My fianceé and me spent the last weekend in the Czech Republic, near the wonderful town of Telč. I also took some photos and put the into my flickr stream.
Best thing there: the beer is unbelievably cheap and good! Around 20 Kč for 0,5l, that’s less than 1 Euro!
Elke and I took some days off from work and went on a short trip to Obertauen. Today we had wonderful weather and I took some nice photos, however the crappy internet connection via GPRS would not allow me to upload some. I added them today and will add some more soon.
We found a nice hotel in Untertauern, called “Hotel zur Post“. The room is ok and not too expensive, the food is excellent and the newly renovated main part of the hotel (we are in another building, 150m apart) features a nice wellness-area, with saunas and stuff like that.
We can definitely recommend this hotel, it was very relaxing there. The only difficulty for me is to decide if the wellness area or the excellent food (anyone who knows me knows that I am usually extremely picky) is the main cause for us to return.
When sorting the pictures, we came across a short video of a bollywood-film-production. We think it looks funny 
And, as the title suggests, I finally had some time to sort and upload the photos. I put them on flickr again, because I currently have not much space left on my server. Comments are appreciated…
We are back home again! Boy, a 10 hour flight is horrible when it’s overnight, but when the flight takes from 10am to 8pm, it is worse.
So, now some information about our holiday: first a small map indicating our hotel…
and then some links:
a short video of a dive (sorry for the shaking, I’m just starting making such videos…) and another video, showing our diving group in a 360 degree sweep. And here, finally, is a link to a selection of our photos on flickr. I will put up a gallery as soon as all the pixx are sorted.
Unfortunately, time has passed too quick… our time here is nearly over and we had our last dive yesterday to say goodbye to all the fish here.
More pictures will follow when I don#t have to pay 7 Rupies per minute for slow internet
Today was our second dive, and our miserable feeling from the last two days is beginning to drown. We are cautious and a bit paranoid about our (remaining) valuables now, but most of the people here seem genuinely friendly and hospitable, at least most of them…
The dive was great, I also took my camera with me and took some lovely pictures of our dive through a small underwater canyon, clown fishes, a starfish and many more. I even tried to make a short video. We will make our next dive on Saturday – it will be a deeper dive in the morning, perhaps we will even see some sharks and other big fish.
Our engagement rings were stolen! What bloody bastard (Elke insists on more swearwords, but I try to see it more calmly) steals wedding/engagement rings?? We reported it to the local security and to the police, but our hopes of seeing them again are crushed. Okay – to be fair – we had not thought of the “real” value of these rings and left them in our room, not in the safe. I hope the thief was Hindu and now will have to face 1000 more lives in misery. Well, at least we know where we can find them again – at the jeweller’s in Linz.
After a strenuous flight to the southern hemisphere (and to “winter”) we arrived at the airport, queue for the immigration check, got our luggage and headed to the transfer bus… after an hour of rough driving we arrived at our hotel. It looks really nice, sparrows and other local birds chirped their “Hello” to us. The entrance hall has no walls on the ground floor, so the birds can pass unhindered.
After a nice half day of catching up sleep, we strolled around a bit and looked at the hotel. It looks nice and clean, and the beach is calm and sandy. The food is also excellent and the people are very friendly. I think I like this place.
We also had our first dive here, it is not quite as colourful as in the Red Sea, but there are many things to see as well.
We also did snorkel on the beach, there are many fish and also lots of sea-cucumbers here. The water is really shallow and you always have ground under your feet. The reef is about 500m out in the sea, but we have not reached it yet because of strong currents.
Soooo, today Elke and I will be flying to Mauritius for some 2 weeks of well-deserved holiday with lots of diving.
If everyting works out as planned, I will be able to post some photos and stories while I’m there, so watch this page for updates!
This weekend, Elke and I visited Strasbourg. Unfortunately, the battery in my camera was low and I had forgotten to bring my charger, so all I can present here are these 8 photos…
Things to see in Strasbourg: cathedral (146m high, one of the tallest churches in the world), Petit France (old-town-quartier) and the European Quarter with the European Parliament. The “cuisine alsacienne” is a bit strange: the traditional food is a big pot of Sauerkraut with cooked sausages and bacon. At least the local wines are great! We drove south towards Colmar along the “rue des vines” and bought us some bottles.
A few hints: we stayed in a nice hotel called CIARUS (which seemed a bit youth-hostel-like to us, but our room was huge and clean and everything for a decent price). A restaurant we can recommend is Flam’s where we ate some delicious Flammkuchen.
