Our Travels

Today was the national holiday in Austria, so we took the opportunity to go to Czechia to stay there from Thursday to Sunday.

We decided to rent a small hut at a camping site near a small lake in Stilec, which is nicely located between some major Czechian tourist locations.

Unfortunately when we arrived at 3pm in the afternoon, we still had to wait another two hours until the office of the camping site opened.

So we had some food at the local restaurant first.

The main course was mixed BBQ meat with various types of vegetables and potatoes.

The drinks are apple juice and Czechian beer.

Finally we had mixed fruits for desert.

Driving on the road, we could find many sexy hookers looking for their business. It was legel in Czechia, but I had never seen it in Austria. So i took some pictures slinkingly in our car. But I was scared to be seen by those hookers or the drivers, so that those pictures had not good quality, and could not see clearly.

This hooker was bargaining with the driver in the car, but they took long time to do that, so we just wondered if they also did something special else, hehe...

This is our hut in which we spent three nights.

It's not very luxurious, but good enough for a few days, and best of all is that nobody minds if you make a campfire for your own BBQ just in front of the hut.

To start a fire, first you go to the nearby forest...

...and collect some wood...

...and break it to smaller pieces.

Then you arrange that wood to a nice pile, smaller wood inside, bigger wood outside.

You light it... and - voilá - you have a fire.

If the wood is dry and you do it right, then it will burn quickly.

In the meantime you prepare some delicious food such as pork, chicken meat, sausages, vegetables, potatoes...

...and when the fire has burned down, but the big pieces of wood are still hot...

...you can grill all that food...

At this time, it was very dark, so we had to use the torch and head-lighters to make everything looking clearly.

...and enjoy it later.

Very delicious!

Pluscity is the biggest shopping mall in Linz. Everyday you can find many people shopping or eating there.

The pity thing is that all the shops in Austria do not open on Sundays, and all are closed on 7:00pm from Mondays to Fridays, and 5:00pm on Saturdays.

Now Christmas Day is coming, it is the biggest and the most important festival in the western countries. So from the pictures, we can see the beautiful decorations for Christmas in Pluscity.

"Urfahrmarkt" is a local fairground in the city of Linz, which takes place twice a year, in spring and in autumn.

There are many different things to do at Urfahrmarkt.
One can take one of the many fairground rides; shop for toys, clothes, accessories or many other things; taste some local or exotic snacks...

...or visit one of the big tents to have a beer there and listen to Austrian folk music spiced up with some comedy acts and other entertainments.

From left to right: Me, my sister-in-law and her best friend.

Drinking beer together with my brother-in-law, his wife (on the left) and her best friend.

"Chaos" - one of the many attractions to play with on Urfahrmarkt.

Spitz is a cute small village near river Donau in the "Wachau" valley. There are many grape fields, the wine is of very good quality and thus very popular and famous in Wachau.

This day we were taking some ~2.5 hours walk in the wine fields and later tasting some fresh wine ("Sturm") at a restaurant along the way back.

The church in the village of Spitz.

In the center of Spitz.

Up in the wineyards.

The feeling of being a farmer is not bad, see, my honey and me looked so cool when we were sitting on the tractor, haha!

These grapes are nearly ripe for eating or producing delicious wine.

This place is called the "Red Gate".
When we took the picture there, suddenly so many visitors came, if not, i thought maybe the picture would look better.

After our walk we visited a restaurant to eat some local food, and drink my favourite type of wine, the sweet "Sturm".

So we visited a few other places on Pöstlingberg, such as...

...a fairy tale world, which is featuring scenes of many popular stories (in the picture: "Sleeping Beauty").

...the church on top, which is also a popular wedding place.

Like this feeling...

...and finally a restaurant, where we took this nice picture just outside the restaurant on a kid's playground.

Visiting Lake Traunsee and the nearby small mountain of Gmundnerberg in early autumn 2006 was my first trip with my fiancee Robert in Austria.

First we took a short walk in the small town of Gmunden along Traunsee, where we had some nice views on the rocky mountain "Traunstein" and the castle "Schloß Orth", which is the main location of a local TV series.

After only 20 minutes we stopped for a drink in a small restaurant which is located directly at the lake.

Thereafter we drove up the nearby hill "Gmundnerberg" to have dinner there.

Beside the reatraurant, there was a small hotel with typical Austrian style building.

This was a small church beside the hotel.

After dinner we were taking a walk on the top of Gmundnerberg to take a few more pictures.

This was a lovely first trip in Austria and it gave me some nice first impression of my new place of residence.