Two Travel Days

The Tour Director's aim was to get the group from Amsterdam to Prague as quickly as possible. This would occur over two days with tonight's stop being at Warzburg. Driver laws for bus drivers in Europe are very strict. A driver must have a 45 minute break for every 4 hours of driving. There must be a 9 hour break from last thing at night to first start up the next day. If we are late in getting back from an after dinner function, eg 11 pm, the bus could not leave the next day until 8 am. Because we were covering large distances (up to 600k's per day) we needed early starts. Often evening activities would begin early to ensure the bus was back by 9:30 pm to ensure the driver had his 9 hours and to get an early start! Today's first stop was Cologne for a couple of hours.

The main feature of Cologne is the cathedral. Most cathedrals are made from sandstone so they can't be cleaned with a pressure hose. They have to be hand cleaned. This is expensive and time consuming. Cologne was heavily bombed during WWII in retaliation for the bombing of English cities. The cathedral is the only building in Cologne which escaped the bombing, either a miracle or an example of precision bombing as this photo shows!

We had bread rolls for our lunch. Bread rolls in this part of the world are just so varied and so tasty!

We boarded the bus and headed further into Germany. The countryside here is very attractive and busy small towns and cities are found everywhere. The road system is fantastic and there is hardly any holdup. Credit for the German road system all goes to Adolph Hitler! It was he who had these great roads built. Here is a pretty small German town.

Shortly after we arrived to catch a boat for a Rhine River cruise. We all boarded and the boat headed off up the river to where we would meet the bus again (and thus provide the driver with another 45 minute stop!) Along either bank of the river were more small towns with 'typical' German buildings. One great building was a Pub at the front and a church at the back. This is one way of getting people to church I suppose.

People in Europe have been killing each other for over two thousand years. The Rhine River has always been important for the transport of materials and goods throughout Europe. To make some money from all this river traffic, local lords built castles overlooking the river then stretched a big chain across the river stopping any traffic passing by until the appropriate 'toll' had been paid! There must have been another castle every two or three kilometres along the river like this one. In one spot you could see three castles, one just behind us, another behind a couple of kilometres on the opposite bank and a third up ahead of us just visible around a river bend!

Not only is there an abundance of cargo vessels using this mighty river, there are also numerous tourist vessels as well. The one in this photo is an overnight tourist boat with plenty of creature comforts available to all passengers. As we sailed along we had quite a long chat with a young lass and her mother from USA who was touring Europe after she had just finished senior high school.

We were back on our bus again hewing up the kilometres heading to Warzburg. We arrived about 6 pm covering the 600k's! Many of the group headed into town to see this bridge. I headed straight for the beer garden across the road where it was happy hour! I couldn't have timed it better!


We were on our way early next morning heading towards Prague. Last night was the last of our single night stopovers, from here on it was two night stops. It was about 30 degrees. We stopped in Nuremberg for the mandatory driver refresher and spent time having a quick look round. Most of Nuremberg streets have become only for pedestrians. The city is very clean and modern and again we bought scrumptious bread rolls for our lunch!

Again we pushed on heading towards Prague and we stopped for lunch on the Czech border. Though the Czech Republic is a member of the European Common Market we had to change our money in kroner! We arrived in a hot Prague mid afternoon. Trish and I found a bar over the road and despite a bit of a language problem we soon had a wine and a beer. Half a litre of beer cost about AUD$2.30.

After tea we went into the city of Prague by metro and had a superb walk around in the evening air. On the Charles Bridge were stalls, people singing, art shows and the evening was wonderful. We found an outdoor restaurant and enjoyed a cold beer while the ladies had a mixed drink under starry skies. It was a highlight of our trip away! Eventually we found the metro station and returned to the hotel for a good night's rest!