The castles along the Rhine

I have mentioned on my previous post that my fave train trip in Germany is along the Rhine river from Mainz to Koblenz... I passed the area several times and always wonder if I could visit some of the castles there. There are lots of castles on the valley and I didn't have any idea how to reach it.

Well, someone apparently helped me to realize it. Thanks to Chris, my VT friend! We talked about it from quite a long time ago and initially we planned to join a boat trip to do the castles hopping. We just talked about the plan again on Thursday and Chris offered me to do it on Saturday by car (and he's so well prepared for the trip...:-)).. We met each other in Bonn Hbf at 9am (quite an achievement on Saturday morning). We drove directly to Bingen, got a glimpse of our first castle of the day: Burg Klopp there. Then we took a ferry to cross the river to Rudesheim, starting our castle journey that day. Our plan (well actually it's Chris' plan :-P) was to visit the ruin of Burg Ehrenfels , we stopped in a very scenic village called Assmanshausen, which is also a starting point for the people who want to go to Niederwald denkmal. It turns out that it's still quite a long way to reach the ruin and considering it was our first destination and it was only ruin, we decided to skip it and continue our journey. We also took some pics of Maeuseturm (mouse tower) on the middle of the river.

Our next stops were some spots to see and take a picture of some castles on the other side of the Rhine: Burg Rheinstein, Burg Reichenstein, Burg Sooneck, Burg Fuerstenberg, and Burg Stahleck, close to the town of Bacharach. The ruin of Nollig castle on our side was the next object of our camera. Yes, we stopped by like every 5 minutes drive, because the castles are everywhere. Great that I have a good driver who did not mind even to return to the missed-spot-for-a-good-pic on such a narrow street along the Rhine :-P

Pfalzgrafenstein castle, a former custom tower on the middle of the river was our next object. Then we stopped for Gutenfels castle after finding a parking space right in front of the way to the castle. We climbed a bit to reach it and found the castle was closed (it was used as hotel before, but apparently it was just recently sold). The scenery from outside the castle was beautiful and we (well Chris actually...I only followed him :-P) just walked around to find a good spot to take a good pic of the castle. We met a friendly woman who was visiting the vineyard around the castle and got some info from her about the castle (some insider info..). We then climbed down and had a glimpse of Kaub, a village on the foot of Gutenfels castle.

Our next stop was for Schoenburg castle across the river, close to the town of Oberwesel. Then we passed through the famous Loreley and Loreley statue. We took some pics of Burg Katz along the way (we could not visit it since it is privately owned by a Japanese), we dropped by at Dreiburgenblick to get a good spot to take some pics (what's else :-P) of Burg Katz, Burg Rheinfels, Burg Maus.

We visited Burg Maus and planned to have some drinks there, but it was only opened for Eagle and Falcon show at that time (and we're a bit late actually). We joined the one-hour show and it was interesting to see the eagle, falcon and owl... After the show and took some pics of the castle (it's a pity we could not go around the castle), we climbed down to the parking lot (they said it took 20 mins to reach the castle from the parking space, but I think we managed to do it less than that...which was quite an achievement for me hehehe..).

The next destination was the two castles Burg Liebenstein and Burg Sterrenberg which are famous as the hostile brothers' castle. The two castles is divided by the so-called hostility wall, legend says that the two brothers killed each other in the nearby church. Burg Liebenstein is a hotel and a cafe..just wondering must be nice to stay there...:-P We had a drink, then returned back to Burg Sterrenberg where we parked the car and had a lunch/dinner there. The food was delicious and it was really warm when we were there (it started to be very warm in Gutenfels when we had the bird show, someone got quite bad sun burn out of it, sorry Chris, seemed that I brought too much sunshine that day). The view from the terasse and tower of Burg Sterrenberg was very beautiful.

It was around 6pm when we had our lunch/dinner and we still had several castles to go...:-P We passed through Boppard on the other side of the river. It really looks like a beautiful town..
We stopped to take some pics of Marktsburg (and got a perfect blue sky as a background). We visited Burg Lahneck which was closed already but we did not give up on taking some pics. Strangely the castle had a red-white flag on top of it which made me imagining if someone from Indonesia owned it (or a new Indonesian embassy) hehehe... Our last castle was Stolzenfels across the Rhine river..

To sum up...we did 20 castles in one day, it was around 350 kms round trip from Bonn and when Chris dropped me at Bonn Hbf again, it was almost 9pm already, so we spent almost 12 hours for our castles hopping ...:-)

More pics on http://dhina.shutterfly.com?a=1

Japan-Tag in Duesseldorf

I will not tell a long story on it. It was several weeks ago already (14th of June 2008), see this link for further info http://www.japantag-duesseldorf-nrw.de/index.php?id=305&L=1

Ole came over for the festival eventhough the forecast predicted rain during that day :-). We started the day with a lunch in Mosch-Mosch. Then we walked to the Burgplatz where the stage was located. An interesting Japanese music group opened the performance (forgot the name of the group :-P) then some kindergarten kids presented their performance...very cute...after that, the rain started to pour... heavy rain with wind ...

We waited for quite some time till they could continue the performance. There were also some exhibition stands too along the Rhine....we joined a session on Papierflieger (making plane with paper) and I also joined an Origami session...which was fun..

The main highlight for that day was ...the pop-culture style kids....very impressive :-P I saw some kids wearing that kind of style before in Duesseldorf Hbf....dressing like manga character...quite a big effort sometimes, but did not realize it has something to do with Japan (manga).

Windsor - London trip, June 2008

No, that pic is not the famous Windsor castle :-P In fact I could not manage to get there during my two-day stay in Windsor, England. I had a team building activity with the Product-Development group in our company... We had a great program, though we, from Duesseldorf, had to be at the airport around 6am to fly to London Heathrow. We arrived at the Oakley Court, our hotel in Windsor at 9am and was totally excited with that awesome hotel...that's the pic of the hotel from the backyard, btw... It has a huge garden and in the backyard, there's Thames river flowing...

Our first activity was karting, not my fave one to be honest. At first they planned to have a dragon boat racing at Thames for us, but due to rainy days several days before (at that time we had a perfect weather, sunny and warm which was quite special in England :-)), there was a warning announcement to have any activity on the river. (Wie schade!). Seriously I prefer to have something on the water than karting, I don't like racing or driving (which is a bit strange considering my driving experience, i.e. Bandung-Malang or the most recent one Malang-Denpasar). But the karting event was okay finally, it was my first time and to me it's a bit scary (especially because Arpad told me before that one of his previous colleague broke her ribs because someone hit her during the race) but in the end I could enjoy it...a bit :-P.

After lunch, we went to London, was so excited that we stopped in Soho area which was one of my fave area in London. Our second activity was to get a cocktail recipe in some bars around Soho and to demonstrate how to make it in front all of us. It was cool, and my group even got a crazy idea to kidnap a bartender to present "Manhattan" recipe (with the budget that was given to us, 30 Pounds). It was quite a nice walk to find some bars on the list that was given.. it's a pity that I could not drop by at some interesting shops (or should I say.. I was lucky hehe).

The cocktail presentations was okay, funny ones :-), we had dinner after that and then had some free time for about 1.5 hrs before returned to Windsor at 10pm. We used the free time to stroll around the area to find Tesco hehe... Daniela and I wanted to buy some choco-caramel shortbreads... we passed through the Chinatown on our way back.

The next day was more serious activity, some speeches and group discussions and presentations. But it was not that bad as I imagined before. I got to know some other colleagues from Harpenden (besides the BA group for sure), Oslo, and Warsaw. There were almost 50 people joined the event. It was indeed a nice experience..though I wish I could spend more time at that hotel and to visit the Windsor castle or Eton college or Legoland... think I should go back there again :-P.

Karlsruhe VT Meeting 2008

I joined VT (see my page at http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/a040a/) three years ago because I needed to get some info for my traveling. I lived in Eindhoven at that time and I saw there was a VT meeting in nearby Maastricht. I decided to join the meeting and did not regret my decision. It was quite a big meeting of about 40 people and I met really nice friends from the Netherlands Belgium, and German. After that I was invited to several small meetings in Eindhoven and Antwerp. I have to admit that I am not that active to join the meetings or to build my travel pages, but I had several best friends whom I kept contact almost every day. We shared the same addiction to travel, it's just nice to share our travel experience and to get some travel tips from someone who have visited or even from someone who lives at the place where we want to go. For me, a nomadic person for the last five years, it's even better. For example, when I moved to Duesseldorf, I had a friend already in this area and he invited me to join the VT group in NRW.
Last weekend, we had a EuroVT meeting in Karlsruhe. It was my first time to join the EuroVT meeting (it was the biggest VT meeting so far with 139 people) and I was so excited to meet some friends that I have met before. There were five-day program of the event, but I decided to only join the weekend session. I took train to Karlsruhe, around 4-hour trip from Duess using IC/ICE train. I arrrived at 9am, dropped my bag at the hotel and joined Karlsruhe walking trip at 10am. I met Sabs and Thomas, my neighbor in Duess, Carin from Eindhoven, Ilse's family from Breda, and Win from Remagen. Karlsruhe is a relaxing city and it has beautiful castle and botanical garden.


I joined the excursion to Ettlingen after lunch. I was not quite sure to join it at the first time, since I did not know anyone who joined it. But the excursion was really nice, had a great time in Ettlingen. Ettlingen is a small pretty town close to Karlsruhe, only a tram ride from the city center (about 30 mins) and I have to admit I got to know some nice friends from this excursion, it was like we knew each other for so long after the excursion :-)

We had a big dinner event in the evening, it was nice event since we had it at the same place where VT was born nine years ago. The restaurant building (it was a brewery actually) is quite impressive. Again, I knew some new people from this dinner.
The next day, I managed to join the brunch session, though I woke up late :-P. My train was at noon, but I still had a nice time to chat with some people, especially with Win who just arrived very late the previous day. Somehow this trip made me realize that I need to explore Germany more...it has been a while since I travel around Germany...

Wroclaw - Krakow trip, May 2008

It was just a sudden idea when I realized we had three bank holidays in May. There's no way I would waste that opportunities (hehehe), especially after checking some flight tickets and I got a good price for flights to ... Poland :-) I traveled solo this time, after quite some time (the last one was Heidelberg trip almost a year ago), mostly because I did not have time to 'promote' my trip and try to find someone to join my trip.

Day 1

It was quite early when I arrived in Wroclaw, after 'not an easy' trip to Dortmund (I almost missed my train...it's only my very strong will to visit Poland that I was able to wake up at 4am that day :-P). I walked around the beautiful market square, took lunch in a vegetarian restaurant (part of my freedom of traveling alone hehe), continued walking to cathedral island, then visited the 360 deg Raklawicka panorama .. I took train to Krakow around 4pm. It was ca. 4-hour trip and I was happy to take it. It gave more opportunity to get a glimpse of Poland...

Day 2
The single room in a youth hostel that I booked was a nice one (not to mention it's cheap!!). I started the day a bit late, exhausted from the previous day trip and also because I wanted to have a relaxing holiday this time. I visited Wawel castle, and was lucky to get the free entry to its State room and Lost Wawel room. Then walked to the famous Krakow's market square (guess what, they just recently opened Hard Rock Cafe in Krakow). After a lunch in another veg resto, I decided that I should manage to get to Wieliczka salt mine before 4pm (to have an English guided tour there). I did not want to join a tour to go there, partly because it's cheaper (backpacker mode on :-)) but also because it's more adventurous to use the local public transport. I found the place where I should get the minibus to Wieliczka, and was lucky to get it soon. The minibus reminded me of the luxurious version from microlet in Indonesia. I did a stupid thing that I chose to sit at the back of the minibus (and also did not realize that Wieliczka is not the end destination of this minibus). To make the story short, I realized that I missed the Wieliczka stop after I saw a sign of Wieliczka with a strike through on it :-P At that time, I thought that I would follow the driver until the end destination and returned with him to Krakow, but I was a bit panic when after half an hour, the minibus passed through small village roads and I could not see other minibus (or car) from the opposite direction. There were only a couple people left, I looked around to find someone who could speak English, and I found the young man sat behind me. Through him, I was able to communicate with the driver who unfortunately forgot me and 'my Wieliczka destination'. It was not so long until finally we reached the end destination (forgot the name of the village) and I followed the driver to return to Krakow. He felt guilty about forgetting me, especially when I told him (I know some survival Polska) I wanted to go back to Krakow, since I knew I missed the 4pm guided tour anw..

Day 3
My first destination of the day was...Wielizcka :-), I was fully prepared from my experience the day before. Everything was smooth... the salt mine was great experience, two-hour walking trip to underground tunnel was okay..it was unbelievable that people put a lot of effort to dig that huge tunnels only to get salt. I returned to Krakow at noon and decided to go to Auschwitz, which is about 1.5 hours from Krakow. Again, I decided to take a local transport which was a very very old bus (see pic). I only managed to visit the museum in Auschwitz since it was quite late when I arrived there. But I was fully aware of it since to be honest, it was not in my top list for 'place to visit'... I have been in a concentration camp before, in Oranienburg, close to Berlin. I know how's the situation, it's a depressing feeling.. But I am glad that I made it to Auschwitz, though I need several days to get rid of what I have seen there... Even when I returned back to Duesseldorf already, I kept on imagining the hall with the victims' pictures on the both sides...
It was sad, scary, depressing, and shocking feeling altogether...

Day 4
My last day in Poland and I planned to have a relaxing day in Krakow. I walked around Kazimierz, a jewish area in Krakow. Then to Wawel castle one more time and spent some time on the market square before saying good bye to Poland. Dzikuje!