Itchy feet go to Germany

Kuala Lumpur - Sydney

2006-01-18T21:07:00.000+11:00

We both had showers at KL airport, in order to try and feel slightly human again.

This was the plane that we flew on from KL to Sydney. It was absolutely packed. KL must have been the change point for people flying from India, as the plane was full of Indians. There were too many families with babies for the number of cots, and many families split between rows, so there was a lot of manoeuvring. The cabin crew didn't seem to care that people were slightly upset. We were seated in two seats at the edge of a 5-seats-across-the-middle section. We had a young mum and with her young toddler on her lap, slap-bang in the middle of the five seats, so we swapped with her so she could at least be on the edge and free to get up if her daughter got too squirmy. She had actually booked a cot but had been told "Sorry, there's none left." But the little girl did very well (our son wouldn't have!), though I am sure that the mother was willing the flight to end from the very start!

It was quite late when we got in, and Tim's father picked us up and we stayed the night at Tim's parent's, ready to see our son in the morning when he woke up. It was interesting to see his reaction to us - a good deal of caution, but he warmed up pretty quickly. It was great to see him and nice to be home.

We loved our trip to Germany, and hope to go again (Tim definitely will need to for his PhD research). And I think Ursula would be very upset if we didn't bring the kids next time!

Frankfurt - Kuala Lumpur

2006-01-17T21:07:00.000+11:00

We woke up in the morning to a magical surprise - it had snowed overnight - on our last night in Germany!

Here's what the view out our hotel window looked like the day before:

Here's what it looked like the morning after (yes it was pretty early, but the snow ploughs had already been through clearing roads and paths):

We packed up and caught a taxi to the airport. We weren't sure how much snow would ground planes, so were half prepared to not go anywhere, but thankfully it wasn't blizzardous, so the planes were still flying. Breakfast was McDonalds - classy.

Once we were on the plane they used a high pressure hose filled with something to hose down the aeroplane's wings so it was safe to take off. The whole time we were thinking how much our son would love to see that!

The trip to Kuala Lumpur was pretty much like any flight. Food average, not much sleep, wishing we were finally home...

Nürnberg - Frankfurt

2006-01-16T20:32:00.000+11:00

The next morning we found our car, which we had left and ignored for two days, and it was covered in ice. We then managed to negotiate our way out of Nürnberg (I always felt this was a big achievement, being the navigator, and not understanding German, and therefore not really comprehending the street signs) and headed for Frankfurt.

It was a rather uneventful journey, where we spent most of the time skipping between relatively awful radio stations. We must mention the radio stations here: they seemed to have a fascination with Dido, and we heard the same songs over and over again. One station also had a particularly annoying jingle that they played everytime it was time to ring up for the current competition.

As we neared Frankfurt we needed to gauge where it was best to refill the car with diesel, as we needed to return the car with a full tank. We managed to locate the rental car entrance to the airport, returned the car unharmed (apart from a tiny chip in the windscreen, which the guy checking the car immediately noticed - probably mainly because the car had been brand new when we got it - it had been driven from Flensburg, up near Denmark, where it was registered, straight to Frankfurt, we reckoned).

We caught a taxi from the airport into the city, to the Marriott, where we were staying in luxury for our final night. This was the view from our hotel room:

We found a post office to post the fire helmet back home - it ended up taking up too much room in Tim's luggage - and then for something to do we caught the train into the city to the shopping district and had a wander.

We had dinner that evening in one of the three hotel dining rooms, along with some business men, and three American ladies who worked for Avon and seemed to be in Germany for a conference. We kept being given free courses by the waitresses (it was a bit weird) including a small plate of venison: "Excuse me, I didn't order this." "Oh no, that's a complementary dish".

We retired for the evening to watch tv - a novelty we hadn't seen since Possenhofen. This included a German movie that was actually set in Western Australia, but everyone spoke German, including the obligatory Australian Aborigine.

Nürnberg

2006-01-15T14:06:00.000+11:00

As it was a Sunday, and not much was open, we decided that this would be the day to go to visit the Nazi Party Rally Grounds and the Documentation Centre within part of it. Nürnberg has struggled to shrug off the burden of it's Nazi legacy. The Nazi Party Rally Grounds have a number of buildings and venues, all with intimidating megalomanic architecture, where orchestrated propaganda campaigns were held to rally support for the party. The Documentation Centre was opened in late 2001, within part of the Kongresshalle (Congress Hall), and houses a fantastic exhibition called "Fascination and Terror" about National Socialism and the rise of Nazism before and during the war. At the time there was also an exhibition on of Leni Riefenstahl's work.

Not really knowing how far it was exactly, but believing it to be a walkable distance, I convinced Tim that there was no need to catch a tram, but walk instead. It was freezing, and in the end took over an hour to get there (it might have been closer to 2 hours). We needed to stop at a bakery to get hot drinks along the way to warm us up again. Tim repeatedly has a go at me for the fact that I made us walk all that way (Tim: and rightly so!), but in any event, had we caught the tram we would have been there way before it opened, whereas we reached it just in time for it to open on foot.

The first place we went to was the Documentation Centre. Built in part of the Congress Hall, the architects did a fantastic job of adding in thoroughly modern architectural bits that totally break up the severe Nazi geometry. We spent a long time in the "Fascination and Terror" exhibition.

We then walked around the Nazi Party Rally Grounds to all the different lcations - it covers a vast area, so this took quite some time.

The inside of the Congress Hall, which was never finished. It was supposed to outdo the Colosseum, and would have been enormous if completed.

The outside of the Congress Hall.

Looking along the Great Street which runs as the central axis for the grounds. It was to be used as a marching ground. If you were to draw a line from this avenue back to the old city of Nürnberg, it would connect the rally ground with the old Imperial Castle. The significance of this was that the Nazis were trying to connect the ideology of National Socialism with the imperial German past. Nürnberg had a special, mystical & mythical importance to the Nazis, particularly in relation to the foundation of National Socialism.

A view across Dutzendteich Lake (though currently drained) to the Congress Hall. I can't remember exactly why the lake was drained at the time, but it was something to do with the fact that there was some sort of bacteria contaminating it. Dutzendteich Lake sits between the Congress Hall and the Zeppelin Field, part of which you can see below. The Zeppelin Field was the parade ground for Nazi Party rallies. It had space for 200,000 people.

The two photos above show the Zeppelin Grandstand (the second is of the door in the centre of it). The grandstand is in front of the Zeppelin Field. There was originally a large swastika on the top of the grandstand, which was blown up by the Allies after Nürnberg was liberated.

The photos above and below show the Hall of Honour. It was constructed after WW1 to commemorate the fallen soldiers from Nürnberg. During the 1929 Party Rally, Hilter commemorated the fallen soldiers of WW1 and the martyrs of the National Socialist movement. Today the memorial commemorates the fallen soldiers of WW1, WW2 and the victims of the National Socialist rule of terror.

After our visit to the Nazi Party Rally Grounds we took a tram back to the old city, once we had worked out how to pay for the tram tickets - Tim asked an old couple for help: "Hello we are from Australia. Can you help us...", and they protested that they couldn't speak English very well until Tim demonstrated that he was able to speak German quite well, but just didn't understand how to use the ticket machine! We walked back through the main shopping area, and took some photos of the buildings, on our way back to the youth hostel.

In this photo above you can see the youth hostel - the great big castle on the hill.

Tim went for a walk later at dusk and took some more photos.

Albrecht Dürer House, where the artist Albrecht Dürer lived from 1509-1528.

Once again for dinner we decided to chance our luck with a kitchen hopefully more reputable than the youth hostel's, so we walked back into the old city, and tried to find a nice restaurant to eat at. One that we walked into appeared to be holding a private party (though there was nothing on the door to say so) and we got some rather hostile looks from the patrons. We worked out we weren't wanted! We finally found a nice italian restaurant, and sat next to a large extended family, a number of whom seemed to be of the gothic persuasion, plus a young couple who appeared to be on a rather awkward first date.

Another night of giggling girls next door.

Vilshofen - Nürnberg

2006-01-14T15:21:00.000+11:00

We left for Nürnberg the next day, and spent a good part of the day travelling. There was not much of note on the journey, apart from when we went past the BMW factory near Regensburg, which was absolutely enormous.

When we arrived in Nürnberg we found the youth hostel, which Tim had booked for us to stay in as it was "in a castle" (cue trumpets sounding) except that when we got there, because it was in a castle it was a bit of a dive. It was unfortunate that in the whole of Germany, the only youth hostel where we had to share a bathroom was there, when we were on the home run, feeling travel weary, and in need of something slightly more upmarket than we were presented with. It also didn't help that in the room next to us (and we shared the bathroom with them) were four giggly American teenage girls who were apparently there with a school group. Talking in high pitched voices and giggling in the middle of the night seemed to be a fun thing to do for them... not so for us...

We went for a walk around the centre of Nürnberg that afternoon to explore and had a late lunch at McDonalds. McDonalds in Germany is a bit different to McDonalds in Australia, evidenced by the fact that you can buy McBeer. They also differ in their opinion of whether a thickshake is a drink or a dessert, with the Germans being in the dessert camp on that.

We also went to see the German National Museum, which was largely boring, though we did get to see a number of portraits by Dürer. I continued to be disappointed by the German lack of interest in displaying traditional pieces of embroidery in their museums.

We went out for dinner that night, because the fare on offer at the youth hostel didn't seem at all enticing (says us, who had McDonalds for lunch!).

Vilshofen - with a day trip to Regensburg

2006-01-13T15:18:00.000+11:00

Ursula informed us that it had been -15 degrees celsius overnight. Hmmm. Slightly cold! Thank goodness for central heating!

We decided to take the train to Regensburg for the day. We caught the train to Plattling, and then had to change for Regensburg. We travelled through lots of snow covered country, and through quite a bit of fog too. We realised part way through the day that it wasn't snow falling on us from time to time - it just didn't seem quite snow-ish, maybe more ice-ish - but it was in fact frozen water vapour. Somehow different. But it wasn't snow.

Regensburg is a lovely university city, and is situated on the Danube. Oskar Schindler lived in Regensburg for a time. The Altstadt (Old City) is a lovely maze of pedestrianised narrow cobbled streets and squares.

We really had very little idea where to go once we got off the train at Regensburg, so just basically followed the crowds down a main road leading from the station. Amazingly we managed to end up heading in the right direction!

We went to the Regensburg Historical Museum first, where Tim took lots of photos of Roman artefacts once again. Regensburg is a former Roman settlement, and we then went to see the Porta Praetoria - an arch in a Roman wall that was part of the Roman fortress, Castra Regina, after which Regensburg was named.

We wandered on to the Dom St Peter, apparently one of the most important Gothic cathedrals in Bavaria (according to the Lonely Planet Guide, though it neglects to say why).

The next stop on our walking tour of the old city was the Steinerne Brücke (Stone Bridge) which is the oldest in Germany, and only recently was closed to cars. It spans the Danube.

We then walked to see a Jewish memorial in the centre of a square, and hoped to visit an underground museum that was just near it, which had excavations from the Castra Regina, and the mediaeval Jewish quarter (discovered when the square was dug up in 1995 to install electrical outlets for the city's annual Christmas markets!). Through a series of misunderstandings about when it was open, and where to get tickets to it from, we missed out on visiting it, which was slightly annoying, especially as we had been hoping to get some souvenirs for Tim's work colleagues from there.

We visited a few shops, had lunch in a lovely pizzeria - where they cooked the pizzas in big stone ovens, and then we managed to almost not get lost on the way back to the station.

That night, back in Vilshofen, Ursula cooked a traditional wiener schnitzel with potato salad for us, as it was our last night with them. We thought it was most amusing that when Ursula wanted to cool the cooked potatoes for the salad, she stuck the bowl of them outside the back door in the snow!

Tim and Winfried went out to the local watering hole again that night, but I stayed home and went to bed early. Apparently there were more free drinks, plus Tim was made an honorary member of the local's table.

Vilshofen

2006-01-12T20:02:00.000+11:00

We spent a day at "home" on this day, just catching our breath. I knitted and Tim read.

We did go out for a morning walk around Vilshofen though, and took photos of some of the sights, and I bought some wool to make this scarf for Tim.

This is the main street of Vilshofen, still decorated for Christmas. I wonder who decides what colour the buildings are - is it individual building owners? And what would they do if the owner next door painted theirs a clashing colour?!

The Vils River flows through Vilshofen, and the ducks were having a bit of "fun" swimming in the close-to-freezing river - there was a frozen layer over most of it.

This is a benedictine monastery in Vilshofen, as seen from Winfried and Ursula's house. In the afternoon, Ursula took us for a drive to see it, and we also went inside to see a mission museum, of artefacts collected from Africa by missionaries from the monastery. The following two photos were taken from the monastery carpark.

After the monastery we went to an Aldi-style supermarket (Ursula was astounded that we actually have Aldi in Australia) - very much a variety supermarket, with food as well. I had offered to make dinner for them that night - a stirfry - and we had to get supplies, as it was not something Ursula normally cooked, and she didn't have any sauces that I would normally use.

I can't remember which day it was, but it could have been this day that in our travels we dropped over to Austria for petrol - it was about 25 euro cents cheaper than in Germany, and wasn't that far away. So I can say I have been to Austria. For petrol.

In the evening we went with Winfried to his favourite local watering hole, and one of Winfried's friends, Rudi, had spent some time in Australia when he was younger. He spoke English and was very pleased to be able to practise it with us! The publican was delighted to have some Australians in his establishment, and kept giving us drinks on the house.

Vilshofen - with a day trip to Passau

2006-01-11T18:30:00.000+11:00

In the morning after breakfast Ursula took us to see Passau from a lookout, one which we had been to on our last visit to Vilshofen.

Passau is quite close to Vilshofen, and the Danube flows through it, meets the Ils and the Inn rivers and then flows on to Austria. It is quite lovely.

The lookout was at the Vesta Oberhaus, a 13th century fortress which gives a great view of Passau.

In the foreground is the Danube, and the background is the Inn River.

Up on the opposite hill from the lookout is the Wallfahrtskirche Mariahilf, a baroque abbey built between 1627 and 1630.

This is me with Ursula, trying to be warm!

A not-very-good photo taken from the car as we were going down the hill from the lookout.

Ursula dropped us off in Passau, and we went exploring. There are lots of narrow cobbled lanes in Passau, great for photo opportunities!

We wandered through some delightful shops of art and craft made by local artists and artisans (nice tasteful stuff, not your touristy kitsch stuff), and then visited the Passau Museum of Glass. This is an amazing rabbit warren of 35 rooms full of glass and crystal jugs/glasses etc. It takes an age to get through all of them, so filled in quite a bit of time.

We then walked back to the train station through the main shopping precinct and after quite a wait where the station staff didn't quite seem to know what was going on, managed to get a train back to Vilshofen.

Ursula had once again organised kuchen for afternoon tea. Mmmm!

That evening, after a slightly rushed dinner (Ursula is a great cook), Winfried had organised for us to visit the Vilshofen Volunteer Fire Station, because Tim was a member of the volunteer bushfire service here in Sydney. We had known about this before we left, so Tim had organised to take a bushfire helmet to give to them as a present (it took up quite a bit of space in his suitcase!) and they returned the favour and presented Tim with a German fire helmet, which glows in the dark! They thought the bushfire helmet was very flimsy and plasticky, and would melt too easily - Tim had to explain that if you were close enough to the fire for your helmet to melt you were too close!

Possenhofen - Vilshofen

2006-01-10T18:22:00.000+11:00

When we went down for breakfast in the morning there were lots of people in a room who looked like they might be going walking or climbing. A lot of them must have arrived in the morning but some of them had stayed the night before.

After breakfast, once we had packed up, cleaned up and paid up, we got on the road.

Before I finish with Possenhofen though, I want to note that I have enormous regrets that we never took any photos at Possenhofen - unfortunately it was pretty much too dark when we were walking through from the station to the youth hostel (and on the way we were always hurrying to get the train). But I have memories (which have probably been embellished in my mind's eye of course) of the trees covered in lacy snow, unlike anything we saw elsewhere on our trip to Germany. It was quite beautiful. We do have one photo on our phone, but the quality is not great, and we also don't have a way to get the photo from the phone to the computer...

But back to the trip: All went fine until one of the freeways we had planned to take turned out not to be finished yet! However, we successfully negotiated our way through the outskirts of Munich and got onto the right road to get to Vilshofen.

Vilshofen is a small town on the Donau (Danube), in Eastern Bavaria, near the Austrian border. When we were in Germany the previous time, with a group of school students, the students were billeted out to families in Vilshofen, and we became friendly with the German teacher in charge of the stay - Winfried, and his wife Ursula. We had arranged to stay with them this time.

Landshut, where we stopped last time on our way to Vilshofen, was about halfway from Munich, but we reached it by 11am, and considering we were meeting Winfried at the Vilshofen Airfield at 3:30pm, we decided to fill in time in Landshut. However it was freezing cold, and Landshut seemed to have as much charm as Warrimoo (a place in the Blue Mountains, near Sydney, which one of our friends has described as "the armpit of the Universe". It seemed we had found the other armpit in Landshut...)

Tim was just lamenting that there didn't seem to be a bookshop when I noticed one, so we spent about half an hour inside thawing out. We wandered around a bit more, even found a wool shop, though no wool worth buying, and then got some lunch. We also spent some time in an internet "cafe" which was slightly more like a dungeon than a cafe.

After lunch we set out for Vilshofen again, and found our way to the airfield. We met Winfried and Ursula there, and Winfried came in our car to direct us back to their place.

Ursula had put on a lovely afternoon tea of kuchen (cakes) and we settled in there for the afternoon and evening.

I have to admit here that from this day I no longer wrote in my travel diary, so the rest of the trip is reconstructed entirely from memory, with photos to assist.

Possenhofen - and yet another day trip to Munich

2006-01-09T17:46:00.000+11:00

After breakfast, where once again we were the only ones, we caught the train to Munich again, so we could go and visit Hubert.

We could some shopping first and even found a shop with nice touristy things in it, rather than cheap and awful!

We went to visit Hubert, and he and Tim chatted some more about the thesis, and then we went on our way again - it was Hubert's first day back at work after 2 weeks holiday and he had 60 emails to read!

It was nice to be walking in Munich without enormous crowds. We did a bit more shopping and then decided to treat ourselves to lunch in the restaurant under the rathaus (town hall), which was very nice, though quite expensive. We both had wiener schnitzel. There was a strange party of people at the next table - a guy who appeared to be Russian, or slavic of some kind, who seemed to be out to lunch with his family. He seemed intent on showing off how much money he had, and kept making ridiculous demands of the waitresses. We felt very sorry for the waitresses.

After doing a bit more wandering and some more shopping we decided to go and visit the home stadium of Tim's favourite football team - Bayern Munich. So we caught the underground (the U-bahn) to Fröttmanning where Allianz Arena is, and discovered that despite the name, the U-bahn isn't always underground. The station at Fröttmanning was an enormous space age thing that reminded me of Olympic Park station here in Sydney - not surprising really! We walked about 10-15 minutes in the freezing bleak weather to the stadium, which can only be described as bizarre. It's a great round thing that looks like it's covered in a round puffy jacket - some people have likened it to a tyre. We were able to walk right in, and also visited the fan shop, which was huge. We discovered that there were tours of the stadium but they went for an hour and we wouldn't have had time to get back for dinner.

This second photo hopefully gives you some idea of the puffy covering on the stadium - you can see the lit stairs in the bottom part of the photo.

It was incredibly bleak, though amazingly not snowing, and this is a photo of a windmill that was right beside the stadium carpark, on a hill. I have not doctored the photo in any way, just to show you how dreary and cold it was. Brrrr!

We caught the U-bahn back into the city and changed for an S-bahn back to Possenhofen. There actually seemed to be more people staying there that night!

Possenhofen - with another day trip to Munich

2006-01-08T17:09:00.000+11:00

During the night two more guests turned up, so we didn't have the whole youth hostel to ourselves for the whole night!

We caught the train into Munich again after breakfast, and as it was a Sunday there were no shops open, spent the day museum hopping. First we went to the State Greek and Roman Collection, though there didn't seem to be any Roman stuff there at all. A selection of antiquities on display is below.

This was after we accidently directed two Poms in the wrong direction to an exhibition they were after. We also discovered that contrary to our guidebook, exhibitions/museums do cost on a Sunday, though less than on other days.

After the museum we decided to brave the underground rail system and catch the train to the next museum. It went without a hitch, though the train driver didn't really seem to enjoy his job, at least if his announcements were anything to go by. We then walked to the next museum - the State Archaeology Collection, which we did the wrong way round (from latest to earliest periods), and Tim bought some Roman coins for his ancient history colleagues.

We then caught the train back into the centre of town, wandered around a little, found where Hubert (one of the two academics we met in Freiburg) worked, and walked along the most expensive shopping street in Munich (Versace, Prada, Gucci, Chanel, Armani etc) to the Ethnography Museum, which when we got there was so busy we decided we couldn't be bothered.

So we wandered back and caught the train back to Possenhofen. It was interesting that even though no shops were open (not even the tourist ones) there were still lots of people walking around, and there were thus buskers out, including the American Indian buskers (complete with feather headdresses) that we had also seen the day before.

When we got back to the youth hostel it appeared that is was just us and Otto again, but after dinner when we were watching tv (nothing worth watching) another guest turned up, to our and Otto's surprise.

Before dinner Tim went for a walk (I stayed warm inside and knitted and watched a German cooking show) and found the local schloss where Sissi grew up. He also walked along beside the lake, Starnbergsee, and watched the ducks freezing in the water.

Possenhofen - with a day trip to Munich

2006-01-07T11:27:00.000+11:00

There was a large group of teenagers plus three adults who stayed overnight and left this morning. Tim spoke to one of them and they were a singing youth group. We made sure we got our breakfast before the hordes cleaned it all up!

We walked to the station to catch the train to Munich for the day, and just caught the train, only to discover that we needed to validate our ticket (after buying it) in a machine on the station, not on the train. We got off two stops after we got on, to validate our tickets, and then had to wait 20 minutes in the freezing cold for the next train. When we finally got into the city we got off at Marienplatz, which is just outside the Rathaus (Town Hall) where the famous Glockenspiel is.

We happened to be there at 11am when it went off, but it sounded very sick, and it took a long time for the figures to move - we wandered off, deciding it needed some work!

We started our morning by going to the Fire Department Museum where Tim saw lots of exciting things (he used to be in the NSW Rural Fire Service). Then we walked back to the main shopping area where the crowds were becoming enormous (the sales were on).

Then we found our way down one of the most expensive shopping streets to the Egyptian Antiquities Museum where Tim went berserk taking lots of photos for school (he teaches Ancient History). A selection of the photos are below.

After the museum we did some shopping, and barged through the crowds from shop to shop. There were lots of lions around the place (in the same vein as the Berlin Bears) all decorated in themes and colours. I don't know what the significance of them were. I have included the photo of the lion below specifically because Tasmania is missing (those poor Tasmanians have no home yet again).

When we had finally had enough we caught the train back (once we'd found the right platform to catch it from), except we got on a train going to Starnberg, which is the right direction, but one stop before ours. So we ended up waiting on Starnberg station (once again in the freezing cold) for 20 minutes for the next train to take us one more stop. There were some ambos taking a youngish girl away on a stretcher when we got to Starnberg - we don't know what happened.

Once we finally got to Possenhofen, as we walked from the station to the youth hostel we speculated about how many guests in total would be at the youth hostel that night. I guessed 10, Tim guessed 6. When we saw the carpark, it was only our car and the guy on staff's (who we had nicknamed Otto). When we went for dinner Otto told us that it was just us!

After dinner we retired to the 'bistro' in the hope that Otto might serve us some drinks, but he nicked off. So we went into the conference room next door to the bistro, where there was a tv, and watched telly all evening - even an episode of Inspector Rex that we hadn't seen before (though unfortunately without the subtitles that SBS obliges me with)!

Freiburg - Possenhofen

2006-01-06T11:22:00.000+11:00

There was a heavy frost overnight. The regulation 2 bread rolls must have been used up for the week as there was only sliced bread left this morning.

We left by the wrong road but got a nice photo of the sun breaking through the clouds over the mountains and a very frosty field, before we turned back to get to the right road.

The sun was out for the morning as we travelled through the mountains (in the Black Forest) through the ski resort of Feldberg. It looked to be a good day for skiing - clear and sunny.

Just as we headed out of the skiing areas it clouded over and we moved into mist. We missed a turn off, but made it onto the right road eventually. We stopped for morning tea at a roadhouse at about 12 (no Avon convention this time) where I used a loo that had a wacky seat-cleaning thing. Driving on, we stopped for lunch at about 2pm (a lot of roadhouses have enormous eat-in sections where you can order just about anything you like, from roast dinners, to fish and chips), and then continued on. We passed a bad accident just before we stopped for lunch, where a woman had slammed into the side rail, but amazingly appeared unhurt though the car was completely smashed.

We finally made it to Possenhofen by 4pm, only to discover that reception wasn't open until 5pm! We waited around in the ultra modern youth hostel until the staff turned up and then we booked in. Dinner was at 6pm and we attempted to do a load of washing (which for some reason took about 2 hours) and then sat in the bistro, once again waiting for the staff to turn up, while the clothes hopefully dried in the dryer.

Possenhofen is a small town famous for being the home of the castle where 'Sissi', Elisabeth, Empress of Austria, spent her youth. It was also home to Hitler's filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl before she died. We chose to stay at the youth hostel in Possenhofen as a setting out point for day trips to Munich - we didn't want to stay in Munich itself. Our first choice was the youth hostel in Dachau, as we had stayed there on our last trip to Germany, but it was closed over that period.

Freiburg - with a day trip to Freudenstadt

2006-01-05T11:16:00.000+11:00

No frost or snow overnight. Regulation 2-bread-roll-breakfast.

We decided to go to Freudenstadt for a day trip because that is where a friend of ours, Verena, comes from, and we wanted to get her something from there. Freudenstadt is in the Black Forest, and is rather out of the way, with it's biggest claim to fame apparently being the gigantic market square (Germany's biggest) that is the centre of town. Tim mapped out and wrote out the route to take, which turned out to be a very winding road through lots of mountain passes.

As we travelled away from Freiburg we started to see frost on the ground and houses, and then there were small patches of snow, then more snow, and then snow covering everything, and then when we got to Freudenstadt we realised it wasn't sprinkling anymore - it was snowing. There were lots of tunnels through mountains along the way, the longest being almost 2km long.

When we got to Freudenstadt we accidentally found the town centre, so parked the car and went shopping for Verena. There wasn't much in the way of souvenirs but we found a few things, including a few things with her name on them (not a common name in Australia!). After finally locating a cafe where you didn't have to stand up to have your drink/food (quite common in Germany) we had some morning tea.

We visited a bookshop in our wanderings, and came across a very Australian book, in German - Jackie French's Diary of a Wombat. We couldn't resist buying it for our son, but I can't help but think that the shopkeeper should be glad we bought it from her, as I imagine there wouldn't be an enormous demand for books about wombats in deepest Black Forest country.

After a little more wandering we got some lunch and then headed for the car. As we came down out of the mountains the snow cleared up and the sun came out - the first sustained sunlight since we had arrived in Germany!

We went back to the youth hostel, unloaded, and then caught the tram into Freiburg again to do some more shopping. We also discovered another internet cafe, so we checked our emails and the Australian news. As evening started to fall we took some photos of the streets we were wandering. As it was just after Christmas they still had all their Christmas decorations up which made them look all the more inviting.

As we hadn't booked our evening meal (what a shame!) we went back to the Italian restaurant again, where the waitress remembered us from 2 nights before. We were highly suspicious of Tim's order of Tortellini boscaiola - it was tomatoey and had peas - but it was still nice anyway.

We really liked Freiburg, apart from the youth hostel, which wasn't the best in terms of service or food, and we were sad to leave. It had a nice atmosphere, feels safe, and has lots of nice shops. Hubert, our academic friend, also told us that Freiburg has the reputation of being the warmest city in Germany, so that's a plus too, when you come from a place that is never cold enough for snow, even in the dead of winter!

Freiburg

2006-01-04T11:12:00.000+11:00

There was a frost overnight and everything was crispy with ice. We had our regulation 2 bread rolls for breakfast, avoided joining in with the folk dancing, and went in to Freiburg for the day, mainly for shopping. We found the art shop and I bought some good brushes, and then went to the wool shop next door where I bought some more wool for another scarf. Said scarf, finished, is pictured below.

We pretty much wandered around most of the day, went to the same bakery twice (just near the picture below. Note the travesty of putting a McDonalds sign on that brown and white building, just above the righthand arch!), for morning and afternoon tea, and at one stage went past a place that had a temperature gauge in the window, which said it was -4 degrees Celsius!

We did some shopping, but it was mainly window shopping. We also searched for internet cafes, as the ones listed in our Lonely Planet Guide no longer existed. The one we finally found was in the basement of a photocopying shop (of course, where else?!), so Tim was able to email his Uni supervisors about his meeting with the academics.

We went back to the youth hostel for dinner (SOOO not worth it!) and then back to our room. Tim decided he needed a book to read, so he went back to town to visit the bookshops and wandered around for a bit.

Freiburg

2006-01-03T10:06:00.000+11:00

Breakfast was the usual spread (rolls, cheeses and meats), though there was a sign up saying we were only allowed a maximum of two bread rolls. After breakfast we decided to be brave and catch a tram into the city. The tram stop was about 10 minutes walk from the hostel (where we saw the original sign pointing to the youth hostel). To get to it we had to go over a bridge over the river, and past the Freiburg soccer stadium (we actually saw the soccer team having a public training session the previous afternoon). Trams came every 5-10 minutes and the fare was €2 per person. It took about 10-15 minutes to get into the city. The first thing we did when we got into the city was to find the pub where we were having a meeting with Tim's academic contacts that evening. As the Uni library was next door we checked that out too. After that we went to the tourist information centre to get a map of the city so we wouldn't spend our day getting lost again.

Freiburg is a very nice town, with cobbled streets and in front of most shops is a mosaic signifying what the shop is e.g. a pretzel in front of a bakery.

There are also little open drains along the streets with fast flowing water, which are a bit of a hazard, though apparently in summer they are great to stand in to cool your feet.

After the information centre we went to the Museum for Pre and Early History, where even Tim was bored. He thought things were picking up when he saw a sign for a display on the Alamanni (a cultural group his thesis covers) but when we got downstairs to it it was only on jewellery!

We went to see the Münster (the catholic cathedral - supposedly the 'most beautiful in Christendom' - though I couldn't quite see what the fuss was about). Inside the stained glass windows were pretty amazing, but that was about it for me.

There were markets in the square outside the cathedral, selling both fresh food and tourist items, and also lots of places selling sausages on bread. As it was lunchtime we both had one. While we were in the square finding souvenirs we saw an example of a German phenomenon that we had come across when we were in Germany last time - 'couple matching' - both members of a couple wearing matching clothes. As if you would wear that beanie, let alone make your partner wear one too!

With shopping breaking up our travels between the sights, we then went to the Augustinermuseum, as I hoped to see some interesting textiles there. There were a few woven friezes, and lots and lots of boring ecclesiastical statues, paintings etc, so we left after I finally found a loo to go to which didn't have a long line (on one of our forays into a department store, we went up to the food court for Tim to get a coffee, where he was told off for not having it on a tray, and I would have gone to the loos there but the line was so long that holding on until I got to another loo wasn't going to be any more of a stretch than waiting in the line until it was my turn. And I would have had to pay for the privilege too - you leave a tip for the woman who supposedly cleans them - though I think they often seem to spend more time guarding their plate of tips rather than cleaning). We did a bit more shopping and then got the tram back to get ready to go back in for our meeting at 5pm.

Once we got back in to town we loitered around for a bit killing time until 5pm. We were meeting two German academics, neither of whom we had any idea what they looked like, nor how old they were. Tim stood at the door (me behind him) looking around, until one of them asked him if he was Tim. They were very nice and friendly and Tim talked to them for about 2 hours, and they were very positive about his research topic. At the end I mentioned that I was hoping to find an art shop to get some paint brushes. Hubert, one of the academics, thought he knew where one was, close to our tram stop, so he walked with us to where he vaguely thought it was. He couldn't find it so we said goodbye and then he raced back a few minutes later to say he'd found it. It turned out that we'd noticed it earlier in the day (though not realising it was an art shop) and it was also next door to a wool shop that I wanted to visit. Neither was open (though some shops stay open until 8pm) so we set it aside to visit the next day. I still have an abiding memory of two workers from a nearby florist climbing up a ladder to attach a moss and berry covered creation to a street lamp, just outside these shops. The creation was just so European compared to any floral arrangements we have in Australia.

We then went in search of dinner. We wandered around for a while, determined not to resort to McDonalds or Burger King (which seemed to be quite big in Germany) until we found a nice little Italian restaurant. While we ate our pasta we emptied our heads of all the info Tim had learnt at the meeting (they spoke in English for my benefit) and then we caught the tram back, for bed by 10pm.

And two more things: (1) it was supposed to snow today but it didn't, and (2) the man who gave us directions to the youth hostel who is part of the folk dancing group keeps inviting us to have a go at the dancing. We keep looking busy!

Hermeskeil - Freiburg

2006-01-02T18:02:00.000+11:00

We had breakfast with the leftover Americans and the only other group now staying at the hostel - some Germans. Obviously 8am was too early for the Americans as almost all of them came down to breakfast in their pyjamas!

After we had packed up we loaded everything into the car. There had been no new snow overnight and there was no ice so for once there was nothing to clean off the car. On the way to the express way we bought diesel without any dramas, though we realised that we had no idea how much the tank holds. We had an uneventful trip, and I even remembered passing the army/airforce base just near Mannheim from our last trip in 2002. We stopped at a roadhouse near Mannheim for some morning tea, where there was also a motel. We counted at least 6 Avon cars in the carpark, so there must have been some sort of Avon convention on.

On reaching the turn off to Freiburg we once again had no idea how to get to the youth hostel, so we just drove and drove. None of it made any sense in relation to the map we had of the inner city of Freiburg in our guidebook. We went through 'town' and ended up in suburbia, and were just looking for somewhere to ask for directions when we saw a sign for a youth hostel. We didn't know if there was more than one youth hostel in Freiburg, but thought that at least if we got to the wrong one they should be able to give us directions to the right one! We followed the signs, but ended up on a bikepath/footpath which lead over a river, but certainly wasn't wide enough for cars! A kind man stopped and told us how to get there on roads but said it was a common mistake! When we finally got to the hostel it was the right one.

It is a very big hostel, but for some reason the kitchen doesn't cater for lunch or dinner unless you order and pre-pay for it over an hour beforehand, so we ordered and paid for dinner. They also still had us down as a reservation for 3 people, even though Tim had emailed them the change in numbers, so our room turned out to fit 4 and is the largest, nicest room we have had so far. As we had missed lunch (and it wouldn't have been pre-ordered anyway) we went for a walk to find something. We walked along beside the river for a while, and then decided to head for the main road. We found what passes for a shopping centre in Germany and had lunch in a Turkish kebab joint. They were the strangest kebabs we have ever had - on pita bread, with lettuce, tomato, red cabbage, yoghurt sauce and some other strange things, plus meat and chilli flakes. We walked back and Tim did some washing and I knitted until dinner. Dinner was ok, (dessert was a Milky Way!), and the only drink on offer was a barrel of raspberry tea. The kitchen staff thought it strange when Tim asked for some water to drink. After dinner we resisted the urge to watch "Bruce Almighty" (in German) which the hostel was showing, and went to bed at about 9pm.

A large group of folkdancers is staying at the hostel, and as well as dancing classes, they have a variety of craft activities too. The man who directed us to the youth hostel is with them.

Hermeskeil - (Another day trip to Trier) - New Years Day

2006-01-01T16:26:00.000+11:00

When we went in for breakfast in the morning our table hadn't been set, and there was no food in sight. Eventually the lady in charge realised and came in and told us that the Americans were leaving early and our fellow dinner room guests were having brunch later, so we had to go and get our food from the spread put out for the Americans. We got the distinct impression that we had been forgotten.

We weren't really sure what to do for the day, as it was a double whammy of Sunday (not much is open in Germany on a Sunday) plus New Years Day. In the end we decided to go to Trier again and see what we had missed the day before. We parked in the same place, and as we expected, nothing was open. But we saw the Roman-built bridge over the Mosel River, and inside a big glass building (which wasn't open because of NY's) we saw some Roman baths which they uncovered when the were excavating to build a car park - which consequently never got built! We also saw Karl Marx's house.

We wandered back to the main drag where we heard music playing. We followed the sound and it turned out to be a small brass ensemble playing hymns and classical pieces on a colonnaded balcony of the cathedral, so the music flooded the square outside the cathedral - quite unexpected!

To fill in some time we had lunch in a bistro/bar where we ordered pizzas, which turned out to be HUGE! After finishing them, we tried to get the attention of the waitress, to pay the bill, but were blanked for half an hour, which filled in some more time too. We headed back to Hermeskeil.

It had been sprinkling a tiny bit throughout the morning, but on the way back, as we moved higher up in altitude, it started to rain, and then the rain got weird and seemed to float, and suddenly we realised it was snowing! In the snow we turned off to visit the local concentration camp, but it was closed and it was snowing quite a lot so we kept going on to Hermeskeil. We took a few photos of it snowing from the youth hostel.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in our dining room writing postcards, reading and knitting (me, not Tim!) and then had dinner in another dining room, with the remaining Americans. Most of them had gone home that morning (to the U.S.) but the remaining ones actually lived in Italy.

I will say here that it was at Hermeskeil that I first remember seeing concrete table tennis tables. It would seem that the YHA in Germany must gotten a good deal on them because they seemed to be at a lot of them. When the soccer world cup was on, I remember one radio correspondent who was staying at the Possenhofen YHA (which we will get to) making a comment about said table tennis tables. I eagerly agreed with the radio that they were quite bizarre!

Hermeskeil - (Day trip to Trier) - New Years Eve

2005-12-31T15:34:00.000+11:00

Apparently lots of businesses close at about midday on New Years Eve in Germany, so we went to Trier for the day to walk around and see what we could see anyway. Trier is one of Germany's oldest towns and was founded by the Romans in 15 BC.

It took us about half an hour to get to Trier, and we saw some enormous windmills along the way. It was cold and bleak.

When we got to Trier we decided to chance the cost of a parking station rather than find somewhere on the street to park. It was pouring with rain and the snow was progressively turning to slush - all we needed was some cola syrup and we could have opened a slushie stall!

We went to the Porta Nigra first, which is a big black stone gate, and would have originally been the gate to the city in Roman times.

Wandering down the main shopping street (cobbled with no car access) we saw a big cathedral off on a side street - the Catholic church. It was huge and inside was very ornate.

We then headed off to see a Roman basilica, and on the way stopped at a lovely little toy shop. At the front of the basilica a rather ornate rococo style building was built, which was an elector prince's palace. The basilica is now an evangelical church. Inside it was very spartan (a complete contrast to the catholic cathedral). In Roman times it was an indoor marketplace.

We trudged on through the slush and rain to the library where an exhibition of the Egbert Codex was being held. The Egbert Codex is a local illuminated manuscript. The exhibition was quite small (and probably not worth the €4 entry fee) but it did have some other lovely calligraphed scripts and even a Gutenberg Bible. We then continued on in the snow to try and find a Roman amphitheatre. When we eventually found it, it was closed (New Years Eve strikes!) but a lady who was walking past suggested we walk up the hill behind it and then we could see some of it, but couldn't get any good pictures of it from that angle. We also saw the ruins of the Imperial Thermal Baths on the way there.

We then went to the Landesmuseum, but it appeared to be closed - not that we could actually find the entrance! This was a big disappointment to Tim, as it was one of the places he really wanted to go.

We then headed back to the main shopping area to get some lunch, and as everything was closing up for the day (1pm) and our feet were sore, we went back to the car to go home. We were quite surprised that the parking only cost €4,80!

On the way back we missed the turn off and ended up going north instead of east, but eventually we worked out how to get back to Hermeskeil.

We went for a walk when we got back, to find a place for a hot drink, and the only places open in the whole town were the pubs. We finally found a bistro which would serve us hot chocolate and we also ordered something that translated as cheese bread. When it appeared it was two enormous pieces of bread with quite a few slices of cheese, plus sliced tomato, capsicum and pickles on top, sprinkled with something like paprika. It wasn't what we expected but it was quite nice!

Dinner at the youth hostel. After dinner I was determined to stay up later than 8pm (the longest I had been able to manage until then because of jetlag) - it was New Years Eve afterall - so I kept myself awake until 9pm knitting. I then succumbed to bed. All around us though were very noisy kids (mostly American) running around, constantly banging the corridor door outside our room. The Americans also let off some fireworks outside at about 8:30pm, and were going to again at midnight, but I never heard the midnight ones. Thank goodness I was really tired because otherwise the noise would have kept me awake for hours.

Mainz - Hermeskeil

2005-12-30T15:12:00.000+11:00

It snowed lightly overnight.

Breakfast was spent with Renate, our American German friend, telling us pretty much the same things as she did the day before about how terrible the American education system was. She also gave us some useful information on shoes and leather - leather is much cheaper here and so shoes that we had seen for €20 weren't necessarily incredibly bad quality. We had been thinking that our shoes didn't have enough grip in the snow and ice so she suggested we try a particular shoe shop.

We had to be out of the hostel by 9am, so we vacated and left the car there to walk into town to go shoe shopping. I couldn't find any I liked with either good enough sole or were comfortable enough, but Tim found some good sturdy boots for a reasonable price.

After our shoe shopping expedition we headed out of Mainz to Hermeskeil. The night before Tim had gone over our maps and had written down the route to take, including names of towns and road numbers, which really helped, so our trip was relatively easy. We did however find that spray from other cars made the windscreen incredibly dirty, and once the sun came out it was almost impossible to see through. The problem was that we hadn't yet worked out where the knob to spray water on the windscreen was, and we couldn't find a place to pull over to check. I tried to assist by getting the car manual out of the glovebox,and reading out the German to Tim (complete with appalling pronunciation) and he eventually guessed enough of my mangled German to work it out. Finally we could see again!

Hermeskeil is a small town and the Youth Hostel wasn't nearly as big as the one in Mainz. We had chosen Hermeskeil to stay in because we really wanted to stay in Trier, but the Youth Hostel there was booked out, and Hermeskeil was the closest from there. The lady at the front desk showed us our table for our meals (you couldn't just sit anywhere) which was in a small room, and we shared the room with about 6 other families who were holidaying together. There were lots of Americans also staying at the youth hostel, apparently on a Christian retreat. It was quite weird, as there didn't seem to be any dedicated meeting rooms in the hostel, so you would turn a corner and discover a group of Americans sitting at a table (virtually in the corridor) having a bible study. I don't know how they concentrated!

We went for a walk after we had settled in and had our lunch. First we went to the tourist information centre and got a few brochures on Hermeskeil and Trier, and walked through the very small museum display on the town. Apparently there was a concentration camp nearby. We then walked through the town, where I found a wool shop, so I bought some wool and needles to knit a scarf for a present. We also found a $2 shop which had some nice Christmas decorations, so I bought a whole lot both for me and for presents. We also finally found a post office to buy some stamps for postcards. By this stage it was getting quite cold and slowly darker, so we went back to the youth hostel and attempted to translate the knitting instructions I had been given for the scarf. I transliterated it with Tim's help and that of a German dictionary, and though I couldn't totally translate it after about 1 and a half hours I was reasonably confident that I was knitting the same pattern I had seen in the shop.

At dinner the other families quizzed us about why we were there, and where Tim had learnt his German.

Mainz

2005-12-29T14:45:00.000+11:00

For some reason at about 5am we were woken by someone from Melbourne calling Tim's mobile. We'll never know who it was, because he didn't get to it in time!

At breakfast we got talking to a Renate, a German lady, who had been living in America for over 30 years, and pretty much hated it. Her very American phrase of the day was "Hell no!" She had some interesting thoughts on American culture from a European perspective.

View down the promenade beside the Rhine

At about 9:30am we set out walking to the Roman German Central Museum, of which we had a vague idea of the location. After walking around in circles for ages, plus many misdirections from helpful but misguided locals, we finally found it at about 12 noon, having already walked past it at about 10am, but missing it for the lack of signage. Tim had a great time, and took lots of photos, and the staff were very impressed with his language. I was greatly impressed by the number of Roman/ancient safety pins on display, and was disappointed on our return to discover not one photo of said ancient contribution to our modern way of life. Below are examples of artefacts we saw. Don't understand the need for a statue of gold chickens myself, but obviously someone thought it was worth spending hours creating!

It was snowing lightly as we left so we made an unscheduled visit to the Museum of Ancient Shipping, which was on our way back to the youth hostel. The museum houses the remains of 5 Roman long boats which were uncovered when they were building the Mainz Hilton Hotel. They have also built replicas to show what they may have looked like.

Kuala Lumpur - Frankfurt - Mainz

2005-12-28T14:43:00.000+11:00

The flight from KL was a much smaller plane, and to our great delight there were only about 40 people on the plane. Once we had taken off we were able to spread out and I was able to sleep lying along 4 seats. There was no one travelling in business class, and only one person in 1st class.

I watched movies, and slept in between, for about 5 hours in total - arguably the most and best sleep I have ever had on a plane!

We arrived in Frankfurt just before dawn at about 6:30am, where it was snowing as we landed. There were great long lines of snow ploughs along the outer tarmacs, all with orange blinking lights on. We managed to clear customs without actually picking up our luggage (a number of people did this, still not sure how!) We then had to find someone to let us back in to pick up our luggage, and then waited in a queue for ages for "Nothing to Declare", while passengers had their bags quite thoroughly searched. Because of our mishap with the luggage, we were almost the last in the queue, even behind the cabin crew. When we finally got to the check I hauled my bag onto the counter, and I was asked if I spoke Deutsch, to which I replied no. I was then asked where I had come from, and once we said "Australia" they said "that's ok, you can go." We still don't really understand why - perhaps Australian customs has a pretty tough reputation?!

We found the car hire place, where we requested winter tyres for our car. As the original car we had hired didn't have them (an Opel Astra), we fluked an upgrade to a Mercedes C Class!

When we got to the car we sat in it for quite a while, trying to find the hand brake, headlights, windscreen wipers etc. Once Tim finally got up the courage to drive (I decided I wouldn't drive - not confident enough to negotiate the wrong side of the road, from the wrong side of the vehicle!) we set out, with Tim finding it difficult to get used to positioning the car in the middle of the lane, rather than almost driving me up the gutter! Thankfully by this time it had stopped snowing (Welcome to Germany, please drive on the left hand side of the road, whilst negotiating snow falling in your face - aaaarrghhh!). After a few wrong turns, and a few short excursions onto the incorrect side of the road (oops!) we finally made it onto a dual carriage way, taking us in the direction of Mainz.

Some building in Mainz - it looks nice, and shows you it is cold and snowy!

We got a bit confused about which turn off to take - there seemed to be an awful lot of turn-off signs starting with "Mainz" but eventually we worked out that these were for suburbs of Mainz. We finally got into Mainz proper, and then realised we had no idea where the Youth Hostel was, so eventually found a place to pull over, to locate the address, which we had helpfully put in the boot. Unfortunately that didn't help, and neither did our Lonely Planet guide which only had a map with an arrow pointing off the side of the page with "YHA → 2km". After missing turn offs many times, not seeing lanes clearly because of the snow, and almost going around a roundabout the wrong way we finally ended up 2km away from the YHA, but still none-the-wiser as to where it was. After stopping at a petrol station to ask, we discovered it was just down the road, around the corner. We finally got there at 10:20am.

As it was a very stressful drive for Tim, we decided that we would go for a walk, though I had a shower first to freshen up, and briefly thought I had left my wallet on the plane (though it was eventually found in the car - phew!)

We walked through a park beside the youth hostel, where there were lots of families with young kids, tobogganing down slopes. We discovered that our shoes didn't have very ice-friendly soles, and spent a lot of time almost slipping over. We walked and walked and eventually ended up in the main shopping area, with pedestrian malls and cobbled streets. The sales were on, so we bought a new beanie to better cover Tim's ears. We also bought bratwurst on rolls for lunch (a common lunch option in Germany, from street stalls). We got lost walking back to the youth hostel, though eventually found our way.

The slippery park, devoid of tobogganing families.

We filled in time until dinner, which bore absolutely no resemblance to the weekly menu stated meal, and was accompanied by raspberry tea (great to tone our uteruses with!). Early to bed - jetlag.

Sydney - Kuala Lumpur

2005-12-27T14:43:00.000+11:00

On December 27, 2005, my husband, Tim, and I went on a trip to Germany for three weeks, partly for a holiday, and partly for research purposes, for Tim, who is doing a PhD that deals with Roman history in Germany. We were originally going to take our (then) 2 year old son, but my parents-in-law offered to have him, and instead of me having constant worries about taking a 2 year old on a plane and to places he hadn't been before (foreign beds, strange food), we decided this was a good alternative. We missed greatly him though, and will probably never forgive ourselves for the fact that he had his second birthday while we were away.

Oh, and Tim's German language is quite good, and mine is virtually non-existent. Though I can order a small fries and a hot chocolate, if pressed. Not a balanced diet by any means though!

Here's a photo of the plane we flew on from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur. We took this for the benefit of our son who is a bit of a plane buff.

We left Sydney at about 3:40pm. I had a vacant seat next to me, which we thought might have once been our son's, before we decided not to take him. It was a reasonable flight, though I didn't manage to get any sleep, as it was still light outside. We arrived at KL at about 9pm their time, and wandered around to find something to eat - we settled on Burger King, which was hideous, and then Tim found a place to have a shower for 25 Ringgit (currently about $AUD8 - I think he would have felt it was worth it whatever the cost!). Then we sat down, and I managed to sleep for about half an hour, which made me feel much more human. After wandering for a while longer, we boarded our next flight, to leave at 12:10am on Dec 28.