfortable night in the Hilton Nuremberg, we got on the road relatively early. We spent over 4 hours on the road driving which isn't quite as much as the day before, but still a lot of driving for two days in a row. But rather than drive 4 hours straight and get to Vienna right away, we made (in my humble opinion) a very important pit stop on the way there.

About 2.5 hours into the drive to Vienna, we stopped at the former Mauthausen Concentration Camp. We had no trouble getting across the Austrian border after stopping for over priced gas and sandwiches. Crossing countries in the EU is very similar to crossing state boarders in the USA. There may be a sign, "Thanks for visiting" or "Welcome to..." but other than there, there is no border control. Same thing with Germany and Austria. I think there was a sign denoting the change in countries, but it was in German and not very significant.  Note: make sure your car has the Austrian toll sticker, otherwise you will have problems driving through the country. We got ours at the gas station right before crossing the border.

We arrived at the former KZ camp about 30 mins early for the English tour and spent time at the camp until about 12:30. The tour was very well done, and it was a very moving experience to see how much of the camp is still in tact. Visitors have the option of walking the "stairs of death" from the former quarry, but due to our time constraints we skipped that. 

Entrance to the former Mauthausen KZ camp

"Stairs of Death" at the Mauthausen KZ camp

From Mauthausen, we drove just another 90 minutes to Vienna, stopping first at Schonnbrun Palace, the summer residence of the Hapsburgs just outside of Vienna proper. The hubs and I got the Sisi ticket (29 Euros) which included both the Schonnbrun Palace and the Hofborg Palace which we were planning to visit tomorrow. The Schonnbrun Palace is very large (think the Versailles of Austria) and opulent. We walked around the gardens for about an hour before going through the palace. The grounds are very extensive, and you can walk up a ways and get an awesome view of the palace with the city of Vienna behind hit (see my picture below). It was a great introduction to Vienna and to the historic Hapsburg empire. 

Schonnbrun Palace from the entrance

Schonnbrun Palace from the gardens

On our way out, we met up with my in-laws who went through the palace at a different pace than us. We went back to our car which we parked on a nearby street and headed right to the center of Vienna. It took us about another 30 mins to drive to the Hotel Trend Europa Vienna (read my trip advisor review). As I stated in my review, we had a little bit of difficulty with this hotel all due to factors out of our control. Europe was going through a heatwave that summer, so Vienna which is usually more temperate was very hot. We chose this hotel for 2 reasons: location and a/c. When our a/c wasn't working, it caused some problems. The a/c for my in-laws worked just fine, and I certainly don't hold our experience against this hotel. We were right in downtown Vienna and paid only $180/night including parking.  

We got cleaned up and headed over to the town hall for an Austrian Dinner show. The show started at 8pm with musicians and salad. After clearing the salads, the singers and dancers came out. They performed selections from Austrian operas for about 20 mins before they brought us the second course of stuffed beef and pasta. Dessert was a buttermilk soufflé but it tasted more like chopped up pancakes…equally as delicious. 

When we got back to our hotel around 10:30-11PM we realized that our a/c still wasn’t working. After some arguing with the maintenance staff, they gave us a different and much smaller (if that was even possible) but cooler room. It was a rather unpleasant end to our evening, but the next day we had nearly a full day to spend in Vienna, and I was already enchanted by this amazing European city. Unlike Berlin who modernized their city after it was leveled by allied bombings, Vienna didn't near suffer the same devastation and amazingly held onto their historic architecture. You truly feel like you're walking in an old city free from the cosmopolitan hubbub that I don't like in US cities. We only had 2 problems in Vienna...we were there on a Sunday...and it was a Sunday in August. If you read one of my older posts about our trip to Italy, you'll that we encountered a very similar phenomenon when we visited Milan. 

To continue reading about Vienna, click HERE. 

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler

Western Germany en route to Vienna

After spending a day and a half in the bustling, busy, boisterous city of Berlin, we started making our way to Vienna by driving through the western side of Germany. I explained in my introductory post to this trip, that due to circumstances beyond our control, we couldn't drive from Berlin to Prague to Vienna like we planned. So instead, we took a detour around the Czech Republic. We wouldn't get to Vienna in one day, so we drove for about 6 hours the first day, taking little stops in the middle, spent the night in Nuremberg and then continued onto Vienna the following day.

On Friday, August 9, we got off to an early start (shocking, I know). We checked out of the Radisson Blu hotel in Berlin around 6:30AM and set off in our black volvo toward the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Short history lesson! The Castle Church in Wittenberg is where Martin Luther posted his 95 Thesis starting the Protestant Reformation in 1517. We found the church with relative ease after driving for about an hour and a half. We parked on the most adorable, picturesque German street, took a few pictures, and were on our way again. (The church itself was closed for restoration.) 

Castle Church - Wittenberg, Germany

"Door" where Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses

Quaint Street in Wittenberg, Germany

We then stopped at a market for gas, water, snacks, and toilets in a small town. What we discovered on our drive that day was that in Germany, there are either Autobahn highways or small country roads, nothing in between. In the United States, we have giant interstate highways or freeways, we have back country roads, but then we also have just normal 4 lane highways that are neither terrifying due to speed or terrifying due to their narrowness. I found it very interesting that one minute we were driving on a highway with no speed limit and the next minutes we were down to a narrow 2-lane road no faster than 25 mph.  

After driving on country roads for about 2 hours (2 very frustrating, windy, long hours), we made it to our next stop. Our next destination after Wittenberg was the Meissen Pottery Factory just outside of Dresden. Not being able to go to Prague ended up being a blessing in disguise for my mother-in-law who is a pottery lover. Meissen pottery is very fancy, very beautiful and very expensive. I enjoyed our visit to the factory even if the gift shop was little out of my price range. We sat through a short demonstration on the making of Meissen pottery and my mother-in-law took home a little souvenir. 

Meissen Pottery Factory - Dresden, Germany

Next to the Meissen factory was a grocery store, so we picked up some sandwiches and meat and cheese and ate lunch in the car on our way to Nuremberg. After a boring 2.5 hour drive, we made it to the Documentation Center and Nazi Party Rally Grounds. 

The reason we left Berlin so early was to try and get to this place before it closed, and as I mentioned, it took us 6 hours of total driving time to get there. The Documentation Center and Nazi Party Rally Grounds was a series of underground bunkers and tunnels and an unfinished stadium intended to be used by Hitler for large rallies. What I found remarkable about this place is that it's one of the only remaining examples of Nazi architecture. I know that might not seem like anything noteworthy, but I disagree. By using slave labor and by conducting abominable experiments on human lives, the Nazis were able to make significant technological and medicinal advances. But what do we know about Nazi architecture? Maybe there is nothing to know. As World War II ended, nearly all of Hitler's properties and headquarters were destroyed by the advancing allies (and rightfully so). They didn't touch this place in Nuremberg, however, because it was never finished. Now it stands as a testimony to what could have been, what Hitler had intended, and the museum in the tunnels below the rally grounds now act as a museum about life within Nazi Germany.

Unfinished Nazi Party Rally Grounds - Nuremberg, Germany

I've read countless books on World War II, watched numerous documentaries, chatted with Holocaust survivors and read their memoirs, toured Holocaust museums, volunteered at the one in Washington DC, visited former Concentration Camps, and what I saw in this museum beneath the Nazi Party Rally Grounds proved to me how much I still had to learn about the whole World War II era. Instead of going into the sordid details about Hitler's plan for European Jewry, it took a closer look at prewar Germany and the people who lived there between 1933-1939. I still remember footage from one of the videos where two elderly ladies laughed and talked about being young girls and having a competition to see who could attend more of the "Fuhrer's" parades and see him in person. It was a new side of an exhausted story that I never heard before, and for that reason, I am very glad I went.

But you aren't reading a history blog (though perhaps I should start one), you're reading a travel blog. Surrounding the Documentation Center & Nazi Party Rally Grounds, we found lots of road closures and construction. We eventually made our way to the Hilton Nuremberg Hotel which is a lovely convention hotel outside of the city, but in a great location for us for driving the next morning. (You can read my trip advisor review of the hotel here.) 

After checking in, we went back out for dinner at “Tang” a German-Chinese Restaurant. It was delicious but absolutely hilarious. They clearly knew we were tourists and either Americans or just assumed that any non-German tourists spoke English. They didn't greet us in German, they didn't offer us German menus, or even attempt to speak any German to us what so ever. The food, although we ordered individual plates, was served family style and over little hotplates with candles under them. Not that we needed them. After nothing but convenience store sandwiches and minimart snacks all day, we gobbled up our German-Chinese dinner, and then called it a day. Another early morning awaits us….

Wait a minute. We got back to the hotel and instead of pillow mints, they were....what is that?? Turn on the light. Huh? Gummy bears? They put gummy bears on our pillows? So weird, but kinda fun! Who doesn't love gummy bears?! :)

So, if you ever find yourself in western Germany, I hope you find this blog helpful. Next up is Vienna and other parts of Austria. Keep reading by clicking HERE.

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler

Berlin, Germany Part II

One of the things I love about Europe is the age of many of its famous structures. These countries existed hundreds of years before the creation of the United States, and with that history come magnificent churches, castles, cathedrals, etc. For that reason, I was excited to visit Germany. Berlin, but it does not contain anything...well...old. Being a student of history, I knew that the allies heavily bombed Berlin during WWII, but I suppose it had never sunk in just how much of the city was leveled. 

We visited Berlin on Thursday, August 8, 2013 and found it just as dirty, noisy, etc as any major city. It’s funny, however, because things still looked old. Germany rebuilt Berlin to look like it was never bombed. To me, that made it lose some of its appeal/charm. They nearly completely rebuilt the cathedral, that we visited the night before (read about it here), in 1946. The original cathedral dated back hundreds of years which was impressive to me, but seeing a rebuilt cathedral didn't have the same WOW factor as say the Florence Duomo. 

There were still a good many things that I enjoyed seeing during our day and a half in Berlin. On our full day, we got up around 5AM, ate our breakfast pastries that we bought the night before and were at the train station by 6:40AM. We caught an early bus and were standing outside the Bundestag building by 6:55AM...slightly early for our 8AM Dome tickets. To pass the time, we took a walk around the immediate area and ducked into a bus stop while waiting for a morning shower/t-storm to pass. At 8:00, we passed through a quick security checkpoint and then went inside the Berlin parliament building. We were very glad that we visited early both before it got too crowded or too hot. 

Bundestag - Berlin Parliament Building

The tickets to the Bundestag don't include anything more than the dome which I knew ahead of time but still didn't love. Don't get me wrong, the dome is pretty incredible and the audio tour is amazing. The audio device is wired to sense where you are at any point of the dome and switch automatically to different tracks depending on the view you're currently looking at. Very intelligent and impressive technology for a tourist attraction. Be prepared for a lot of walking if you visit the dome. I highly recommend it. 

Dome tour atop the Berlin Parliament building

After visiting the dome, we walked to the Brandenburg Gate. Only about a 10 minute walk from the Bundestag, we stopped there on our way to the Berlin Holocaust memorial. I loved how there was almost no one at the Brandenburg Gate when we were there. My in-laws visited there later in the afternoon, and there pictures were much more crowded.

Brandenburg Gate - Berlin, Germany

The Berlin Holocaust Memorial is very large and interesting. Completed in 2005, I found it curious that it took 60 years for Berlin to do something like this. Better late than never, I suppose. It is quite extraordinary just how large the memorial is. No admission fee, you can just wander in and out at various points throughout the city. 

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe - Berlin, Germany

We continued walking around Berlin, and paid $0.50 to use one of the steaming hot city johns which were fascinating and amusing. From there, we walked to the Gendarmarkt which is a square with the opera house sandwiched between two identical churches one German and one French. I thought the square would have had food vendors of some sort or nearby restaurants, but since they had neither, we kept our time there to a minimum and kept going. 

Half of the Gendarnmarkt Square - Berlin, Germany

We took a quick detour through two exhibits on the Russian Gulag at the Berlin Story Museum. Nearly all of the exhibit material was in German, so although I found the artifacts interesting, we couldn't learn too much from the display labels or text panels. So, we left and made our way to museum island. On museum island in Berlin, they have 5 different museums focusing on everything from Byzantine art to ancient Egypt. We planned on going to the Egyptian museum at a minimum, but just the line to buy tickets far exceeded our patience, so we left. Hunger trumped our desired to stand in line for over an hour with no shade whatsoever. If you have more than a day in Berlin, I'm sure you could easily spend a full day or two just touring these museums. And if you only have a day in Berlin, and museums are the thing for you, perhaps you would make that more of a priority. Our afternoon agenda, however, had other things on it.

We left museum island fairly quickly avoiding the modern-day gypsies who were going up to tourists asking them if they spoke English. We ignored them and pretended not to understand. Having come full circle since early this morning, we found little pizzas for lunch right near our hotel and then headed to Alexanderplatz, the main train station. 

We took the S7 train to the Wannsee stop, then took the 114 bus 6 stops to the Haus der Wannsee Konferenz  For those of you who don't know what this is, it is the historic villa where top Nazi officials held a conference on January 20, 1942 where they decided the fate of European Jewry.  The villa was absolutely beautiful and situation on a very picturesque lake. The inside has been converted into a museum. I wish they could have incorporated a museum about the Holocaust and the Wannsee Conference without removing all of the furniture from the house itself. The rooms all stood empty with display cases and information panels on the walls. The museum was very informative if you weren’t already familiar with the subject, and in the room where they held the actual conference, you could read the meeting minutes which I found very interesting. I would have liked to see perhaps one panel that just gave a brief history of the villa itself before the infamous Nazi meeting.

Haus der  Wannsee Konferenz - Wannsee, Germany

Back of the Wannsee Conference House 

Afterwards, we took the train back to Berlin but got off at the Tiergarten instead of taking it back to our hotel. We walked the full length of the garden to the Brandenburg Gate again and took an over-heated bus back to the hotel. 

Tiergarten - Berlin, Germany

We reconnected with my in-laws for dinner and heard all about their day. We got some buttery breakfast danishes for the next morning and returned to the Radisson Blu for our last night in Berlin. If you recall from a previous post, I mentioned that our original plan had been to drive from Berlin to Prague to Vienna. Since the German rental car companies derailed that plan, in order to get to Vienna, we had to take a detour around the Czech Republic. To do that, we drove through parts of western Germany which you can read all about by clicking HERE.

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler

Berlin, Germany Part I

Hello friends. After our day in Copenhagen, Germany, we set off for Germany. We took the fastest route possible, which included a 2 hour ferry ride across the Baltic Sea. We got off to a rough start that morning when our alarm didn’t go off at 5:30. Getting up at 6:30 gave us very little time to get ready and packed, but by 7:40 we were check out of the Crowne Plaza and ready for the airport shuttle. 

At the airport, we found the Hertz counter to pick up our car that we would drive around Germany, Austria and back to Denmark for the next 2 weeks. I had prearranged with Hertz to order a very specific car so that we made sure to get an automatic transmission with a large enough trunk for four people's worth of luggage. Even with the Volvo wagon that we got, the folks in the back seat had to deal with a bag between them the entire time. Big tip - pack light! When you travel with more than 2 people, renting a car and splitting the cost is definitely the way to go instead of trains and public transportation the entire time. We paid $1,222 for our car for 2 weeks. That's $611/couple which I thought was a good deal. The snafu that we ran into happened in the Copenhagen airport. We arrived at the hertz counter a little before our scheduled pick up time. The car was already available but they wanted to charge us a fee for picking it up early. After double checking our receipt and noticing what happened, we assured them that we would return it early, and they agreed to lower the price back down. It helped that we had all of our confirmation paperwork printed and available to show them which made it difficult for them to refute the reservation price.

From Copenhagen, we set out for the town of Gedser, Denmark which took us about 1:45 drive. From there we stopped at the ferry entrance and waited for the green light to drive our car onto the ferry. We took the Scandlines ferry across the sea. The other couple arranged the ferry so I don't recall the exact price, but looking at the website now, prices range from 40 Euros and up. I do know that we paid extra for priority boarding because we were bringing a vehicle with us. I can't say whether or not this was necessary, but if definitely made us feel better knowing that we were in a different lane than other cars and that we got on the ferry (and off the ferry) first.

As soon as we got on the ferry, we parked underneath the ship and then headed to the top. The ferry itself was lovely and we really enjoyed the short time we spent aboard. It was only a 2 hour ride, and inside they had a luncheon buffet and duty free shopping. I love Toblerone. :) 

At the buffet we experienced our first encounter with chip and pin credit cards. These are starting to pop up all over Europe, and the machines are not compatible with American credit cards. We are slowly getting more and more cards with chips in them, but they are still not the same as the chip and PIN cards that they have over seas. My in-laws traveling with us even got a specific card with a chip in it, but the pin still didn't work. In nearly all cases where we had an issue (and could communicate with the sales clerk) we had to tell them that we had no pin. Once they realized we were foreign or had no pin, they were able to run the card a different way and it would work. And if worst comes to worst, always make sure you have enough cash on you to cover things like meals or other small incidentals.

Duty free findings on our ferry from Denmark to Germany

Before reaching the other side, they made a few announcements about going back to our cars, but they were either in Danish or German. We kept an eye on our watches, but made it back to our car just in the nick of time before the doors opened for us to drive off. You could say the timing was perfect, but we cut it a little too close for my timidity. 

Our first mission in Germany was a quest to find the Green Emission sticker for driving in city centers. I don't know how on earth we came across this, but at some point during my research, I found out that German cars are required to have a special clean emission sticker in order to drive downtown in certain cities. Since our Berlin hotel was smack in the middle of the city, we knew this was something we'd have to worry about. If we had rented a car in Germany itself, the car would have already come with the appropriate stickers, but since we rented our car in Denmark, it only had the necessary Danish stickers. We weighed the likelihood of getting a ticket vs. the cost, time and stress of taking a rental car to a car shop in Germany. The cost of the sticker was only 6.55 euros vs. a violation ticket of 40 euros (and they required stickers in Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Nuremberg and Freiburg, all of which we were visiting) so we decided to figure out where we needed to stop and get one. Of course that wasn't terrible easy either, but we eventually found a place within a pretty close distance to where our ferry dropped us (in Rostock, Germany). Of course, being this far outside any major city, we couldn't find anyone who spoke English to tell them what we needed. Fortunately, my father-in-law paid for an international data plan on his iPad and had a translator app. As soon as he typed in green sticker, the gentleman at the ATU station knew what we wanted. We gave him our rental paperwork and the documents in the glove compartment, paid our 6.55E, got our sticker and were on our way.

ATU Station in Rostock, Germany

Green Emission Sticker for city driving in Germany

After another 2 hours we drove to the center of Berlin to the Radisson Blu Hotel. We parked underground and checked in. You can read my trip advisor review on the hotel, but in short, it was pretty great. We chose it for the location. We only planned on spending a single day in Berlin, so having a hotel with easy access to attractions and public transportation trumped everything else. My husband and I opted for the non-refundable, prepaid price of $157/night for 2 nights while my in-laws booked a refundable fare which was slightly more expensive. Our rooms were identical, so depending on what type of traveler you are, either option is doable at this hotel.

Giant fish tank inside the Radisson Blu Hotel - Berlin

We didn't waste anytime. We arrived in Berlin in the middle of the afternoon, dropped our bags in our rooms, and immediately set out on foot for the Berlin Cathedral (right next door to the hotel). Allied bombing nearly destroyed the Berlin Cathedral during World War II (and nearly all of Berlin/Germany for that matter), but as you walk up the staircase toward the dome, you can read all about the renovation project that took place after the war. They also had pre and post war pictures which I found especially fascinating.

Pipe organ inside the Berlin Cathedral

From the cathedral, we walked to the main train station, Alexanderplatz. We fought with the ticket dispensers for about an hour. This was a rather unfortunate waste of time, but the youtube videos we watched prior to arriving didn't help us at this particular moment. We eventually realized that the machine we stood at was a change only machine. My father-in-law went to one of the convenience stores (think 7-11) and got enough change to buy tickets. It was then that we learned that the U-Bahn is on the honor system. The idea is that they randomly check passengers for tickets but you don't technically need a ticket to enter/exit the metro like you do in the United States, Tokyo, Bangkok, etc.  I don't recall now if they ever checked ours, but we always made sure we had them. 

We headed from Alexanderplatz to Bernauer Strasse and then still had to walk quite a ways to reach the Berlin Wall Memorial and Documentation Center. We got to the Documentation Center with only a short amount of time to see it before they closed. We then spent some time walking around the remnants of the wall itself outside. I thought this was a very moving experience and highly recommend it. It's a piece of history that happened during our own lifetime and made such a huge impact on the people living in Berlin at the time. 

Berlin Wall Memorial - Berlin, Germany

After visiting the Berlin Wall Memorial, we took the train back to Alexanderplatz, got a traditional German dinner, bought some pastries at a bakery for breakfast the next morning (breakfast at the hotel cost something ridiculous) and called it a day. 

Click HERE for Berlin Part II which includes many more great tourist attractions and my own perspective on Berlin as a modern European city. 

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler

Copenhagen, Denmark (1 Day Itinerary)

Welcome to Day 1 of my trip to Denmark, Germany and Austria. As I said in my Introductory Blog to this trip, traveled by Scandinavian Airlines nonstop from Washington DC to Copenhagen, Denmark for almost exactly $1,000/per person. After flying all night on this mediocre airline (less than stellar airline food, terrible quality in-flight personal entertainment devices, poor movie choices, uncomfortable seats, etc) and getting very little sleep due to chatty children, we landed in Copenhagen around 6:50AM, about 25 mins ahead of schedule. 

On this trip, I broke my own packing rules. Have you read my blog on What to Pack, and How to Pack It? I am usually very anti-checked baggage, but since we were driving ourselves around for the majority of the trip, and because we had to pack clothes for different varieties of weather, we each wound up checking a bag. Though keep in mind, we still had to fit all of the luggage for four people within 1 car trunk, so our checked bags were still small. 

Getting our checked bags and going through customs took no time at all. We barely waited in the customs line for 10 minutes. They asked us no questions and then stamped our passports. In choosing a hotel in Copenhagen, I also broke my own travel rules. In my blog on Picking a Foreign Hotel, I explain that I keep all foreign hotels under $200/night. Copenhagen hotels are expensive, and since we only spent one day in the city, we agreed to pay a little bit more for a few important conveniences. 1. We didn't pick up our rental car until the next day, so we had to rely on public transportation to get around Copenhagen. 2. We needed to get from the airport to the hotel, so a hotel shuttle was key. We selected the Crown Plaza Copenhagen for our stay. We paid $214/night, and it was worth every penny. You can read the specifics in my Trip Advisor Review, but some of the highlights included the airport shuttle, being able to by metro tickets right at guest services, and the fact that we booked our hotel through hotels.com and had no issues.

We called for the airport shuttle and were at the hotel by 8AM. Check-in wasn't until 3pm, and we were prepared to ask them to store our bags (as we've done all over Europe and Asia). To our delight, they had rooms ready so we were able to check-in early and get cleaned up before heading into the city. We bought train tickets at guest services and walked about 10 minutes to the train station.

Unfortunately, as soon as we got on the metro bound for Christianhavn (pronounced Christian-han) the arriving metro car decided to have a malfunctioning door. This delayed us by about an hour, but we were still in the city by about 10-10:30. We rode the train for about 5-6 stops before getting into downtown Copenhagen.

We first walk to the Church of our Savior which has an exterior copper staircase that you can climb to the top. The stairs inside are incredibly narrow and steep through the church’s bell tower. The views of Copenhagen were beautiful. In my picture below you can see how the top is spiraled. The stairs are initially inside (and it was very stuffy, but amazing to see the giant bells of the bell tower), and then a door takes you outside for the rest of the way. Sadly, there is no "top", the stairs keep going until they're too narrow to continue. You get there, and are like, "wait, is that it? ok, back down,  I guess." It's very anticlimactic, but we enjoyed it very much. And for $7.00/pp, we thought it was a worth while activity.

Church of Our Savior - Christianhavn, Copenhagen

Next, we walked to the famous, colorful canal street Nyhavn (pronounced Ny-how-n). 

Nyhavn, Copenhagen

From there, my husband and I split off from my in-laws and we each went off on our own. My in-laws took an hour long boat ride through the canals and went to the Royal Danish pottery store while my husband and I set off walking all over the place. Copenhagen can be a very walkable city if you're in good shape and if the weather is nice. Copenhagen is a quirky city, but we enjoyed it very much.

We started out walking to the famous Little Mermaid statue which took us about an hour to walk to from Nyhavn (about 2-3 miles). En route we did a little souvenir shopping at the House of Amber and got Danish hot dogs at a street vendor. Visiting the statue is pretty neat. There are tons of tourists around, and to get a picture with the statue, you have to push your way to the front.  You have to cross a series of stones and a bit of water to get to the statue itself, but then you can get that iconic picture with Hans Christen Anderson's famous oceanic lady. The statue is at the far tip of the city, so we walked to that first, and then made our way back through the city to the other sites. (A quick note: if you take the boat tour through the canals, you only get to see the back side of the Little Mermaid statue.)

Little Mermaid Statue - Copenhagen

After the statue, we walked through the star-shaped fort, got ice cream, saw a wounded bird and made our way to the Rosenberg Castle by walking through a nice park. We walked through Rosenberg Castle, saw the Danish Crown jewels and then walked to the Danish National museum lamenting the heat and lack of A/C in this whole country. Being so far north, Denmark is generally mild throughout the whole year, but on this particular day in August, temperatures soared into the 80s, and I regretted my decision to wear capris. 

Rosenberg Castle -  Copenhagen

For dinner, we got pulled chicken and cheese sandwiches at a corner sandwich shop, found chocolate chip scones (not very tasty) walked back to the train and called it a night. We really enjoyed our day in Copenhagen, though neither of us cared very much for the food that we ate. This would be an ugly recurring theme at the end of the trip as well when we spent 2 additional days in Denmark. Danish food, not so great.

The jet lag hit us hard after dinner, and we happily went back to the hotel instead of going to Tivoli. Apparently we were both very tired because we were in bed by 7:30 and slept until 6:30 - an hour later than we intended…oops. The next morning, we packed up, and headed to Germany. Day 1 of our three country European tour is complete. To continue reading, click HERE. 

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler

Introduction to Denmark, Germany and Austria

Hello faithful blog readers! In the summer of 2013, I traveled with my husband and in-laws across three countries in western Europe, Germany, Austria and Denmark. We didn't initially plan on traveling to all three of these countries, and it's all very bizarre how it came about. If you've ever looked at a map of Europe before, you'll notice that many major European cities are only a few hours apart from each other. When planning a trip, it's hard not to look at two cities and think to yourself, "they're only 3 hours apart. Why not see both?" The problem with that, is that before too long, you'll end up driving all over the place. And yes, driving. This is a very important part of this blog segment. Driving! I know that there is the Euro-Rail, and if you're aiming to travel on the cheap, that might be a better option for you, but if you can afford to drive, it's absolutely the way to go in these countries. If you're new to my travel blog, check out one of my earliest posts called To Drive or Not to Drive. That blog contains my best advice for when you should drive and when to rely on public transportation.

We started with Germany for two reasons: I wanted to see castles, and my mother in-law wanted to look up her family heritage. From Germany, I started poking around the surrounding countries drafting up a rough itinerary of countries and cities to see that were nearby. Originally, our trip started in Germany (flying into either Berlin or Frankfurt) and included Prague, Austria, and Budapest. All of the major cities we wanted to see (Frankfurt, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, and Budapest) were within easy driving distance of each other, and the trip itinerary started to take shape. 

Early in my research, we started getting quotes from different sources before we booked anything. We kept our eye on airfare and looked at the various options of flying into different cities, nonstop vs. connecting, multi city flights (i.e. flying into Berlin but flying home from Budapest), and rental car pricing. Only my father in-law knew how to drive a manual car (most prevalent and inexpensive option in Europe) but since we didn't want him to be stuck driving the whole time, it was imperative for us to get an automatic car. Several European based car companies didn't even offer automatic cars, so we called major companies like Hertz and Avis to get quotes. What they said, shocked us!

Apparently, even though the Iron Curtain of communism in Europe was lifted back in 1989, there still exists a notable distinction between western Europe and eastern Europe. When I spoke to the Hertz representative about renting a car, he asked about which countries we planned on visiting. I gave him the rough outline of our trip, and he very clearly said that they did not permit cars rented in Germany to be driven into the Czech Republic. Since we insisted on an automatic large enough for 4 adults and luggage, our only option was a luxury brand (Mercedes, BMW, Volvo, etc.) and due to the high volume of vehicle crime in the Czech Republic, they didn't allow their cars to cross the border into eastern Europe. Avis said the same thing. What? Are they serious? Yes, actually, they were very serious. Suddenly, our whole itinerary started to unravel. 

Before giving up on Prague, we looked into flying there directly and starting in Prague, but flight costs were crazy, and car rental companies wouldn't guarantee an automatic car...go figure. We also looked into trains. We priced out the cost of traveling by rail roundtrip from Berlin to Prague but were still left with the problem of getting to Austria once we were back in Berlin. (If you look at a map, it's a nice line from Berlin to Prague to Vienna. Cutting Prague out of the middle wouldn't make sense, and Vienna was one of my "must see" cities.) Sadly, we decided that Prague and Budapest (also in eastern Europe) would have to go. Instead of driving through the Czech Republic to get to Austria, we would drive around it through central Germany (which ended up being lovely). 

So how does Denmark fit into this picture? Well, once we worked out our new itinerary, cutting out Prague and Budapest, we found ourselves with several extra days. Rather than spend more time in any one area or cutting the trip short, we thought we would see where else we could go. We also weren't overly thrilled with the Germany flight options. Berlin and Frankfurt flights either had connections or were a few hundred dollars more. We found decently priced flights on Iceland Air that had a layover in Reykjavik, and Iceland Air claimed that we could stop in Iceland for a few days instead of continuing our layover immediately without any extra cost. Unfortunately, they didn't mean exactly what they said, and we couldn't actually stay for 2-3 days without the flight costing several hundred dollars more. 

At that point, we started looking at flights to other cities that were within a reasonable driving distance to any of the cities we were already visiting. We noticed that driving from Copenhagen to Berlin would only take us about 6 hours (and a ferry ride). Scandinavian Airlines offered nonstop, roundtrip flights to Copenhagen for under $1,000/pp, so we said, "SOLD!" 

And there you have it. We started and ended in Copenhagen, Denmark and from there drove all over Germany and Austria. 17 days and over 3,000 miles, it was an amazing but completely exhausting trip. We never spent more than 2 nights in any one hotel, but we saw and did so much. In my next blog, I'll begin at the beginning with Copenhagen. 

Until then, here is a picture of the map that shows the route we took. Pretty crazy, right? 

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler