2 November, Grand Moltke Hotel, Hamburg,
Germany
Hamburg was never intended to be more than
a stop on the way home to visit the Miniatur- Wunderland, the largest model
railway layout in the world. Somehow we ended up with three days here. There
are apparently many model railway shops in Hamburg!
We arrived from Krakow, via Berlin, about
7:00 pm last night and walked out of the station into a full-on Saturday night
in Hamburg. The area where our hotels are located (we have booked two for
different nights) is right in the middle of the club and pub district. Coming
from sedate Krakow into this madness was a bit of a shock, but we easily found
our hotel and settled in after a long 12 hours on the bus and train.
When we left Krakow it was close to 0C. As
we pulled into Hamburg, it was up to 20C, by far the warmest we have been since
leaving China, seven weeks ago.
We have commented previously on the homogeneous
nature of the populations of the countries we have so far passed through. China
is fairly obviously almost exclusively Chinese, Mongolia was a mix of ethnic
Mongolians and Chinese. Russia and all points west have been, from our
observations, predominantly European. Spotting an African on the streets
anywhere west of the Chinese-Mongolian border is a rare event, as is seeing
anybody from the Middle East or the sub-continent. But walking out of Hamburg
station was like walking into Garden City, Upper Mount Gravatt, 1km from our
home. All that was missing was the Asians, who are not as strongly represented
here as in Australia.
Germany seems to have become a real melting
pot, vastly different from her neighbours to the East and north. Just outside
our window, on a major intersection, is a small tent embassy, set up to support
refugees from Northern Africa. Many African refugees congregate in the area,
but they don't seem to cause any problems. It is obvious though, that while
Germany and other western European nations need to boost their falling
populations, they haven't yet come to grips with how to manage the rapid flow
of people across the porous EU borders.
Escaping Hamburg for the day, we headed off
to Lubeck, a 40 minute train ride north. Lubeck was once the queen of the
medieval Hanseatic League of trading cities. It has retained some of its
medieval flavour, but, following WWII, it has been significantly rebuilt. This
time the blame doesn't lie with the Germans or the Russians, but with the
British.
Renovated though it may be, Lubeck still
has a great feel. On this warm Autumn day, the streets were packed, the
restaurants full and the mood festive. Back in Hamburg, it was much the same,
though far more hectic. Constant car horns blare out in the traffic - not a
very Germanic response from our previous experiences here. Could it be evidence
of the change in Germany's ethnic make up? Interestingly, our observations are
that the cultural diversity in Hamburg is not all that different from most
cities in Australia, but the way it is impacting German society is far more
dramatic, possibly because Australia has historically been a nation of
immigrants and for Germany and for many other EU nations this is a relatively
new development.
3 November, Hamburg, Germany
Many reading this blog may think that our
journey more than halfway around the world, overland, was just another of our
crazy adventures. Not so. It was a carefully crafted plan to get to where we
went today. Miniatur-Wunderland, the largest model railway layout in the world!
Whether a model train lover or not, we defy
anybody to visit this spectacular attraction and not be impressed. Some
statistics might help explain the scale of this display. The whole thing covers
1,300 sq metres, there are almost 1000 operating locomotives, hauling more that
14,000 wagons, over 20 kms of track. There are 500,000 lights, 250,000 miniature
people and the whole thing is operated by 50 computers and a team of young
geeks who obviously would pay to work here.
To describe the individual areas would take
days. So here is a brief description of just one of the 8 areas of the show.
A Swedish harbour has been recreated with
every detail imaginable. There are ships in dry dock with welders working,
fully operating locks, scale ships that navigate through the port, trucks coming
and going at the cargo terminal, trains running along the waterside and wait
for it... it is all done in actual water and it is tidal!
The latest addition, the Airport, features
aircraft that actually take off and land. It has to be seen to be believed.
The rest of the day we went model shopping
at a couple of Hamburg hobby shops.
Oh and we saw yet another church and the
very tame Hamburg Red Light district.
9 November, Home, Brisbane, Australia
The large gap between this and the previous
post can be best explained as “travel time”.
Leaving Hamburg on the last leg of our long
journey from Xian, China, we ended as we began, over seven weeks ago, on a High
Speed train, this time bound for Amsterdam for our flight home.
While planning this trip we were extremely
concerned that something might go horribly astray and throw our carefully
crafted itinerary into chaos, but as we walked out of Schiphol Airport to catch
the hotel shuttle bus to an airport hotel for our last night, the final piece
fell neatly in place as the Best Western shuttle cruised to a stop just as we
reached the bus platform.
It had been a long day with two connections
to make to get us to Schiphol. Our flight wasn’t until the next morning, but we
had travelled to the airport to avail ourselves of the free transport to our
hotel.
The tragic events that befell Malaysian
Airlines just prior to our departure from Australia saw us accepting that airline’s
offer of free cancellation and opting for a Singapore Airlines flight which
meant that we had to add a quick flight back to Kuala Lumpur to pick up our
AirAsiaX flight home. A five hour break in the airport hotel at KL
International 2, the extremely flash renovated terminal that has replaced the
cattle sheds that made up Kuala Lumpur’s old Low Cost Carrier Terminal, gave us
just enough sleep to see us through.
Goal achieved. Xian to Amsterdam, Overland.
Just for the record and as a guide for
others who might wish to plan a similar adventure, here is a full list of the
legs of our trip.
AUSTRALIA
Brisbane to Guangzhou (Plane)
CHINA
Guangzhou to Xian
(Plane )- Xian to Beijing (High Speed Train) - Beijing to Mongolian border
(Trans-Mongolian Railway)
MONGOLIA
Mongolian border
to Ulaanbaatar (Trans Mongolian Railway) – Ulaanbaatar to Ger Camp
(Private Car and driver) – Ger Camp to Ulaanbaatar (Private Car and Driver)
- Ulaanbaatar to Russian border (Trans Mongolian Railway)
RUSSIA
Russian border to
Irkutsk (Trans-Siberian Railway) – Irkutsk to Listvyanka/Lake Baikal
(Private Car) – Listvyanka/Lake Baikal to Irkutsk (Private
Car) – Irkutsk to Moscow (Trans-Siberian Railway) -
Moscow to St Petersburg (Sapsan High Speed train) - St Petersburg to Helsinki
(Allegro High Speed Train)
FINLAND
Helsinki to
Tallinn (Tallinn-Link Ferry)
ESTONIA
Tallinn to Tartu
(Regional Train) - Tartu to Valga (Regional Train) - Valga to Strenci (Local
Bus)
LATVIA
Strenci to Riga
(Regional Train) - Riga to Vilnius (International Bus)
LITHUIANA
Vilnius to
Bialystok (PL) (International Bus)
POLAND
Bialystok to Malkinia
(Regional Train) - Malkinia to Warsaw Central (Regional Bus) - Warsaw to
Krakow(Regional Train) - Krakow to Berlin (D) (International Bus)
GERMANY
Berlin to Hamburg
(ICE High Speed Train) - Hamburg to Osnabruck (ICE High Speed Train) -
Osnabruck to Amsterdam Centraal (NL) (IC Regional Train)
HOLLAND
Amsterdam Centraal
to Schiphol Airport (Local Train) - Amsterdam to Singapore (Plane)
SINGAPORE/MALAYSIA
Singapore to Kuala
Lumpur (Plane) - Kuala Lumpur to Gold Coast (Plane)
AUSTRALIA
Gold Coast to
Brisbane (Hire Car)
Trip Review
Xian to Amsterdam, Overland is best described as an “experience” rather than a journey or a holiday.
Xian to Amsterdam, Overland is best described as an “experience” rather than a journey or a holiday.
First off, one simple question should be
answered. Would we do it again?
Absolutely not!
Not because it wasn’t fantastic, but
because it really only can be done once. To do it again wouldn’t be any sort of
challenge at all. Not only that, what we have learned would make doing the same
thing again no challenge at all, so not worth doing!
We have never been fans of organized tours
but, in planning this trip, we came to believe that we had to forget our
prejudices and at least go half way and do a so called “Independent Tour”. What
convinced us that such a course was necessary was information from travel
agents and some reviews on the web that indicated that organizing visas for
Russia and travel within Russia was all but impossible. In a word,
“fiddlefaddle!” The more we saw of how things worked in Russia, the more
certain we were that travel agents were engaging in scare campaigns to ensure
control of the market and continue to gouge travellers by imposing outrageous
mark-ups and fees.
Russian visas can be organized online. It
is not a simple process, but it can be done. Travel within Russia is no more
difficult than anywhere else, once you get the hang of it. Movement from city
to city is unrestricted, booking hotels can be done online just as in any other
country. There are hotel registration processes, but these are managed by the
hotels, again, just as they are in many other places. We organized some parts
of our trip through Russia ourselves and had no problems at all.
We may have been lucky, but horror stories
of intimidation of Western travellers by Russian Immigration and Customs
Officers and Russian Police, simply didn’t eventuate. Officials at the borders
were universally efficient and polite. Russian Police were far more interested
in the locals than us.
The other scare tactic employed by agents
is the problems of travelling in both Russia and China where English is not
widely spoken. Again,“fiddlefaddle!” With the exception of a small guesthouse
at Lake Baikal, every hotel we stayed in had English-speaking staff and in any
event, not speaking the local language has never caused us a problem.
It is virtually impossible to comment in detail
on the many things we saw and experienced on such a long trip, so a few broad
observations will have to suffice. Starting in China was great for us as we had
been there before and were well prepared for the crowds and the very different
“Chinese way” of doing things.
Definitely the standout in terms of
cultural difference for us was Mongolia. Rapid development in the capital,
Ulaanbaatar, is changing the whole country as nomadic herders move off the land
and flood to the city in search of work. What they are leaving behind is a hard
life in an extremely harsh environment. What is being lost is an ancient
culture, the roots of which still exist in the thousands of family camps
scattered across the vast treeless plains of Mongolia. Surprising to us was
that the nomadic herders are, in fact, much better off than it may seem. Life
is simple, but adapting modern technologies such as solar power and mobile
phones into their nomadic life-style makes it easier to deal with the
environment. The fact that they pay no tax, land is free, basic education is
free and the Government insures their herds also helps.
Tensions between Russia and the West have
been mounting over the past year as a result of conflict between Russia and
Ukraine. Russian media is, as might be expected, very critical of the West,
especially the USA. Unsurprisingly, Russians see their place in the world
rather differently from those in the West. They seem to be looking to regain
the status they had in Soviet times, although they are well aware of the
negative aspects of those years. We were struck by the openness of society, the
wealth in the west of the country, in particular Moscow and St Petersburg, and
the underdevelopment of most of what lies east of the Ural Mountains. And,
obviously, the vastness of the country.
Finland and the Baltic States of Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania were all new territory for us. Our stay in Finland was
extremely short, but to us it felt much like its Scandinavian neighbours. We
were enthralled and saddened by the difficult history of the Baltic States, but
heartened by the success of their struggle to rise above their past and assert
their independence.
Our final legs through Poland and Germany
covered old ground and things were much as we had experienced previously,
except perhaps for the rapid development of Poland since it joined the EU.