Leaving to Italy Tonight

At Vienna now. Leaving to Venice tonight. Haven't updated after Berlin.

We left Berlin for a night at Rothenberg - a well kept medieval town famous along the Romantic road. It was nice and delivers a sense of tranquility. Nothing really special happened, but the atmosphere was really enjoyable. Starting from there, I have been consuming ice-cream, or ice-creamS, daily. "Eis" here, are exceptionally cheap compared to HK (and US if my memory doesn't fail me)

Then we went to Fuessen. There we met a vast group of Chinese at the Youth hostel. It was a Chinese School held at munich. They were then having the end-of-semester summer camp. It was much like the Chinese School held at CCC&C, just not by Church nor for ABC (G.BC rather). We met a "Mrs. Wong" of the group. She was really nice and gave us food supplies far more than what we had had since the first day at London - namely: Sausages (bunches), Bread (2 big bags), Apples (6), Oranges (2), ChineseDumplings[for the DunUm Festival] (3), Roasted Meat(3 pieces), Pudding (uncountable)...... And the most important is that she spoke German for us, who are far worse than novice in the language. It was on of the first times that I had a "full" feeling at my stomach since our trip started. We also had a nice excursion to the NeuSchweinstein near the hostel. Cool hiking...

So then we left for Salzburg, where we visited the HohenSalzburg castle, the medieval shopping steets... We spent the last day visiting a Ice Cave 50 minutes train ride from Salzburg city - another exhausting hike which ascended us to ~1775 m above sea level - surely with cable car. It gave us a good escape from the routine Gothic, Barouque and Romaniques architecture and monuments.

Then here we are at Vienna - the capital of European music. We had a concert last night which seems to be held for tourist specifically. The Imperial Orchestra, jointly formed by the WienPhil and WienSymphonic, had a strong character. The players on stage deliver a good sense of humour and show a special charisma of their own. Passionate perfomaners and an enjoyable show we have had.
Here I recap the memory 10 years ago - revisiting the Shonbrunne Palace, the Chinese resaurant where we had dinner a decade ago, the City Park where we had a decent meal and Waltz shows. Time flew by unformidably.

So, here it is. Time to logoff and go for another city walk. Update later!

PS: And, please fill out a PostCard request form with your address if like^^ -- LangLang, waiting for your address ar.

At Berlin now!!

Woke up at 3AM in the morning (slept at 1230 thou), we took the coach to Stansted and fly to Berlin - here we are, in this historical, marked and serious German capital. This is really not an English speaking place - for except at the airport, I needa ask with my remaining primitive German if they speak English. Most comes out negative, pathetically.

It's quite a hassle without a well-equipped communicable language - hard to ask around on the road (met a police at a big train Bahnhof who can only talk in German, which I could hardly understand) Should have tried brushing up the language before departure. Dinner is another scenerio. No one in the restaurant speaks English:
(In German...)
'Can you speak English?'
'No'
'I cannot speak German'
'You are speaking German'
'Only this a little, but I can speak English'
'Ya. But I cannot speak English'
....
so, what a funny dinner.

Had a decent meal with Ada in London last night. This made me having to part with Louis and Wing at dinner time. But it has been a good time. Really haven't had a chance to chat together since childhood - and after these some years, quite a lot to update:) That's a nice time meeting at London.