Baltic trip (2): Klaipeda and Curonian Spit

It was raining on the way to Klaipeda, but it was perfectly sunny when we arrived there at around 14:30 (it was 4-hr trip from Vilnius) :-). Klaipeda is the third largest city in Lithuania, a port city located in the western part of Lithuania, so that was our first encounter with the Baltic sea in this trip. The main reason for visiting this city is because it is the gateway to reach Curonian Spit. Curonian Spit national park (as you can read on the link) hosts some of the most beautiful sand dunes in the world and is recognized as a World Heritage Site of Unesco since 2000. The Spit itself is divided almost equally by Russia's Kaliningrad region in the south and Lithuania's national park in the north.

As usual, we dropped by to the local Tourist Information to get some advices. There were not so many things to see in Klaipeda, though I was impressed by quite a lot of Fachwerkhauser (German half-timber house) in this city. Historically the city was a Prussian city of Memel, so no wonder there are quite a lot of German buildings and also German tourists :-P. We then decided to take a short ferry trip to Smiltyne, the northern part of the Spit which is the closest part to Klaipeda and visited its quiet beach. The funny thing is that I did not realize that they have several kinds of beach there (good that Remko read something about that before). Basically they have beach for woman, man, family, and the nudist one... So we have to be careful to read the sign before entering a beach area :-P

The next day, we took the ferry again to the Spit and since the weather (at that time) was quite good we decided to take bike to Nida from Smiltyne (it is about 50km away). It is possible to rent a bike in Smiltyne and drop it at Nida so we do not have to cycle again to Smiltyne (otherwise..no way hehe). The bike trip was great, though on the way to Juodkrante (half way to Nida) it was raining quite hard....but cycling when raining can also be fun :-) We had a light lunch in Juodkrante (after 25 km and the rain... I need something to eat :-P). The area is famous of its smoked fish which reminds me of bandeng asap (Indonesian smoked fish). I had salat with smoked fish and it was good. We then continued cycling (thanks God it was not raining anymore), passing by the scenic villages of the Spit: Pervalka and Preila with their pretty timber houses.

Finally we reached Nida around 16:30. Nida is nice village and was surprisingly quite crowded with tourists. We visited the 52-m high Parnidis dune (or the Great dune) which is really beautiful. It was nice view from it but the stairs really hurt my legs (well I have not cycled for more than one year and that day I had my 50-km bike trip). After spent some time in Nida we returned back to Smiltyne by bus, it was one hour trip and along the way we met a group of forest pigs (and the bus stopped to let us having some moments with them :-P). We reached Klaipeda around 20:30 and had dinner in Kurpiav, a nice restaurant with jazz live music. It was really a nice day to end our visit in Klaipeda and Lithuania, since the next day we had to leave for Riga, Latvia.

Baltic trip (1): Vilnius

I had my summer holiday (finally!) three weeks ago, this time I had 12-day traveling in some Baltic countries: Lithuania (Vilnius-Klaipeda-Curonian Spit), Latvia (Riga), Estonia (Tallinn-Laheema National Park), and Finland (Helsinki, but well I am not sure whether Finland is included to what so called Baltic countries...but at least it's still in the area :-P). This year I visited some Eastern Europe countries which are just recently included to Schengen agreement (meaning no additional visa needed for me, it is kind of my celebration :-P). I still miss Hungary, Slovakia, and Slovenia though... hopefully I can visit Budapest this year, keep my fingers crossed :-).

Remko, my Dutch friend who is just recently returned back to the Netherlands after working in Indonesia decided to join me for this trip. We started the trip with a flight delay (yeah what a start :-P), but I was so excited with the idea of having 12-day holiday... so I did not really care at that time.. We should have been departed at 08:45 but the flight was delayed to 10:10...quite a long delay actually...I only thought that I could sleep longer :-P

We arrived in Vilnius at 13:30. After getting the free map and advices from the Tourist Information, we walked around the old town. Vilnius has a lot of churches....I mean really a lot... I can not remember the names, only one church that I find a bit different than the others: the St. Anne church which is a bit gothic. That day we had a nice dinner in Balti Drambliai, a cheap vegetarian restaurant in the old town.

The next day, we started early and went directly to the bus station for Trakai. We took bus at 09:15 and arrived in Trakai around 10:00. Trakai is a very nice small town (or village?). It was quite important place around 13th century as the Grand Duke of Lithuania lived in the island castle of Trakai for some time. Before reaching the island castle, we passed through some colorful timber houses a long the main road. Trakai also famous of its Karaite sect people. They are originally from Baghdad and were brought by Grand Duke of Lithuania Vytautas from Crimea in ca. 1400 to serve as bodyguards. There were about 380 Karaite families at that time and now only around 63 remain in Trakai.

The island castle is beautiful, though it's really obvious that they just recently renovated it. We visited the Trakai museum inside the castle and then we visited the ruin of Peninsula castle and had a light Karaite lunch on the way back to the bus station.

We reached Vilnius around 15:00 and visited the Gediminas hill and castle to see the view of the old town from the top of the tower. Our next destination was Uzupis area. It is kind of artist district of Vilnius which in 1998 unnofficially declared the district as a breakaway state called Uzupis republic with their own president, anthem, and 41-point constitution (zoom in my pic below to read a bit of their constitution). During April Fool's day, they even stamp the visitors' passports. We had dinner in Uzupio Kavine just by the river of the Republic's main gate. We left Vilnius the next day for Klaipeda.

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.