Masada

Welcome back!

From Jerusalem we went on an excursion to Masada, an ancient hill fortress by the Dead Sea.

To get to the top you have two options. You can take the cable car or you can walk up. Julius the lazy bugger took the cable car of course.

But I walked up on the so called "Snake Path" like a real man.

The path gains about 300 metres in altitude, and the steps are quite a challenge for a little monkey like me.

I'm starting to regret this, but at least I'll get rewarded with a magnificent view when I get to the top...

Oh, for fuck's sake, the Dead Sea is right there and you can't even see it. Stupid desert haze.

Well, at least there's decent a view on the other side towards the Judaean Desert.

The plateau itself is full of ancient ruins (and some not-so-ancient gazebos).

I got inspired to try and build my own structure.

Here's the result. Quite a palace right?

Well, that's enough for today.
Come back soon, next stop Bethlehem!

Ho ho holy Land

Shalom friends!

Sorry for not bringing you any updates about my life in a long time. I've mainly been at home taking care of Julius and uncle Jevgeni. That's a full-time job, you know...

As a reward for being so good this year Julius decided to go to the Holy Land to see Santa Claus Jesus and also to get some much needed sun. We spent a few days in Jerusalem before continuing to Tel Aviv.

Jerusalem was a very interesting place. We walked around the old town and touched all the holy stuff.

Holy Jewish stuff...

Holy Christian stuff...

Holy Muslim stuff...

And eh... miscellaneous holy stuff...

In fact Julius got so affected by all the holiness that he developed a halo. As if he wasn't annoying enough to look at already...

Come back soon and I'll tell you more about our trip to the Holy Land.

Vallisaari

Hello people!

I'm back, and as you can see Julius and I are enjoying the Finnish summer.

You may remember my posts (here and here) from last year about what to do in Helsinki in the summer. Well, here's another thing you can do: Visit the island of Vallisaari. If you've been to Helsinki you've probably heard of Suomenlinna (Sveaborg). But just in case you haven't: it's a sea fortress located at the entrance to Helsinki harbour and it's so famous that it's become a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Here's a picture:

Anyway, that's enough about Suomenlinna, I'll make another post about that sometime in the future. But for now, back to Vallisaari or Skanslandet as it's know in Swedish. The name roughly translates as Fortification Island, and it's an island located next to Suomenlinna and as the name suggests it once formed part of the defence of Helsinki. In fact it was used by the Finnish Defence Forces until 2012. With the exception of a radar station in operation during the second world war it was only really used for weapons and munitions storage, though. In 2016 it was opened to the public and now you can get there by boat from the Market Square in the centre of Helsinki. Here's me getting on the boat:

And here I am enjoying the ride and the sunshine. The trip takes about 15-20 minutes and costs €10 for a return ticket. The boat stops at Suomenlinna on the way back so you can combine it with a visit to Suomenlinna if you want.

Vallisaari has two things going for it: it's nature and it's views.

Because it was off-limit to the public for a couple of hundred years, nature has been allowed to develop in a way that you won't find anywhere else in the capital region. For example the island is home to several rare species of insects and bats. The flora is interesting too, you can find Russian plants that must come with the fodder the Russian soldiers brought for their horses during the 19th century.

As you can see from the picture above, the island also has lakes. In fact the original name of the island was Träskön (Lake Island), and for hundreds of years it was used by sailors as a place to pick up fresh water.

Overall it's a very green and lush island, so it wasn't hard to find a nice and comfy spot in the shade where we could sit and rest our little legs.

And of course the island is full of old military constructions. I'm not quite sure what these concrete bunker-like things are. Probably some kind of storage buildings.

Because Vallisaari is located between Helsinki and the sea, you get some amazing views of both the city and the sea if you climb up to one the higher points on the islands. But climbing is hard work when you're as small as we are...

It's well worth it though. If you look to the north you can see the entire city centre as well as the Suomenlinna fortress.

And if you look to the south you're looking out over the Gulf of Finland and the islands south of Helsinki.

So, don't forget to bring you binoculars!

In the picture above I'm looking at the island of Santahamina which is still an active army base. I hope I don't get arrested for spying on them...

That'll be all for today, but come back next week and I'll tell you about my trip to Hanko.

Bratislava

Dobrý deň!

From Vienna we took a one-day trip to Bratislava in Slovakia. It's only an hour away by train. In the summer you can do a boat trip down the Danube instead if you want.

On the way to Bratislava

But taking the train was easy and cheap. A return ticket that's also valid for public transport in Bratislava is only €16. And they have trams as part of the public transport network in Bratislava! Trams always make me feel at home.

Bratislava is the largest city in Slovakia but still quite small for a capital city. It has a long and complicated history. In fact the name Bratislava is only a hundred years old. Before that it was called Pressburg and the majority of the population were Germans and Hungarians. For a couple of hundred years it was the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary. After the first world war it became the capital of Slovakia within the newly founded Republic of Czechoslovakia.

“An der schönen, blauen grünen Donau”

Until the second world war it was a multicultural city of Slovaks, Czechs, Germans, Hungarians and Jews. But in various stages during and immediately after the second world war all the minorities were expelled (even the Czechs) so that it's now very much just a Slovak city despite being within walking distance of both Austria and Hungary. Talking of that, did you know that it's the only national capital in the world that borders two other countries?

View from the castle

Most of the city is fairly uninteresting but the old town in the city centre is nice with its winding streets, cafés and restaurants.And of course Bratislava has a castle. It located in the city centre on a hill above the Danube. So you get a pretty good view of the city from there. The castle itself is very... uhm... square... and white.

On the way from castle down to the old town we met this lady. I'm not sure who she was but she seemed nice.

When we got to the old town I needed a rest. Luckily there was a pink bench there waiting for me. I think I need one of these for my home.

They had even equipped the bench with a matching tree with pink paper flowers. I also need one of those.

I'll leave you with that.

Čau!

Museums of Vienna

Hallo Leute!

As promised, here's a post about the museums we visited in Vienna. You already know that we went to see the imperial palaces, but there are many other interesting museums in Vienna.

First we went to the Albertina artmuseum which houses the Batliner collection, a private collection of impressionist and early 20th-century art.

Julius went straight for the Monets.

I'm not interested in blurry old paintings so I had a look around the rest of the museum. They had an exhibition of Niko Pirosmani paintings. If you—like me—have never heard of him he was a Georgian naïve painter. I liked his giraffe. He had apparently heard of giraffes but never actually seen one, so this was the result:

In the basement of the museum I found this guy.

My new goal in life is to eat as many hamburgers as he must have eaten.

From Albertina we went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum. It's an impressive building. This is just a tiny part of the interior decorations.

In 1871 Emperor Franz Joseph I decided to build two museums, the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Natural History Museum, so that the Habsburgs would have somewhere to put all the stuff they had collected over the years.

And my oh my, they really did need the space. The museum has everything. Greek and Roman sculptures... Ancient Egyptian stuff...

Old paintings... lots and lots of old paintings...

Shiny things...

So many shiny things...

And gold, so much gold...

This guy was my favourite:

A bear with a golden rifle! I want one too. A golden rifle that is, not a bear.

Okay, that pretty much covers Vienna. Next stop Bratislava!

Castles of Vienna

Grüß Gott and welcome back!

Let's continue our exploration of Vienna.
Having been the capital of the Austrian Empire and one of the two capitals of the Austro-Hungarian empire Vienna has castles, and fancy ones at that, palaces.

On our first day in Vienna we went to see the Schönbrunn Palace.

It was the summer residence of the Habsburgs, but nowadays it's a museum of course. The palace was built in the 18th century and has 1441 rooms. I can't quite comprehend how you can utilise that many rooms...

When we got there we had to queue up to get tickets. But just because you have ticket doesn't mean you can enter the castle. The ticket has a timestamp on it and you can only enter the castle at that time. In our case we had to wait an hour and forty minutes. In the summer that wouldn't be a problem because you could spend time walking around the extensive gardens. But we were there on Christmas day and the weather was miserable to say the least. It was windy, rainy and almost freezing. So walking around the gardens wasn't an appealing idea. Luckily there was a Christmas market in the court yard, but even generous amounts of glühwein couldn't keep me warm.

We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, so I can't show you what it looks like on the inside, but I did get a picture of this sculpture by the entrance.

The other imperial palace in Vienna is the Hofburg. It was the winter residence of the Habsburgs, but unlike Schönbrunn it is not just a museum, it's also the official residence and workplace of the President of Austria.

Like any good castle it's been extended and remodelled over the years but the core of the castle is from the 13th century. Personally I think it looks more impressive in the dark. Notice the stalls in front of the castle? That's another Christmas market. There were Christmas markets everywhere in Vienna.

Alright, that'll do for today. The next post will be about the museums of Vienna.

Wiederschauen!