TAKE A HIKE!

This is the story of a hike we did last week - probably one of the finest medium distance hikes (Picasa link) I've ever done. It all started a couple of weeks ago when Awanti wrote to Alice, her friend from France and who she met while studying in Sydney. They had been out of touch for the past few years, but as soon as Awanti wrote to her she responded back enthusiastically about meetingup in France. A few days later, she wrote again saying she was planning on doing a hike in the south of France, and asked us if by any chance we would be interested in joining her and her boyfriend, Camille. Realizing that such an opportunity does not come along daily, we jumped at it.

Well..first we had to get there, which was no mean feat. A bit of background will help you see why - the hike is a 240 kms hike over 12 days and follows the route taken by the US author RL Stevenson in 1878. The hike is in the Cevennes Range which, while not the highest by any stretch of imagination (it tops out at 1700m), it certainly does take home a few trophies for stunning French countryside. The trail passes through numerous villages, hamlets really, of five to twenty houses. Alice was planning on joining the hike at its mid-point and hiking for 6 days to its end. Agreeing to meet her at the mid-point, Le Blemyard, we started to look at public transportation options, confident that the vaunted European public transportation would not fail us. Well, we found out we needed 2 trains, a bus that only runs 2 twice a week and our legs to get us to the starting point. Wisely, Alice suggested we meet her at her parent's place in the country-side. A bit about her parents and their place.

The Carr Villa

They both are doctors who just moved back to the mainland from Reunion Islands and bought a 500 yr old house in the countryside. The house is one of those rambling stone semi-manors you read about in novels and is perched on a hill-side surrounded by a couple of acres of lawns. They even have a stream flowing through their property! We had a great dinner at their place that was accompanied by some good wine and the obligatory cheese plate. Having eaten way too much we hauled ourselves to bed for an early start the next day.

The hike started off under overcast skies that soon led to a downpour. This was the only blemish on what was to be six sun drenched days. Alice had planned out the hike so that we skipped any 'major' towns and ended up staying in a succession of smaller and smaller villages as the hike progressed. The hike is pretty popular in France and has led to creation of at least one bed & breakfast (b&b) or hostel in each of the villages. Our plan was to camp each night, but Alice had made reservations at each of these place before-hand so that we could eat a hot home-cooked dinner in each village.

Here's a brief snapshot of how each day passed:

We woke up fairly early and after packing up our tents headed to the hostel kitchen for a cup of coffee. From there we headed to the village bakery, or if it was too small to sport one (which was the case in quite a few), we walked to the next village and picked up some croissants and other baked goods for breakfast, as well as some bread, cheese, and sausage for lunch. We then did some serious walking until about 1pm, at which point we found a nice meadow, or ridge, or some other scenic point to have lunch. Lunch was a simple affair of bread, sausage, and cheese. Dessert was fruits that we plucked along the way, which included apples, raspberries, and blackberries. Having thus sated ourselves, we would take a nap for 30 minutes or so. Having roused ourselves, we would then resume walking and be at our campsite by 5pm. After setting up tents, we would have hot water showers, which Awanti and I still found a novelty, having never experienced showers on our hikes in the Sahyadris, Himalayas, or the Rocky Mts. This was usually followed by a beer and an hour of reading or playing cards until dinner time. Dinner was around 8pm and was cooked by the b&b or hostel host using ingredients from their gardens. A bit more detail on dinner - these were 4 course affairs, that started off with an appetizer or salad, followed by a local and rustic veggies and meat dish. Post this was dessert which was normally pie (the rhubarb pie was my favorite) or cake and topped off by a cheese plate and coffee. The cheese was for the most part made in the near-by farms. In one instance, the goat cheese served was so fresh that it was still leeching milk (I assume) and had to be served in plastic containers with holes for the milk to drain. All the courses were obviously accompanied by prodigious quantities of wine and a few of the local drinks. Having thus eaten and drunken, we would stumble to our tents.

Trout for dinner

It wasn't all fun and games though. We also had to hunt or rather fish for our dinner one of the nights. At one of the camp-sites, the host did not make any dinner. However, she had a pond that was stocked with trout and she handed us an over-grown twig to which attached a rusted hook via an old twine and told us to go fish. The first step involved finding some bait. So its 7pm and you have a French and Indian couple running around the campsite trying to catch grasshoppers by hand. Having captured a few, we proceeded to skewer them on the hooks and toss the line in the pond. The fish were biting that night and in short order we had four large trouts. The next task was gutting and cleaning them, something neither of us had done. Camille gallantly stepped forward and completed the messy task while the rest of us attempted to look busy making canned soup. Dinner was great though - grilled fish and veggies.

And so passed 6 ideal days. On the last day we hiked out the final 15 kms to St. Jean du Gard and took a steam train from there to Anduze where we were picked up by Veronique - Alice's mother. We had covered 120 kms by foot over the past week and were glad for some fossil fuel driven mode of transportation. The hike also has the distinction of being the only hike where I ended the hike weighing more than what I did at the start. And so ends the story.

- Ashish

Fatherland - Teil Zwei

Onto the rest of Germany..Dusseldorf, Munich, Karlsruhe (Picasa Link) and a few other cities. We were definitely seeing a lot of the country. One big reason is this sweet DB Rail deal that Awanti found online - the Weltmeisterinnen Pass, or the World Cup pass. I know, I know, the FIFA World Cup was over 5 yrs ago, but this pass was for the Women's World Cup which was held in June and July in Germany. The pass entitled us to unlimited travel on all of Germany's trains, including their crown jewel - the ICE. They have a speedo in each compartment and we saw it check in at 320 km/h when traveling from Dusseldorf to Munich.

Anyhow, from Hamburg we moved onto Dusseldorf, where Johanna, Awanti's exchange partner from yesteryears lives. After a day spent walking around Dusseldorf and the Rhine promenade, we took a couple of day trips to Cologne and Aachen. We also managed to drag Johanna, not the most enthusiastic of walkers, for a small hike near Bonn. Her parents, who Awanti stayed with for a month the last time she was in Dusseldorf, also invited us over for dinner and Annette, her mother, cooked us a fabulous Auf Lauf. One interesting tid bit that I feel worth mentioning is that Johanna owns a horse which she rides and cares for almost everyday and keeps at a stable close to her place. Coming from India, where owning a horse is something you only read of in story-books or need to be fairly wealthy to afford, it was interesting to see that normal people could and did own horses in Germany. The stables are set in a couple of hundred acres of rolling woodlands and hills, barely 3 miles from the city-centre and I enjoyed some good long runs on the wooded trails.

Post-Dusseldorf we took the ICE to Munich. If there's a city in Germany I could see myself moving to, it would be Munich. We spent 4 wonderful days walking around the English Gardens - one of the largest urban parks in the world, checking out the fabulous wealth in the form of jewels, crowns, and other ancient object accumulated by the Kaisers over the past 6 centuries. On one of the days we headed out to Schloss Neuschwanstein. This is THE CASTLE and is universally regarded as one of the most beautiful in the world. They say it also served as inspiration for the Disney castles. The castle was built by King Ludwig II, the last of the fore-mentioned Kaisers. As Bavaria moved towards democracy, the King was increasing side-lined, but still given a huge allowance to keep up appearances. Ludwig decided to build a couple of castles will all his money - but just not any castles. His castles are some of the most extravagant and over-the-top edifices built by man, and they bankrupted him in the process. The King wasn't able to enjoy the fruit of his labors though, as he was mysteriously found dead in 2 feet of water - his life is the stuff of pot-boiler mysteries. Getting back to the castle - it has probably the perfect location imaginable and it rises as if in a fairy-tale from the woods and a rocky outcrop. The crowds that turn out to see the castle befit it too. Feeling the heat, we decided to hike up Tegelberg, a 5000 ft mountain right behind the castle and were rewarded by stunning alpine beauty and clear vistas. At the top, which is also served by a cable car, there were hundreds of paragliders and hang-gliders taking advantage of the weather to soar with the birds. We enjoyed a nice picnic lunch watching the good and not-so-good attempt to emulate Icarus.

Work sets you free - or so they say

Before heading out from Munich, we also spent a morning at Dachau - the first concentration camp built by the Nazis. At its peak, the camp which was built to house no more than 2000 political prisoners, was crammed with over 200,000 Jews, POWs, Romas and Gypsies, and other sections of society deemed to be unworthy of an existence by the Nazis. The camp also served as a blue-print for other concentration camps, including the infamous Auschwitz and Treblinka concentration camps. The memorial and museum were a great source of information and served as poignant reminders of what could happen when fundamentalists take over a country.

From Munich it was onto Karlsruhe, a university town just north of the Black Forest, where Nayan, Awanti's college friend lives. We decided to spend a day driving around and through the Black Forest and really enjoyed the narrow winding roads through the heavily wooded forests. From the Black Forest we drove to Strasbourg over on the French side of things. Definitely one of the more prettier cities, it is dominated by a giant catherdrla and is is full of cafes and narrow cobble-stoned paths. There was a bomb-threat/hoax on-going, so we were only able to catch snatches and glimpses of the cathedral as we walked around the city. On our way back we hit a section of the famous auto-bahn and Nayan made full use of this by pushing his VW Golf to over 200 every time the road opened up.

We head to France tomorrow and its with some regret that we leave Germany. While German efficiency and the famous engineering is encountered at every turn, its not all straight lines and right angles. We were fortunate to meet and spend time with some fun and interesting people, take in a some great sights and sample new cuisines. Up next is a 120 km, 6 day hike in southern part of France.

Auf weidersehen or Au Revoir as I better start saying.

- Ashish

Fatherland - Teil Eins (Part 1)

Having romped our way through Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic, we decided to head north to the Fatherland (Picasa link). Berlin was our next destination and the first taste of a big European city. Granted, Prague and Vienna are big, but not on the scale of a Berlin or Paris or London. The first thing that hit us as we got to Berlin was the weather. The past 3 weeks were filled European sunshine, 10 pm dusks, and a feeling of warmth and well-being. Berlin was cold, and wet, and miserable.

Checkpoint Charlie

We promptly headed indoors to one of Berlin's museums - all of which are set in fantastic pre-war buildings that were extensively rebuilt post-war. Berlin is regarded as one of the 'museum capitals' of the world and rightly so. From 200BC Greek temples to 200mph racing cars, they have a museum for both, and everything in between. We headed to the Pergamon museum which housed pretty much an entire temple. How it came to be in the middle of Berlin makes for an interesting read. 19th century German archeologists were either very wealthy, or funded by some Kaiser or the other, and they traveled the world digging up anything that looked remotely interesting. Once in a while they stumbled on something larger than pottery shards, dug it up, promptly paid the local ruler and shipped the whole thing back. The Pergamon museum is a perfect example of this. The temple of Pergamon which is from the 2nd century BC was discovered by Carl Humann in 1878. He excavated the entire temple and sent it all back to be housed in the museum, which was built primarily to host this stunning find. Other than the temple, the museum also houses the Gates of Ishtaar, stunning 20m high mosaic inlaid gates that framed the entrance to the fabled city of Babylon in 575 BC. I bet Turkey is pissed off at having these stunning works sitting quite legitimately in Germany after being paid a pittance for them.

The miserable weather was interspersed by snatches of sunlight and we spent those walking through the Brandenburger Gates, Checkpoint Charlie - in a way the birthplace of the Cold War - and the city gardens. A consistent and stark reminder of the years spent behind the Wall is the difference in building structures and wealth between the Eastern and the Western parts of the city. The 45 years or so that East Berlin spent under Communist rule have had a harsh impact on both, the residents and the economy, and its effects are still obvious even 20 years after the fall of the Wall.

On a lighter note - Berlin's known as THE party city, so we headed out to one of the local hot spots. After getting there at 11 pm and realizing that we were there wayyy to early, we waited it out with cocktails for company at a nearby joint. As Cinderella made her way home, we finally entered the night club, called for some reason SO 36. 12 AM quickly turned to 2.30 AM, and what had been a relatively nice place to dance turned to a mad house. Realizing we're too old for this, we headed out and lamely decided to call it a night. But Berlin had other ideas. We got to the train station and in the atrium saw a crowd of around a hundred dancing away to a band that had decided to setup shop in the train station. After a brief stop there we headed down the escalators to the subway platforms, and promptly ran into another crowd - this time jamming away to a large juke box in a wheel barrow. At this point we half expected to walk into our apartment and see a party under-way there too. Berlin - you have earned your party creds!

Kind of random, but if anyone has any doubts on the impact of military spending or lack thereof on a country's economy, look no further than Berlin. The city was heavily bombed during the war - so much so, that the term 'carpet bombing' was probably coined here. Pictures taken just after the war show entire neighbourhoods leveled out and the only structures standing are shells of buildings such as the Parliament. Well, they certainly wasted no time rebuilding. With post-WWII agreements curtailing military spending, and aid pouring in from a number of Allied countries, the city went on a re-building, renovating, and constructing spree that has resulted in a city that's spanking new and yet has managed to retain a large part of its heritage through restored pre-war buildings. This rebuilding has been topped off with a stunning new dome on the Reichstag (Parliament house) designed by Sir Norman Forster. The glass dome is 40m in diameter and has some cool features like a sun-shade, a funnel to carry out hot air from the parliamentary chambers (no pun intended), and a walk-way that allows you to walk to the top and take in one of the best views in Berlin.

Gates of Ishtaar

Having thus spent 5 days gaping at The Wall, Rembrandts, and 2000 yr old temples, we headed onto Hamburg. While Berlin is the big daddy of German cities with its booming economy, party scene, and large immigrant population, Hamburg is decidedly the smoother of the two. After the obligatory church and civic hall visit we decided to spend a day walking around Blanknese. Blanknese is a mini-Malibu - replace the Pacific with the Rhine and multi-million dollar homes with million dollar cottages/houses and you have it. The entire neighbourhood is set on a heavily wooded hill and a large number of houses can only be accessed by cute stair-ways and quaint ivy covered passage-ways. Surprisingly we seemed to be the only out of towners around and we enjoyed a great morning walking up and down random paths, peering into cottages, and being pesks to the high-falutin crowd inhabiting the hill. All that walking built up an appetite and we paid a visit to the local farmer's market, which unlike the US had products that were actually grown within a couple of miles, and followed it up by a picnic lunch in the city park. Having thus sampled Hamburg, we bid it adieu. Next up is Dusseldorf.

- Ashish

Of palaces, museums and churches...

If I had to sum up our time in Europe so far, those would be the key words. It would be a tad unfair, as it is really so much more than just that, but visiting palaces, museums and churches has constituted a fairly large part of the European leg of our journey so far. Even as I write this, we are whizzing past gorgeous castles perched atop lush green carpeted mountains in one of Europe's super-fast trains (the ICE), on our way from Prague to Berlin. I'm not saying that we're "castled out" as yet, as Ashish likes to put it, but I think we might be on our way there. Nonetheless, with its cute roadside cafe's, narrow cobbled streets, incredible architecture and houses with flowers in the window sills - Europe feels like you have stepped right into a fairytale.

So since we last updated you on our whereabouts, we have been to three beautiful cities in three different countries; Vienna, Budapest and Prague. Vienna proved to be quite lucky for us from the beginning. To start with, we managed to snare a ride from Salzburg to Vienna at the last minute in a brand new fancy car, almost door-to-door. The concept of 'ride share', called 'mitfahrgelegenheit' in German, is extremely popular in Europe. The way it works is, say you're driving from Salzburg to Vienna just by yourself, and are looking for either companionship, or someone to split petrol costs with. You put up the necessary information online - such as what point you are willing to pick people up, where you can drop them off at, the number of available spots in your car and how much you want to charge them for the ride (which is normally very minimul). This works out well for everybody involved - especially budget travellers like us. To put it into perspective, the train ride from Salzburg to Vienna would have cost us 60 Euros per person, that too only till the main train station in Vienna, while the car share guy dropped us off at the door of the place we were staying and charged us 15 Euros each. Thats my whole point of mentioning this.

On our first night in Vienna, our couch surfing host Elizabeth, a very sweet and friendly young mom, made 'Topfen Knoedel' for dinner, a delicious local specialty consisting of dumplings and homemade strawberry sauce. She then marked out all the worthwhile local places to visit in Vienna on a map for us, which tourists would never even know of. Speaking of which, I feel that is one of the best parts of couchsurfing - staying with locals, you get to see all the hidden secrets of the city, which there is no way you would know of, if you were staying in a hostel or a hotel. And it dosn't end there. You get a chance to try out real homemade food which the locals eat on a daily basis which you would not normally find in the typical touristy restaurants. Plus, it is so interesting to learn about the local traditions and customs and have long conversations with your hosts about what everyday life is like, in cities we view only from the eyes of a tourist. To have someone come pick you up at the station, cook for you, give you clean sheets and towels, as well as insider tips about the city, and generally take good care of you - almost feels too good to be true. Its like having a home away from home, literally. Or staying with good friends. And there is no monetary exchange at all. I normally cook one dinner (Indian food ie.) at all the hosts we stay with, in exchange for two or three days of staggeringly warm hospitality and friends for life. Its like a small community of people who simply love traveling, helping out other travelers, meeting and getting to know people from different corners of the world and making new friends, all completely based on trust. It is wonderful to just have a home to laze around in on a rainy day when you don't feel like trudging around the city. The concept, I feel, is just amazing, and makes such a big difference to how you experience a city. In fact, we have been so lucky in getting wonderful hosts, that we both agree that we're quite spoilt now.

Getting back to Vienna, I have to admit, it is definitely one of my favorite cities so far. It might be because we spent a good seven days traipsing around the city's numerous medieval "Gassen" - the tiny and very narrow cobbled lanes, where you can touch the buildings on both sides if you stretch your arms out - and exploring the hidden courtyards these Gassen usually end in. One such courtyard, which Elizabeth took us to on a Friday night-out, turned out to be a big open-air beer garden. There were about five or six bars in a circle, all with seating in the courtyard, and quite clearly, as we could see from the turnout, it was where all the locals went to have a good time. Of course, we also visited all the must-see sights Vienna has to offer; such as the opulent Schonbrunn Palace, which is anything but a summer residence as it is supposed to be; Schloss Belvedere with its beautiful Monets (my favorite artist); Stephansdom, the icon of Wien; the Kunsthistorisches Museum, with its mummies and a fabulous collection of Egyptian treasures, and the Shatzkammer, where the ridiculously exorbitant jewel-encrusted crowns, gowns and jewelery of the Habsburger dynasty are on display.

On one of the afternoons, we went for a walk in the Augarten, a haven of green in the middle of this bustling city, and happened to chance apon a street band performing live in the beer garden within the park. They were playing old American tracks and listening to them sing in thier thick German accents kept us entertained enough to stick around till late evening. On our way back, we stopped at Tel Aviv Beach which I think deserves a mention here. Note that it is not a real beach. The people of this landlocked city have made parts of the Donao river banks into so called 'beaches', by dumping truckloads of sand along the water and setting up beach chairs and cocktail bars on them. These 'river beaches' are packed with people tanning and swimming in the frigid water of the Donao during the day, and turn into party central by night. Having lived in Sydney for two and a half years, I can surely call myself spoilt, and while I found this concept fascinating, I could not help but feel bad for the Viennese. (Another reminder of why Sydney is by far the best city in the world!) Having ticked off all the typical tourist stops, we decided to spend my birthday doing what we like best - hiking. We spent a very nice day climbing up through vineyards and small picturesque villages, up to Kahlenberg, which presented picture postcard views of Vienna and a good break from the city madness.

Quite sad to leave Vienna, which had almost started feeling like home, it was onto Budapest and more castles, museums and churches. Only this time, nobody spoke German and suddenly, the feeling of being in a foreign country without being able to communicate, hit for the first time. Having visited only German-speaking cities till now, it was wonderful to understand signs, train announcements or to speak with the locals at resaurants or shops. I was actually very happy to find out that I still understand everything being said, although my spoken German has become quite rusty given that I have not been in touch with the language for almost four years now. Inspite of that, I am definitely enjoying listening to and speaking German again after so long, and am hoping it comes back to me by the end of our time in German speaking territory.

Anyway, as I was saying, at the Budapest train station itself, we were rudely awakened to the fact that communicating in any non-German / English speaking country was going to be painful. It took us half an hour just to figure out the way from where we were to Castle Hill. Nobody at the station seemed to speak English, or had ever heard of Castle Hill, the main sightseeing landmark of Budapest. All the signs were in the local language too, which I thought was quite tourist-unfriendly. Finally, after gesturing wildly, locals counting the number of stops we should get out after, different locals telling us different directions and speaking with some youngsters who do seem to know basic English, we managed to get to Castle Hill. Other sights of interest in Budapest included St. Stephens Basilica, the Citadel with the statue of the Lady and the Jewish synagoge. After a nice walk through the city park, which we always make it a point to do in every city that we visit, and sampling the local speciality 'Dobos torta', a layered chocolate, cream and caramel cake, we were ready to head to Prague.

As soon as we arrived in Prague, we were picked from the station by our host Lucia and whisked away for lunch to a place where we could sample 'Haloushki' - a local delicacy made from cheese, dumplings and sprinkled with fried bacon. Prague was beautiful, and unlike Budapest, did not seem to have suffered as much from the communist era in terms of aesthetic beauty. We diligently visited the Karlovska Castle the next morning and even caught a show of the "change of guards at the castle gates" at noon, as one is supposed to. We saw Loreta, walked around Mala Strana and it's farmers market, and then around Kampa, an outcrop of land which has been converted to an urban park and also boasts of the famous 'graffiti wall'. Thereafter, we strolled across the much-crowded Charles Bridge, by far the most touristy attraction in Prague, and then walked along the Vlatva river till sunset.

Having played the role of a tourist fairly well, we decided to spend the next day relaxing at home and spending time with Lucia, the sweetest host we have gotton so far. She started the day off by baking delicious chocolate croissants for breakfast and then as if that was'nt enough, she took us to her favorite cafe for some cake and coffee in the afternoon. Feeling guilty about all this eating, we went to Letna park, a very nice park in the area that we were staying in, where Ashish played frisbee with our next host in Prague, Tomas, while Lucia and I did a spot of yoga. After much debate and discussion about which side or town is better, our two hosts finally agreed apon a restaurant where we could sample some of the authentic local fare. On the way to dinner, we even stopped at another park from where we had a fabulous view of the city.

The following two days in Prague involved going on a fantastic hike from the castle Karlstejn to the Monastery of St. Jon under the Rock on the outskirts of Prague, being taken on guided night walking tour of Prague by Tomas and visiting the Vysehrad citadel. On the last day, we met up with Lucia again, our favorite host so far, for a goodbye lunch at a Vietnamese place, before catching the train to Berlin. The perfect end to a perfect city.

Oh, there goes another church...

- Awanti