Unfortunately I didn't see much about the whole city, because of the ugly weather.:(
Wikipedia says that Timisora was the 1st town in Europe and 2nd in the world after New York City with streets illuminated by electric lights and the cultural center in the western part of Romania.
We walked from a bit outside of the center and it's said that nobody takes care of this area.
Visiting Vienna
This
is the last night in Graz and it's still raining so I have time to
write on the blog about What is worth to visit in Vienna in my
opinion.:)
This
time when we were in Vienna we didn't really have time to visit many
places but a year before we spent 3 days and looked around in the
center.
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| Karlsplatz |
But
we still took "a day off" from busking and we went to Albertina Museum
and saw the best exibition of my life. It was impressionism and in the
other floors you could see drawings from Klimt and the little collection
of paintings between Monet and Picasso. It was amazing!
And of
course this is not the only Museum in Vienna. In the Museum Quarter you
can find out more information about the exibitions in Vienna.
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| Museum Quarter |
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| Albertina Museum |
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If
you just want to walk around you can start from the
center(Stephansplatz). In the center there is a huge, beautiful, gothic
cathedral,
Stephansdom .
You will meet in the main walking street with many street artists with
different kind of perfomances (spray paintings, puppet show, music and
so on).
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| Stephansdom |
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| Stephansdom |
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And if you can't stand the crowd anymore you can go
to Stadtpark. It's a small park about 5 minutes away from Stephansplatz.
You can find their the Strauss statue. A lot of turists go to that park
to see the statue. The lake is full of ducks and they are really
friendly :) They come really close to you of course for food.:)
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| Stadtpark |
The other nice park close to Stadtpark is Karlspatz.
One of the most beautiful baroque church is Karlskirche. The big square
makes the building more monumental and it takes your breath away. And if
you really like parks than you should defenatly go to Danube park(Donau
park). We got one beautiful day in Vienna when we had no clouds in the
sky and we found that beautiful place.:) All the flowers were blooming
and everything was green :)
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| Danube park |
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| Danube park |
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There's a little colorful train that is going through the park. It's so cute and small.I loved it:)
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| little train:) |
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| little train going between the trees |
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The whole park belongs to the newest part of Vienna,
called Donau City. It's like a future city from 2050. Maybe for other
Western-Europeans it's not a big deal to see skycrapers and such modern
structures but for me, being an Eastern-European, it's like being in a
sci-fi movie.:P
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| Donau City in Vienna |
Oh,.. And I almost forgot about the Hundertwasser
house. It's "hiding" in a small street in Vienna but it's quite easy to
find it. It's about 15 minutes walk from Stadtpark. He knows how to
combine nature and architecture :) And there is a factory designed by
him on the U6 line that is also worth visiting. Unfortunately I don't
have good photo of it:(
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| Hundertwasser houe |
And of course you should defenatly visit the palaces
in Vienna (Schönnbrunn, Belvedere).I visited Belvedere(10-15euros the
entrance) a year before but unfortunately We didn't go to Schönnbrunn:(
But i am sure that I will see it soon :D
Maybe
what I wrote is a bit chaotic but that's how thoughts came to my mind
and I just wrote them down.:P But I still hope that you found something
interesting in it.:)
Click here for more pictures!
Visiting Oslo
We spent 3 days in the capital of Norway. Eveybody told us that the city is not that nice and it's a really small capital so our expectations were lower. But what we found was very different from what people had to say about the beautiful capital. :)
The hitchhiking was easy again. As usual it took 3 rides and not a lot of waiting :P The first impression of Oslo was unexpected in a good way. When we entered the city the road followed the fjord and we could see the small islands and green hills in the distance.
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| Oslo fjord |
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| Walking street with grey clouds |
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The first day we took a walk. The center has really nice architecture, maybe not as impressive as in Budapest but defenetly not ugly. The walking streets are full of people and street performers. The only bad thing is that there are a lot of beggars everywhere(mostly gypsies) and nobody does anything against it. It's sad. And because begging doesn't work that well they grab an instrument and sing the same 2-3 songs over and over without any passion for 4-7 hours continiously... And this is why more and more people think that buskers are beggars and make busking harder and harder in most of the Europian countries.
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| Walking street |
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| Port |
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In Oslo amazingly we didn't saw really horrible performances. Maybe that's why it was one of the best city for busking :P
Anyway when we arrived it was the midsummer festival(23th of June) witch is one of the biggest holidays in Skandinavia(this is the longest day of the year). In Sweden it's bigger than Chiristmas. Everybody's drunk and in the city they are dancing around a huge penis shaped wooden sculpture which is decorated with flowers, and they sing songs about frogs(It's some viking tradition:P). In Norway they build large bonfires.
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| Bonfire on the water |
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| Water, Fire and Rainbow |
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On Sunday we went to the National Museum. On Sunday you can get in free in 4 Museums of Oslo. We were lucky because there was a temporary exibition with Munch and we could see some of his bigest works(like The Scream) and also we saw some Degas, Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Auguste Rodin etc.
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| Monet |
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| Van Gogh looking at The Thinker |
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There is a Munch Museum where they have the biggest collection of his works. If you like art it's a must visit place in Oslo. Unfortunately we didn't have time and money for that but we were satisfied with what we saw. :)
You can get a good panorama of the city and the Oslo fjord from the Opera House's rooftop. This is the first Opera House where you can walk on the roof top.
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| Opera House of Oslo |
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| Oslo fjord |
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Tips on what you can do/see in Oslo:
- walking in the city center and the port
- Visit one of the islands
- Opera House
- Museums (on Sunday some of them are free)
- Botanical Garden
Prices:
The most expensive city we've ever been to. But again if you don't want to eat out you can always find relatively cheap supermarkets. Alcohol and tabaco related products prices are way too high so if you want to drink or you are a smoker you should buy them in Sweden or wherever you come from:p. A lot of Norwegian people go to Sweden just over the border to do their shopping.
Public transport:
We didn't use it cause everything is within walking distance in the center. you can buy ticket for 40 Norwegan crowns(5.4 euro!) But again the conrollers are visible if we are informed right...
So thats all for now:) Enjoy Oslo and all it has to offer!
The Norwegian fjords
Our real goal in Norway was to get to one of the fjords. We found a really nice area in Google maps witch is called Aurland and we decided to go there :D It's about half way between Oslo and Bergen(maybe a bit closer to Bergen). It's situated next to one of the branches of Sognefjord, Norway's biggest fjord.
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| Aurland fjord |
It was a bit hard to get out of Oslo, because the hitchhiking place was far from the center. We arrived there late so we had to camp one night close to the road, but we found a really nice and quiet place.
In all of Skandinavia there is law called "every man's right". It says that you can camp anywhere if you are 150 m away from the closest buildnig even if it's a privat property. Though it's polite if you ask the owner to camp on his land. Usually nobody says no and everybody is kind.
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| Camping |
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| Huge fern in the wild |
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So after camping we started hitchhiking in the morning and it was quite easy. Once we had to wait a lot(like an hour and a half or more) but we didn't have to wait more than half an hour for the other two rides(yes, it was 3 rides again :P) At last an older truck driver stopped for us who slowed down wherever we wanted to take pictures and even payed for our dinner.:) It was amazing that these kinds of people exist in the world, who without any expectations help you with whatever it is that you may need.
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| freezing a bit above 1000m |
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| the longest car tunnel and our angel |
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The way to Aurland is amazing. Everywhere you see mountains, snow, waterfalls next to the road. We had to cross the longest car tunnel in the world (24,5 km long). we stopped in the middle and stared at it for a while and 20 minutes after that we finally reached our destination.
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| Aurland |
Finding a campingplace was kinda hard because everything around us was privat property and the campingplace costs 200 crowns(about 20 euros:o).. The first day we camped next to a river, but the second day we asked around locals if they know where should we camp. The first women we asked offered us her place next to the fjord.
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| first camping place |
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| second camping place |
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We got lucky with the weather cause we had 2 wonderful sunny days and we could discover the beautiful fjord.:) The second day we went to hike on the mountain where you can get an amazing view of the fjord. It was a hard hike, but it's worth it! if you are lazy there is a view point where you can go up by car.:p
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| Crossing the waterfall |
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| lonley boat |
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The next days it rained a bit and most of the time it was cloudy but we still enjoyed the whole experiance.We ate wild berries, took long walks next to the fjords. The only bad thing is that I caught a cold and I needed a whole month to recover completely...
Anyway we stayed here 5 wonderful days that I will never forget! This was the most amazing thing we've ever done! I can just recommend everybody that before you die you must visit Norway and the beautiful fjords! :)
Visiting Laos (part 1)
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| the Mekong river at sunset |
In February we've been to Laos (and we saw a bit of Thailand also) for 2 weeks and we've spent a short but wonderful time there. This post will be about travelling rather than busking (actually we saw an old musician on the street). We got hipnotized by the beautiful Asia and we'll defenetly visit this part of the World again sometimes in the future.
I will post this Asian trip in more parts otherwise it would be too long and boring in one "dose". :)
From Amsterdam it's a 10 hour flight to get to Bangkok, the capital of Thailand. It's a really long and tiring flight but the view is really nice if you get a seat next to the window.
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| somwhere over Europe |
First I would like to give you some advice. The following information is useful if you are travelling in this part of Asia
- be careful with street foods (expecially uncooked stuff) - vegetables and fruits (fruits that you can pill are okay like banana, mango etc.) might not be washed well. And you should avoid foods with half raw or raw meat, sometimes they get rotten in the heat.
- clean the cutleries in restaurants before you eat with them (unless it's a fancy restaurant :P) at least with a napkin. Usually they put a ball of hot water next to them.
Of course you can try the local specialities but I don't think so that you would like to get a diarrhea and spend most of your time on the toilett. So still be careful with what you eat. By the way...
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| example of the Asian toilett |
- always keep toilett paper with you because in most of the places there is none... or you can try to wash 'it' with a bowl of water... :P
- drink a lot of water even if you won't feel like it. You can get dehidrated really fast.
- don't drink from the tap water. It can be really dirty. It's better to drink from bottled water.
- you can bargain everywhere in markets and shops. Actually if you dont they'll do it for you :)
- get a nice hat. you can easily get a sunstroke if you stay too much in the sun
- for girls: if you go to a temple cover your shoulders and legs (anyway there will be signs)
that's it for now I guess :)
Visiting Laos (part 2)
This is the second part of the small "guide" through Laos.
We knew that the culture is very different and we heard quite a lot of stories about Laos before the trip. We even saw some pictures of the country but still we found it hard to imagine what it would feel like to be there. Is the air so hot that you can't breathe? Do elephants walk up and down on the streets? Are there any huge spiders and insects climbing on the wall? Is it really true that Lao people eat almost anything that moves? What does an insect taste like? And we had a lot more similar questions in our head.
Well we got some answers but we still left a lot of things undiscovered. Maybe next time :P
Vientiane:
As soon as we arrived we got an answer to our first question. Yes it's as hot as everybody describes it. It was 30-32 degrees. But it can get way hotter and more humid in the rainy season. So we actually chose the best time to travel.
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| Vientiane |
Vientiane is the biggest and the most populated city in Laos. We were suprised because there were actually a lot of turists everywhere. Ofcourse not as much as in Thailand but Laos gets more and more popularity. Mostly the travelers who visit Laos are looking for a quiet place where the "western civilization" hasn't destroyed the beauty of simple life. Well Vientiane has two different faces. It's developing really fast, there's a lot of cars on the roads and you can find huge hotels and fancy restaurants next to the main road. On the other hand you see tons of electric cabels above your head, the traffic is really chaotic sometimes and the air is filled with red dust and some of the houses are in a really bad shape but people seem happy all the time.
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| Street view |
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| Smiling monks |
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Vientiane has its charm that is hard to put in words. Maybe it's the people who are always smiling at you and it seems they're always in a good mood and nothing bothers them or the old Buddhist temples filled with a strong smell of incense sticks and the monks orange robes that you can't take your eyes of or the long red sunsets at the Mekong river or the little cute geckos on the walls of houses that makes this whole city so alive.
Tips on what to do and visit:
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| Sunset |
- whatch the sunset next to the Mekong river. The Asian sunset is nothing like in Europe. Words cannot describe the view and the athmosphere.
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| Tuktuk |
- Take a ride with a tuktuk. it's the Asian taxi. :)
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| Buddha park |
- Visit the Buddha park. It is not that old but you will find here beautiful buddhist and hindu sculptures everywhere.
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| Market |
- Go to at least one local market. These places are really chaotic. You'll see a lot of weird stuff, like insects, frogs, snakes, lizards, rats sometimes cats and beautiful birds for sale. Of course they sell them as food and not as pets :P You'll be amazed by the amounts of vegetables and fruits also. The smell usually is horrible because of the meat and the heat and there are flies everywhere but if you won't visit at least one market in Laos you haven't seen the country :P
- Morning Market - Talat Sao. It's a huge market on several floors. I think it's the best place in Vientiane to buy souvenirs for your friends and relatives.
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| Pha That Luang |
- Visit the Buddhist temples (like Pha That Luang) You can't miss this beautiful temples. They are not as renovated as in Bangkok but maybe because of this they look more real.
- For breakfast the locals eat a huge portion of noodle or rice soup which is quite heavy for the stomach. So usually we ordered fried eggs with some bread :P If you want "normal" breakfast you have to find a western restaurant.
- Try some local food. Most of them are really delicious. I really like the ones that you have to cook for yourself. On each table there is a little hole for the fire place and you have to fry your meat on it :) And the fruits are really delicious! And I can tell the same thing about the fruit shakes.
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| Boat restaurant |
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| Down to the river |
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- Boat restaurants are awsome! It's quite close to Vientiane but unfortunatly I don't remember the name of the river where it was. :( Around 10-20 people fit in one boat and while you're eating you can enjoy the beautiful view from the river. And most of them have a karaoke machine on it and locals like to use it quite a lot :)
So if you are in Laos, Vientiane is a must see. Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed! :)
Next time I'll write about Xieng Khuang.
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