Well, I instantly jumped back into the car and drove back to my home. If anyone has been to China before, they know how crazy the traffic is here: Big trucks driving really slow on the overtaking-lane, a whole bunch of beginners blocking two lanes at the same time and everyone too lazy to use their turn signal when changing lanes. Trying to get through all this is nearly impossible, but I had to try.

Once arrived at my home, I jumped out of the car, ran back to my home, up 15 floors, got the backpack, 15 floors back down and right back to the car. Running this much in Germany wouldn’t be a problem, but in Beijing, with the extremely thick air, it’s hard to breathe enough oxygen.

The time shows 13:05 now, only 25 minutes left until check-in ends. I felt my heart pumping more and more adrenaline in my blood. 10 minutes later, traffic jam! I couldn’t believe it! Why now? It’s lunch time, everyone should be sitting somewhere eating, not blocking my way to the airport! I took my phone out and called someone I know at the airport. “Get to the check-in gate for Hainan Airlines and tell them that I’ll be 5 minutes late! Try to check in for me. My passport number is…” – 2 minutes later – “No can do! They need to see your passport first!” – “Okay, get me a spot at the counter so I don’t need to wait!” Luckily, the traffic jam only lasted for a few minutes. At 13:20, the road was empty again. No time for speed limits now! 140km/h, 150km/h, 160km/h… OMG, a huge truck driving only 80km/h just switched from the rightmost lane to the leftmost right in front of me. The brakes squeaked and we stopped 5cm before the truck. Phew…

At 13:35 I finally arrived at the terminal. 5 minutes too late, will they still let me in? I dashed as fast as I can to the counter and showed the lady at the check-in counter my passport. She quickly checked my passport and gave me my boarding pass, which she had already prepared, tagged my luggage as extra urgent and told me to take it to the overweight luggage check-in so they can bring it on the plane real quick. I was so relieved.

I have to admit that didn’t expect that driving next to the river Elbe with the bike would be that beautiful. The have a really well build bike road there right next to the water, where you can enjoy the view to the other side of the river. Our first goal was “Belveder”, a hotel/restaurant on the cliff of the Elbe. Unluckily, the restaurant was on the other side of the river and on top of the cliff, so we had to first cross the river and then climp the cliff. But once we reached the top, the view was really beautiful and the food was really nice. I had the best “Schnitzel” I’ve ever eaten there. It was kind of hard to guess the prices though, as we didn’t have any Czech koruna, the currency of Czech and neither did we know what the exchange rate was, so we actually didn’t know how much the food would cost. I picked the most expensive “Schnitzel” they had and paid around €10. I guess we’re lucky they accepted Euro, but it seems most of there costumers were German.

Hrensko, a picture from our bike tour

The next day, we wanted to go inside the Saxon Switzerland national park to see the Schrammsteine, but unfortunately, it was raining really bad that day. We did climp up, but because of the bad sight, there wasn’t much to see. So the second day ended pretty much with us having completely wet pants climbing up and down. It was really fun though. I definitely need to get waterproof pants for my next trip.

A view from the Schrammsteinaussicht

On the last days, the weather changed completely, again, so we went to the “Schrammsteinaussicht” to finally see the Schrammsteine. Our program for this day is really full now, after not beeing able to do anything the day before. So after enjoying the incredible view for a while, we descended for our next destination, the “Pfaffenstein”. After climping to the top of the Pfaffenstein, we were quite astonished to see a huge restaurant there, right on top of the mountain. It seemed like it is a really well visited mountain there. After we reached the “Baberine”, an emblem of the Saxon Switzerland, we quickly understand why. You really need to go there and see for yourself. It’s simply incredible.

Two targets are now left for that day, the fortress “Festung Königstein” and the “Bastei”. I think I don’t need to describe how beautiful both are. There is one thing on the fortress “Festung Königstein”, the biggest fortress in the mountains of Europe, that really fascinated me. It was their well and the system how they got their water. Over 150m deep and I believe 5m in diameter. It was a little creepy looking down this huge and endless hole. As for the “Bastei”, there is that incredibly famous stone bridge there, the “Bastei Brücke”, connecting “Neurathen” with the “Bastei”.

Looking from Neurathen

After this short trip, we decided that we definitely want to go there again. It is so beautiful there…

We decided to hike around the “Wandlitzer See” the first day, which was pretty nice at the beginning, where there was a promenade. But after 1km, the promenade turned into a normal road and started to drift away from the waterside, which is not exactly what I imagined of a hiking tour around a lake would look like. Anyway, I found a quite interesting sign next to an intersection after walking around half the lake lying on the ground, most probably knocked over by some car, saying “Watch out for children!”. I hope the children are still doing well unlike the sign…

Anyway, later that day, we went to a little wild animal zoo in Schorfheide, north of Wandlitz. Unlike normal zoos, they only have almost extinct animals, like the European wolf. The day we went there, the zoo had a special attraction, a full moon wolf night. At 10 PM, only armed with a flash light, we walked in the dark forest of the zoo. You could hear the howls of the wolves from the distance… What an atmosphere! After reaching the wolf park, the zoo manager held an quite funny and informative talk about the European wolves. Did you know that there is actually no written evidence of a wolf attacking a grown up human, but still the wolves were hunted down like no other animal? Anyway, I managed to shot a picture of a wolf at the night. SuperFlux LED flash lights are pretty powerful, eh? I strongly suggest you go there for such a full moon wolf night. It’s definitely not something you can experience anywhere else. Go take a look at their website.

The next day, we went to the second lake in Wandlitz, the “Liepnitzsee”. It’s one of the most clean lakes in Germany and is completely surrounded by a forest and has a isle in the center. You can swim there in the sommer, or rent a boat like us and paddle around the isle (takes 1-2 hours) and enjoy the landscape, the fresh air and the sunshine. The picture is not the “Liepnitzsee”, but the “Wandlitzer See”. It was so beautiful there that we forgot to take a picture of it…

Our trip ended with a little shopping tour in a little shop called the “Hofladen” in Biesentahl, where they offered fresh vegtables from their own production. They are much cheaper than the ones in the supermarket, but taste a lot better. They don’t only have the vegtables of the season, but also a lot of homemade marmelade in all different kinds. Really great stuff! I’m getting hungry thinking about it…

For more information, check out the German version “Subwoofer für den Lupo“.

Luckily, Amsterdam offers Park and Ride. This is a service which allows you to park outside the city and ride with public transportation to the city. For € 6 a day, we parked at P+R Sloterdijk and even got 2 train tickets to Amsterdam Central Station for free. Remeber not to throw those tickets away. You will need to return them to get the special € 6 price. If you loose them, you will need to pay the normal price of around € 15 a day. From Sloterdijk, it’s only 7 minutes to Amsterdam Central Station. The train ticket costs € 2,20 (for the way back), so it’s much cheaper than parking in the city, especially when all parking spaces are full even with those inhuman prices! Anyway, Amsterdam is a really small city and we could easily go to anywhere interesting by feet. If you are really lazy, you might take the tram, but then you couldn’t take a closer look at the beautiful scenery with all those pretty houses.

So in the end, it wasn’t a too expensive trip even though food was around €12 / meal.

So I did book the flights, but I did not book a hotel in Rome. There were no available rooms online for a reasonable price unlike in the other cities, so we decided to find our self a place to stay on our own there. The room price for a 3-bed-room was around € 80 around the main train station in every city. So on last Friday, we took the plane to Pisa. From the airport, we found a bus taking us to our first sight: The Leaning Tower of Pisa. We took some weird pictures (see above) and went to our first Italian restaurant in Italy. We ate for € 10 each (€6 for the pizza, €2 for the drink and €2 tax), but the taste was horrible. The pizza salame (pepperoni pizza) had 4 pieces of pepperoni and on the pizza mare, there were some empty mussel shells. Well, we didn’t stay long and took the next bus to the train station, where we bought us 3 tickets to Firenze for €5 each. Public transportation seems to be very cheap in Italy. In only 1 hour, we were supposed to reach Firenze. Half way there, the controller came for the tickets. We showed them to him and he started taking Italian to us. We didn’t understand a word what he wanted. After a 5 minute discussion, he started talking about “stamp” and we finally knew what he wanted. The tickets needed to be validated but how are tourists supposed to know that? (All other train tickets we bought did not to be validated by the way) He wanted to fine us € 5 for not validating our tickets, how stupid is that? After another 5 minutes of discussion we gave up and paid the € 5.

After reaching Firenze we went to our hotel “Derby” only 5 minutes away from the station and then started exploring the city. Now I always thought of European cities to be as tidy as German cities, but I guess that was only my imagination. Firenze seemed pretty chaotic. I guess I can’t stand those tight streets. After taking some pictures, we went to get dinner, again for € 10 each. This time, I took Lasagna. Well… top layer was meat all right, but the rest… 9 sheets of noodles with nothing in between. What happened to the good Italian food I was used to in Germany? Anyway, we decided to eat some Chinese food again for the next meal.

Breakfast was included in our room rent so we went to the buffet in the morning. They only had some croissants, no bred, no meat. I ate some muesli and we left to visit the historical science museum in Firenze. It was quite interesting there and they had all those old instruments Galileo used to describe and explain nature. There even was a special exhibition about sun dials which was really interesting too. Afterwards, we went to eat at the Chinese restaurant “Capitale della Cina” next the train station. We ordered 3 dished for € 5 each (which were so small I could have eaten up everything by my own). When we wanted to pay, we were kind of surprised to get bill for € 30. After asking the waiter how this could be, we found out that there is tea fee, rice fee and seat fee. How crazy is that? In Germany, a dish for € 5 would include rice, tea, a soup, dessert and you would have enough to eat. Takethis restaurant for example, where the food even tastes way better. So when you happen to go to Firenze, don’t even bother going to that Chinese restaurant on “Largo F.lli Alinari 12-13″. Later that day, we took the express train to Rome for €33.

After only 1.5 hours, we reached Rome and started searching for a place to stay for the night. Unluckily for us, every hotel was booked out. With every, I really mean every! All the local hotel reservation services only had a sign “sold out” hanging on their doors. After asking directly at a lot of hotels, we gave up and went sight seeing. After a round trip with the “110open” tourist bus, we got back off and started searching for a room again. Somehow, my dad managed to get a room in some Chinese guy’s apartment for €75. I guess it’s an advantage to be Chinese in such cases. I didn’t want to spend the night somewhere in Rome. Unlike in Germany, the train station closes at 1 am and there are no public benches whatsoever to rest in the hole city.

The next day morning, we went to the Vatican church and museum, where I saw the longest waiting line ever. It was around 2km long and 5m wide. I don’t know how many people wanted to get in that museum, but even after getting in, it was nothing else than standing in another line to get out again. Just imagine if all hotels in a tourist city are full, how many people there must be… Afterwards, we went to the Colosseum. Very impressive I have to say. Too bad there are no blueprints of how I looked like when it was still in use.

In the evening, we went to Naples for € 25 via an express train. It was already late, so we went straight to our hotel, a new two star hotel. It was so new that the guy at the reception seemed to be the owner and he hasn’t employed someone who speaks English yet. So first, he tried to tell us that there are no free rooms and after some discussion where neither side understood the other, he finally picked up the word “online”, started smiling, repeated the word “onnlinee!” and gave us our room key. So in the next morning, we went to the volcano Versuv and the buried city Pompeii. Climbing the Versuv was rather unspectacular, but Pompeii was really interesting, seeing how such an old city looks like. The old roads and houses just like in the history books from the third grade… I liked it very much there. After returning to the hotel, we took the plane in the morning back to Germany and successfully finished our Italy trip.

More about our trip can be found on my girlfriends website: Junny’s Homepage

I filmed a little with my N70, so here is the video:

Download this video (Right click, save as)

Along with 3 other drivers, we started a 8 kart race. The other drivers seemed to regular guests of the track, so it was hard to compete against them. I finished third, after 2 of those other drivers. One of them lost against me, making him the forth. Jonas got the 5th place, my girlfriend the 6th, her little sister the 7th and Foxi placed 8th. My average speed on that track was about 35.73 kph or 22.20 mph making my best lap time around 39.29 seconds. At least I kicked one of those regular driver’s ass.