Switzerland

Waw, what a day. This is the first day that i'm really tired of driving. I've driven around 500-600km, but on the narrow streets of Switzerland localities that were either going up or going down, never on the same level. And this people that are sleeping behind the wheel ... they kept me with 70 between localities (the limit is 80), and in the locality 30-40 ... i was going crazy.
But the catch of the day: we leave Lyon, we take the highway to Geneva, cause that's why we went through Lyon. Very beautiful, i'm not sorry for those 11.5 euro. When we enter Switzerland, a lady wants to stick the vignette on the windshield, and asks us 40euro. Hey, wait a minute, i don't want to use the highway. No? - she says, then you must go back to France. No, look on the GPS, i will go out at first exit in 1km, wtf, i need to pay 40euro for that? Yes, 40 euro. Ok, no thanks, i'm going back. then we go, i don't see the road left that takes us back, so i go straight, and go like my GPS was saying. But ... surprise: that exit was on another highway, in fact that's where the highway starts in Switzerland. There was a red light, in front Police, left some industrial parc. the exit in 2km. No, i won't pass near police control, the fine would be too big. so i take the left, go through that industrial parc (decision made in 1 sec) and from there the GPS takes us to Geneva without using highways (it was set like this from entering Switzerland, forbid highways). Common, 40 euro highway tax (it's for the entire year, but who will go there again in one year?). We've eaten a nice romantic dinner in Winterthur's center for those money.
We walked through Geneva (not big deal, except for the lake :P), then through Lausanne - nice, through Luzern - very beautiful and to the hotel. We've tried to eat something on the road, but at 3pm they didn't have the kitchen opened till 6 (at one restaurant) and they told us we shouldn't try in other places on the road because we won't find the kitchen opened. it's normal for them. When entering Lausanne a police filter stopped us (did they love our romanian number? maybe they don't like the Bucharest people also :D) but after verifying the documents they let us go. Full of swans on the Switzerland's lakes, i think our guys found some better snacks :P
Tomorrow we have 193km to Hohenschwangau and then 230 till Salzburg. Because we have time ... we are thinking of going through Liechtenstein (Vaduz) because there are only 60km detour.

Winterthur - Vaduz - Hohenschwangau - Salzburg

 In the end, we've decided to go through Vaduz, we had enough time. There was not too much to see there, only the castle of the Liechtenstein princes (like they say, Principality of Liechtenstein). But well, who has ever seen this country? We are the best, isn't it? At Hohenschwangau we arrived pretty late - we've made a mistake in the GPS setting also, we left it on "avoid toll roads" after we entered Austria and bought the vignette, so we went parallel with the highway about 30km ... till we got it. Unfortunately, these losses of time were payed, we got to the german castles at 3pm and there were no tickets left, all of them were sold. Some americans were there, i believe some asylums for old people, there were only people passed 70 years, i don't even understand how did they went up to the castle. We saw them while they were going down and they were barely walking. So we walked to the castle (20 min. of going up) we ate something at a restaurant there and left for Salzburg.
We've seen some wonderful sights in the Alps, when we left from Winterthur it was foggy :) From time to time we've stopped to make some pictures because it was like in fairytales. It was like visiting Heidi :)
And like this, we've walked today through: Switzerland - Liechtenstein - Austria - Germany - Austria. Nice. Tomorrow we are going home, we already don't remember when we left, and we don't remember what we've seen in the beginning. We are so lucky to have this blog :P

Paris - Tours

Yesterday in Paris we mostly travelled with the metro, because the distance between the places we planned to see was pretty big. The first one was the Opera, then Place Vendome, Sacre Coeur, Notre Dame de la Lorette, La Defense, Trocadero + Eiffel Tower, Invalides, Musee D'Armee, Asemblee Nationale, Palais Bourbon, Musee D'Orsay, Conciergerie, Palais de Justice, Institut du Monde Arabe, Gare Austerlitz, Bastille.


We were exhausted after such a day. Last night I planned the route for today, with the castles of the Loire Valley, and I made a reservation in a hotel near Tours. I found a Premiere Classe for 41eur, very good and in our way.
So in the morning we left Paris a bit late (we went shopping in a cheap supermarket in Paris plus it was difficult to pack) and we headed towards Versailles. We only walked outside the castle, we didn't go inside because there was a 1km queue at the entrance, swirling around the front courtyard, so we just took some pictures and left.

Next we went to Chartres, we saw the cathedral, then we went to Orleans to see the cathedral as well. We also wanted to see Ch'dun, but it was already pretty late so we skipped it. From Orleans we went to Ch'bord and I was amazed by this castle. From there we went to Ch'rny, but it was in vain because we didn't see anything. The ticket costed 15euro and we didn't want to pay that much just to see the castle from the outside and to take 3 pictures. It was well hidden so we didn't get to see anything.

The next castle was Bois, because it was in our way towards Ch'boise. Ch'boise was more beautiful, but from the Bois Castle you had a nice view on the centre of the town and you could also see the cathedral a bit more up. Between these two we saw another one on the banks of the river, we also stopped in a parking to take some pictures. These pictures were made using zoom, so I don't know how good the pictures are, because I can't really stand still when I take pictures.

We planned to see 4-5 more, but it didn't work out because it was already late. they are here in the area and we'll visit them tomorrow. Besides, we also have to drive to Lyon ... But tonight I made reservations for the last days of the trip, so tomorrow we'll sleep at Premiere Classe Lyon Est Bron Eurexpo, then at Etap Winterthur in Switzerland and the last night at Jess Hotel Urstein in Salzburg. Unless there will be some surprises, Tuesday evening we'll arrive in Oradea.

Loire Valley

We've started early today. We had a long trip to the remaining castles and then to Lyon, avoiding highways. We've seen one by one: Chateau de Villandry, Chateau Azay-le-Rideau, Chateau de Chinon, Chateau de Rivau, Chateau de Chenonceau and Chateau de Valençay. We didn't enter, didn't have time for it, so we didn't see anything at Chenonceau, it was well hidden.
The road outside the highway was not so bad, a lot of speed limitations (30 - center, 50 - through the locality, 70 - before a curve or intersection, 90 general limitation) but we didn't take them into account so much. We've driven as the road allowed us, paying attention at the radar signs (radar was presignalized with 100m).
Driving on these roads gave us the chance to see the real France, not only what you see driving on the highway (nothing). In conclusion: good roads. A - highway, N - national road, Dwxyz - less numbers after D, the bigger the road - well, a D with 3-4 numbers is like a good road in Romania. The GPS took us on a very narrow road between some very small villages, but even that one was good, without holes in it.

With the GPS we had other adventures. Once, when we had a bigger distance between 2 castles, it said 120km. From what I've seen on bing maps, the distance should've been much smaller, and mostly the drawing was not minimum (not even close to a straight line). As for the time it said 140min, so it wasn't quick neither. On the GPS the setting was "optimum", so I changed it to "shortest" and surprise, 75km and 90min, a big difference. So we went like this, on the shortest, and we were careful not to enter every small road that the GPS would've said, so we arrived in 60min.
On Valençay - Lyon, on optimum I had 371km and on shortest 360 so for 11km it was not worth it. With the time we were not on the same line, GPS said 7h30 and we made 6h15 with 2 pauses, gas refuelling, some shopping at the supermarket and missing the street when entering Lyon, so instead of going near Lyon, with speed, we went through the center, red lights and roundabouts. So 5h i think it should've been correctly.

The best news is that my window is working fine again :) it's like new. i didn't do anything, it saw that I'm not giving it too much importance and it cured itself :) so we had a moral boost perfectly timed before the road to Lyon.

This evening we don't have internet in the room, they say it's because of the renovation works in the hotel that wi-fi is not reaching anymore, so i've posted (the romanian version only) in the morning, before leaving. The route for the next day is Lyon - Geneva - Lausanne - Luzern - Winterthur. Depending on how it will go (we will avoid the highways again), we'll jump some of them or enter through Zurich also.

Paris

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L'Arc de Triomphe - taken from Tour Eiffel

Petit Palais

Jardin des Tuileries, Carousel & Louvre - taken from Tour Eiffel

Place de la Concorde, Tuileries - taken from Tour Eiffel

Institut de France

Champ de Mars - view from Tour Eiffel

Luxemburg - Reims - Paris

We got up at 8h and went for a swim. Yes, it was so relaxing ... After that, starving, we went to the restaurant to have breakfast. It was good, that was indeed a 5***** breakfast. They had so good croissants and a fresh orange juice and a lot more. I ate so much that I had to stay layed on the bed for 30' before I could drive.
So again on the road (not by James Kerouac, lucky us), with Reims as a first target. Of course, like always, they worked on the transition from E25 to A4 highways, so we lost about 2 hours circling around (we caught 2 traffic jams, of course) but finally we are there. Reims' cathedral is only 1km away from the highway so it was easy and quickly.

We hoped that there won't be road taxes in the north, but unfortunatelly there were. Still, we choose to go on the highway to arrive in time in Paris and to avoid driving in the evening/night (because of our problem with the lights). So: 13.2 + 4 + 3.7 + 2 Euro we paid between Metz and Paris. Too much. From now on, in France, we will try to avoid the highways.
We arrived at the hotel at about 6:10pm, but the usual problem: parking space. We parked in a restricted space (like other 5 cars around us) and we hoped they won't pick our car in the time needed to check in. The guy on the reception said that in August the paying parking is free, so we could park in the "payant" spaces. But all of them were occupied. No problem, we waited till one became free and we jumped on it immediately. Problem solved. Internet is free, hotel is in the zone 2 of Paris at about 15-20min from L'Arc de Triomphe, so everything is perfect. We went in a walk around to know the area, we've seen also the metro station, I talked with the person in the information office about some maps, some travel tips and we are ready for tomorrow.

Meerhout - Luxemburg

In Meerhout we had 3 days of rest, feeling the vacation. We stayed in a superb house, where everything is where it should be, everything is logic and with good taste. Our hosts were impecable, the kids were gorgeus. best days of our vacation. we just hope they will return the visit.

We played some table tennis (Sven & I) and after 2 matches, is 1-1. We may play a decisive game in Timisoara :) On saturday we went to Leuven (Louvain for the french) where, after making a tour of the city, we ate a local specialty: fondue. It was very good and we are happy that we went there.

Leuven - City Hall

On Sunday we've went to Brussels for a tour with the kids. It's a beautiful city, a lot to see there, unfortunately it is situated on some hills and we had to walk up and down so we were pretty tired in the evening. In Brussels we ate another specialty, waffle.

Brusells - Rune, Robbe and the cathedral

We ended the evening with a barbecue where we had some meat specialties made by Sven's father. They were very tasty, especially the sausages ...

Sven noticed a headlight was dead, so i should be careful not to drive in the evening/night. Could it be from the same german specialist in Hannover? We also saw that the fuses are not as they are supposed to be concerning the driver's window, instead of 25A there was one of 7.5A - we inversed them so the window is opening/closing but not continuosly, but it's better. so this morning on the road to Luxembourg we stopped at a Auto 5 in Hasselt and bought some spare fuses. I replaced it, but nothing changed. still, it's better then not opening at all so we can live with this till we finish the journey.

So we were on the road to Luxemburg when, before Liege we see signs on the highway that E25 that goes to Luxemburg is closed. So we took E42 like the signs said, and we made some 40km more. Like this, we arrived at 14h instead of 12:30 as we hoped. no problem, we checked in at the "magnificent" hotel Hilton ***** where internet is not free, and we went in the city asap.

The city of Luxembourg is very beautiful. It has a tourist office so we got the necessary info about what should we visit and in 5h we did it. Of course we are exhausted again, we arrived in the room after 9pm. We plan to start the day with a swim in the hotel's swimming pool, i hope we will feel refreshed after that. I can't wait for the breakfast that Sven said it's magnificent.

Paris, we are coming, are you ready?

Belgium

Yesterday it was a pretty hard day also. It started well with a breakfast with Ian and Jolien, then we went to visit Gent. They've presented us the city, they were very well prepared with a map and a city tour for us, and they told us a lot of stories about the city. It's a historical city, the buildings look so medieval, it's like going back in history. Every building has it's story. We've walked for about 2 hours and then we took a boat trip through Gent (2 rivers meet in the city, and there is also an old channel that was made to make a connection to the North Sea).



Then we've driven to Antwerpen where the "Onze Lieve" Cathedral impressed us. It's very big and mostly very high, so high that it is very difficult to catch it in a picture. We've seen a lot more there, although it is pretty close to Holland, the style of the city is closer to french style, or even spanish style, with huge buildings. Here Sven recommended us a free parking near the center of the city, and also gave us a map with the most important places to visit, so in about 2-3 hours we were done.

We arrived at Sven's place at about 7pm and this time we were not late. We've met each other, we discussed about the plan for the next days and we've watched the photos from our weddings.
Today we did a lot of things, we've played table tennis, we've walked to the center of the village, and of course, creme de la creme, we went out in a small tour with the bikes. I was funny, too funny maybe, because you know that i don't know to ride a bike ... but i still wanted to do it. So i entered with full speed in a bush (a big bush, about 2m high), and also destroyed some corn plants in a corn field near the bike road that we were going at that time. After that, when going on the streets i only had problems with the cars and with the left/right turns, and also when i was going too slow. otherwise i went pretty well :) of course my ass hurts like hell now, i don't understand how the cyclists can go 200km on bike day after day.
In the evening we went to Isis where we met also Sjarel (other friends from Soccerproject) where we ate very well and had some very interesting discussions. I'm happy that we know each other for real now, it's easier to speak with somebody on the internet when you know him in person.

Amsterdam - Rotterdam - Gent

This day was better. We forgot about the problems with the car, about the 36euro car parking, we just enjoyed A'dam. We started the day early, ate the breakfast that was included in the hotel price (a good breakfast, nothing to complain) and we headed into the jungle :)

We saw the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh museum, the Opera House, the Flower Market, the Rembrandt Square, the Wilhelmina square, Central Station, Diamond museum and then we took a last visit to the Red Light District and back to the car. Luckily, the Albert Cuyp street (recommended by Sven) was at 3 min. walking distance from our hotel, so we didn't have to walk too much. There we bought something to eat (2 grilled minichickens for 6euro) and that was more than enough.

It was getting pretty late so we thought about skipping Bruges. We went to the Castle in Muiden, but didn't enter because 11euro pp was too much for this. So we took some pictures and drove to R'dam. Of course we got lost in all the streets/highways from A'dam Ring so we made about 30km more but we finally arrived in R'dam. Nice bridge, the Erasmusbrug, unfortunately it was pretty much all we saw in R'dam. The batteries were empty after taking some pictures, but we've caught the essential.

Next we drove to Gent to Ian, and of course we got lost again, so we were a bit late. Sorry for that. We also caught some traffic jams (thanks Sven for preventing me), 2 in A'dam and one in R'dam, but at 9:00pm we've parked the car in front of the house.

Thanks to Ian and Jolien for being such a good hosts, I hope we were the same for you when you visited us some weeks ago, we are feeling very good here. Very nice house, and Bilbo rocks! I hope the cats are named Frodo and Sam, or maybe Merry and Pippin :D

Tomorrow we will do Gent, then Antwerpen and finally we'll meet Sven. I can't wait. We don't have photos from today, because we don't have batteries. Tomorrow I think we'll put more.

Hannover - Amsterdam

The most "adventurous" day from out vacation. Pfoa... we started the day at 6:45 am, because Jan and Sybille had to leave for work at 7:30. We stopped by at Continental AG Hannover so I could take some pictures in front of the building, then we went downtown and visited the main attractions. When we were about to leave... surprise: the GPS is dead. I unplug it, see a lot of components in the cigarette lighter... I take them out, try to put them back in place, plug in the GPS again... nothing. I insert the cigarette lighter, it doesn't heat up. Au... what are we going to do without GPS when out trip has just started? It's wonderful, we have 2 GPSs and it's the cigarette lighter that breaks down.

We don't panic, we take the laptop, we power it on, connect the GPS to the laptop... yeah, the GPS will function until the laptop's battery goes empty. So we take advantage of this situation, search for a Renault dealer and stop by. When they see us, they come up with things like "you'll leave the car here until tomorrow and we'll see what we can do". Hello, Deutchland, we have a schedule, reservations, we have to get to A'dam today, what do you mean with tomorrow? Well... let's see, I'll have a look, "der Meister" says, a guy of about 30 years. He takes a look, he says that some 15A safety fuse is not there although it should be. We tell him that the cigarette lighter was ok until now, we haven't touched the safety fuses, so even if it should have been there and it's not, it's not because of that safety fuse that the cigarette lighter is not working. He takes another look, calls one of his colleagues, that other guy takes a look for about half an hour and in the end, apparently, he found that safety fuse and apparently it was defective so he had to replace it. Unfortunately, when the safety fuse broke down, the power cord of Iuli's GPS broke down as well. Sorry Iuli :D The GPS is still functional, but we have to get you a charger.

And so that you can see the "difference" between Germans and Romanians, when we asked how much we have to pay, he answered, like a true German: zwanzig. Without receipt, of course, because it we wanted one we had to want until the next day :)

It was ok, because we were in a hurry. Besides, instead of leaving Hannover at 9:30, we left at 12:30. After we left, I wanted to close my window when we entered the highway (because, until then, it's obvious that it wasn't necessary to close the window, since I drove with 50km/h), it closes bit by bit and completely, meaning that now I can't open it anymore. That's the second good news.

Anyway, even though A'dam is only 375km away from Hannover, after about 200km I felt that I could no longer keep my eyes open. I felt so sleepy. I found a park place and took a nap for about one hour. After that, We played badminton and the truck drivers looked at us as if we were coming from the circus. Then we left. We reached A'dam, we found the hotel, but when I asked the dude from the reception about some parking place, he burst out laughing. Parking place in A'dam? Well ... 4EUR/h, 36EUR/day or you can drive to the Ajax Arena and pay there 6 eur/day; they will also give you a subway ticket so you can come back to the hotel. So, apparently we drove there ... about 7km, we entered P6 (meaning park place 6), we asked the gatekeeper and he says that 6eur/day is valid only for P1. That sucks. We can't get to P1, because it's full of "forbidden" signs, so we give it up and go back to the hotel to park there for 36eur per day. And there (meaning in P6), surprise. Our credit card doesn't function, only credit cards from "Dutch" banks function, so we exchange some money at Lidl (after 2 shopping tours in which we bought juice and chocolate), and go with 18 coins of 2 EUR each to the automatic parking device to get the parking ticket. Of course it doesn't function when we try the first time, the dude from the reception helps us, who, by the way, him, but, well, that's the way it is.

So, at about 5:30, we finally get to leave the room and have a walk through A'dam, to see some incredibly narrow buildings (Flemish style) and to see the Red District which, little by little, turns into Chinatown. It rained about 3-4 times, of course, as if all the problems we had today were not enough.

So we came back to the hotel - ah, I haven't told you that we are not staying in the hotel where we made reservations, they gave us a key from a hotel which is across the channel, because they have a "problem", but it's ok, it's a room with 4 beds and we stay only the 2 of us, looks pretty well, the furniture is a bit old and we have a view to one of the million channels of A'dam. perfect :) Too bad is raining, i would stay with the chair on the balcony to watch the channel.

They have houses on this channels, meaning some floating barracks used as a residence. some of them really look good, one had the curtain open so we could see all of his house :)

Tomorrow will take another tour of A'dam then we'll go to R'dam to see the biggest harbour of Europe, then we go to Bruges and we stay for the night at Jan's place in Gent.

Berlin - Hannover

We've started early today, we agreed to meet Rafa and Adi at 10:30am at East Side Galleries (graffiti on the Berlin's Wall - what's left of it). We've checked out, and went to the meating place. There we've seen a lot of graffiti, some of them real masterpiece, along the wall that measures about 1.2km.

Then we've folowed the plan and went to see Gedaechtniskirche, a church in ruins (intentionally left like this) between only new buildings.

We left to Hannover where we've met Sybille and Jan and will remain at their place for the night. They are very nice and have a very educated dog. We've went out to dinner at a greek restaurant where we ate very well for 32eur in total, but we've tried everything :) Then we walked on the lake's shore and saw the old town hall, that the legend says it was built in a swamp on top of 8000 oak trees. All the city looks like it is built in a forest (i believe it really is), full of trees everywhere, like all the buildings are the house of Red Riding Hood's grandmother :)

Today i have to stop here, it's very late and we will wake up early - our hosts have to work tomorrow and we will go to Amsterdam where you never have enough time to visit everything. I'm sorry for the lack of activity on the blog these days, in Germany is a bit harder with the internet. It's good that I had the time to write :)

Berlin

Today it should’ve been a relaxing day, a walking day. Lol, what a nice joke. Yes, relaxing, yes, walking, but …

We woke up late, so we left only around 10:30 from the hotel. We took a bottle with aprox. 0.7l of juice, which of course was not enough, and 0.5l of any liquid in Berlin’s center started from 2eur. We won’t make this mistake again. We took a very fast tram to Alexander Strasse where we started. Although we’ve planned a lot with what to go where, when we arrived in the center everything was there. One after another we’ve seen them all. We found a very good map on the one and only turistic info office – very poor prepared – and then it was very easy. We’ve finished all center in a day, but we’ve walked about 20-25km. My legs hurt, but we are please with the achievements for today.

We ate “on hand” the local speciality – currywurst and bratwurst. Nothing spectacular, but with 5eur we both ate so: no complains. Tomorrow there is a special offer in the hotel, 6 euro for lunch so maybe we will eat it here.

Berlin is a big and beautiful city and a little disturbed in this period by all kind of constructions/renovations. But we’ve seen a lot, we’ve made a lot of pictures, so it did worth visiting it. Who wants to come to Berlin should contact us, we have a lot of useful advices :) We still have some objectives to see tomorrow, but we want to leave after lunch anyway.

We’ll go now to a Mac to eat an icecream and mostly to get a free wi-fi internet. We didn’t carry the notebook with us when we went walking, and our phones don’t know wi-fi. I hope that they have it in MacDonald’s because if not … we’ll have to leave it for tomorrow/Tuesday.

The plan for tomorrow: - in the morning we’ll visit graffiti galleries of the Berlin’s Wall (East Side Gallery), we eat, we go to see Gedaechtniskirche and then we leave for Hannover where we meet Sybille and remain at her place for the night.

After MacDonald’s edit: the internet there is the same as here (in hotel), only with Deutche Telekom hot spot, so thanks but no thanks. Too expensive. It’s strange, because in Romania at MacDonald’s there is free wi-fi, also in France (even in Paris). In Romania we have it free in squares and commercial centers, here there is no free wi-fi.

Bratislava - Berlin

What a relief. We’ve done the most difficult part of the trip. We’ve arrived around 8:30 local time in Berlin, after ~ 1300km in 28h. We’ve finished the reckless driving, we’ve done 20% of the trip in 10% of the holiday. From now on, till the last day we’ll have only small driving days.

Now let’s sum up what we’ve done today:

- we woke up pretty late, considering that we went to sleep late in the night. We left Bratislava at 10:30 local time (from now on, when I say time I mean CET) and set the GPS for Dresden, downtown.

- we arrived at the destination at approx. 4:30 pm. Once we parked the car (0.5 EUR/20min.) it didn’t seem like there would be much to see in Dresden. We’ve bought 40min and we went out in the center to see what is to be seen. I was surprised to find that one has really a lot to see in Dresden. It’s outstanding. We’ve returned and took some more (2eur = 80min) because there’s a lot to see. We will put some pictures also, unfortunately to few. It happened what is always happening: the batteries were exhausted. I cannot explain how, but it happened (2 sets, do not think that we were unprepared :D). Also there was a powerful wind blowing on the Elbe’s shore that almost took us flying, luckily we took a brick in the pockets, otherwise we would've been in danger :p

- at 6:30pm we’ve left Dresden, very happy with what we’ve seen there.

- 2h later we’ve arrived in Berlin and we’ve checked in at Hotel Grand City Berlin East (Holiday Inn chain) where for 37.6EUR/double room/night we’ve got a very nice room at 12th floor. Unfortunately we don’t have internet in the room except if we pay 13EUR/day, so we refused. We’ll find tomorrow a McDonald’s with free wi-fi to put the articles online.

Till now we’ve noticed: gas is very expensive, i was expected in Germany to be cheaper (it begins with 1.37EUR/l), and I thought in Bratislava was expensive (1.230EUR/l). In supermarket almost everything is cheaper that home. Meaning water is 0.19EUR/1.5l, apple juice 0.6eUR/1.5l and probably others.

Fuel consumption is 7.9l/100km for now, probably because Friday we’ve used AC non-stop and today we’ve went with a 170km/h average on the wonderful german highways. I think that next days it will decrease a bit considering I’ll drive less and more relaxed.

In Berlin it’s pretty cold now, we’ve went out for a walk it was a bit cold. Also a strong wind is blowing. Still, it’s good that we don’t have 40°C

Tomorrow – relaxing, walking, not driving anymore, not staying glued to the chair anymore :D

So we started

A hard day, a full day. Initial plan:

- 3:30 pm - leave the office

- 4pm - start the trip

In fact:

- office till 4pm, run to the Renault showroom for the impowerment from the leasing company, to be able to get out of the country, fuel.

- 4:30pm - i'm home finally. take a short shower, verify the luggage, everything is there =>

- 5:30pm - start the tour.

The driving was good, with no bad events. 150km/h on the highway (and i thought i can drive within the legal limit = 130), slowing when the locals slowed (probably before the cameras). Unfortunatelly, the GPS didn't know that the hungarians are started the highway to Nadlac, so we lost about half an hour with a small detour.

Then I clicked on the GPS's map by mistake and we've got a 50km prolongation of the route, luckily we observed it in time, after passing our destination, that became "checkpoint" in the meanwhile

In the end, everything was ok, we arrived in Bratislava, at Rafa and Adi's place (by the way: thanks for hosting us) at about 11:30pm Romania's hour, 10:30pm local hour. But, what do you know ... a storm starts so quickly that we cannot take the luggage out of the car. We managed to do it after more then one hour with the price of a short shower.

We have no pictures today, and probably we won't have too many tomorrow as well.

Tomorrow's plan:

9-10am - leave for Berlin via Brno, Praga, Dresda - 700km - i think about 7 hours with a safety delay. We want to see Dresda for 3-4 hours, so we can arrive in Berlin in the evening, around 8-9pm. I hope tomorrow's plan we'll go better.

Test

Welcome!

This summer I plan a "walk" through Europe, considering that we have a new car now. Probably we should've started with a tour of Romania, but, as usual, what's close we leave for "some other time" (some other time = ->oo).
Due to the lack of time, the "walk" will only include a part of Europe: Germany - the Netherlands - Belgium - Luxembourg - France - Switzerland - going speedy through Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria. We hope to visit the last countries in weekends or in one-week holidays, because they are closer to us (max. 1 day driving) and more accessible. Maybe some other time we will do the South also, for the moment we only consider the "by plane" version for it. We'll see, depends on how much we will like it this time.

Furthermore, if we want to go on such a long trip (about 5200km at a first glance), I thought about joining the trend, meaning: to keep a blog. I was against this idea (maybe i'm too conservative), but in this case, I think this blog will be useful both for me and for my family/friends.

In fact, what do I want this blog to be? I will have my notebook with me, so every evening, before going to sleep, I would like to write the daily history, thoughts, opinions and to put some representative photos. In this way, we will have and you will have our feelings, thoughts, impressions on the fly, as they are being created. You will be able to see almost in real time what we are doing, where we are, how we feel, what problems we come across and how we are following the schedule. On the other hand, we will be able to relive our memories easier, to compare what we remember after some years with what we felt when we lived the events. I would like to make an English version for my friends that don't understand Eminescu's language (biggest Romanian poet), but I have to understand first how does this thing function, technically (l.e. i've found something, although i'm not yet completely satisfied with the result), and then i'll perform the optimizations.