Second day in Bonn

My first day at Bonn was nice and it was all spent in doors. After nicely relaxing for one whole day we regained our energy and boost the enthusiasm. We all wanted to explore Bonn and other cities around there. So early in the morning we all dressed up heading towards Cologne, Cathedral.

The distance between the cities Cologne and Bonn was roughly around 24 Km. But there are no speed limits in Germany. I had the pleasure of travelling at 180 km/ hour and it felt so good and fun. But even at that speed there were people overtaking us. They drive so fast, so easily and it really impressed me.

As I remember it took us less than 30 minutes to reach Cologne. Well well... I was so thrilled to see all the Gothic architecture. I was always dreaming of seeing how Europe looked like in medieval period. All that I learnt in history just rushed in to my mind the moment I saw the Cologne Cathedral. There were many other small churches of similar architecture surrounding the entire Cologne city. These great churches and cathedrals and in a number of civic buildings that the Gothic style was expressed most powerfully, its characteristics lending themselves to appeal to the emotions.

After exploring the Cologne cathedral, we decided to walk around the city. Though I referred it as Cologne, people in Germany called it Koln ( pronounced as Kirn ). Talking a little bit about Cologne city, it is the fourth largest city in Germany. And it is one of the oldest cities in Germany, having been founded by Romans in year 38 BC. The name of the city Cologne is derived from that of the Roman settlement, Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium. This city lies on the River Rhine. I had the pleasure of seen the river Rhine too. It is one such view that I cherish for the my whole life.

And also Cologne is famous for Eau de Cologne. My friends told me that the birth place of Eau de Cologne is city Cologne. And the name 4711 aroused my curiosity. After I came home I searched a little bit about it and found the following details from wikipedia.

At the beginning of the 18th century, Italian expatriate Johann Maria Farina created a new fragrance and named it after his hometown Cologne, Eau de Cologne (Water of Cologne). In the course of the 18th century the fragrance became increasingly popular. Eventually, Cologne merchant Wilhelm Mülhens secured the name Farina, which at that time had become a household name for Eau de Cologne, under contract and opened a small factory at Cologne's Glockengasse. In later years, and under pressure from court battles, his grandson Ferdinand Mülhens chose a new name for the firm and their product. It was the house number that was given to the factory at Glockengasse during French occupation of the Rhineland in the early 19th century, number 4711. In 1994, the Mülhens family sold their company to German Wella corporation. In 2003 Procter & Gamble took over Wella. Today, original Eau de Cologne still is produced in Cologne by both the Farina family (Farina gegenüber since 1709), currently in the eighth generation, and by Mäurer and Wirtz who bought the 4711 brand in December 2006.

We walked around this ancient city for hours. Though it was very cold, we never got enough of it. I tried my best to capture pictures of every nook and corner of the city. But unfortunately what I saw was not what was exactly captured in to pictures. Especially the low lighting inside the cathedral made it impossible to capture a perfect picture. At the end of the day I understood one thing, what we see on TV and pictures are not even a close resemblance of their true beauty. All we could photograph was a fraction of their true beauty. So it worths traveling. Exploring the world.

Towards Bonn , Germany

The first night just flew away dawning the longest day of our journey. Our next destination was Bonn, Germany. It is a long journey from Linkoping, Sweden. Knowing all difficulties that can come on the way, we decided to leave Linkoping early in the morning. Since we left the hostel before they served breakfast we had to stop on the way for breakfast. Well.. after that all I remember was road... :D Endless road... country roads.. narrow roads, wide roads.. all those roads led us to our second destination.

But just as we thought, this time also we exceeded the scheduled duration. In Denmark we had our dinner. According to the schedule we were supposed to have our dinner at Bonn, Germany. But it was just a sweet dream.

After 24 hours of painful, non stop driving we finally reached Bonn at 7 am next morning. It was such a big relief to reach our next destination.

This time we all were so exhausted. Luckily at Bonn, we stayed at one of our friends place where their kind hospitality helped to wash away the sweat. Clean linen and hot porridge was all that I was longing for. After a hot shower and a delicious breakfast we all fell fast asleep. All our plans for travelling around the city were just thrown to garbage and we embraced the bed for hours.

After about five hours of sound sleep we woke up for lunch. That was when the comfort seeking zone of our brains ruled our decisions and changed all the plans. Our friends were so furious about our risky trip and forced us to spend one more night at their place. But according to the plan we were supposed to leave Germany next morning. Well well... with all the nice treatments how could we resists.. Beside all the long driving ahead just rushed in to our mind like nightmares. So we changed the plans and decided to stay there for one more nights.. I do not know whether this was a wise decision but this resulted in so much of complexity towards the end of the journey.

So I advice you guys, don't change plans on the fly. And don't make any optimistic plans. Google maps are good if you are from mars :D.. Since you are a human from earth add an additional factor like 2^x to the duration given by Google maps, where x is the number of days + 2. So first day your delay can be 2^3 = 8 hours. The delay has an exponential relationship with the number of days you are travelling.

Hope my logic makes some sense. There's lot more to come in the future. So keep reading.

Journey Begins

Well, I couldn't update this blog for quite sometime. I'm still wondering where to begin. May be I can start from the first day of our journey.
The journey began just as we scheduled. We left home at 4 am and to stay in schedule we made snacks for breakfast.
No sooner we realized the biggest mistake we made, that was scheduling the departure in Christmas eve. Though we had food to eat and plenty of water to quench the thirst we forgot the basic fact that we need to stop at least once in every 200km to switch the drivers and to use WC. Since it was the Christmas eve most of the shops were closed. This made our first day very hectic. But we were still fresh to the journey and the limit of tolerance was so high. So the enthusiasm remained unspoiled.

Well.. well... after driving for so many long hours, nearly after 2o hours we reached Linkoping. Then the time was around 12 in the night. We all were so tired and dead hungry. There was no place to buy food. fortunately we had some instant noodles and salmon tins. That supplied our dinner.

Let me give you one piece of advice, take as much instant food as possible. like noodles, instant pasta, soup cubes, preserved salmon tins, canned meat balls. They come in handy in many situations like this. The actual time to reach your destination will be the time suggested by google maps + 2 hours. If you have a baby on board, it may go beyond 4 extra hours, remember you have to stop to clean the diapers. So when you reach the destination the shop will be closed.

Let me come back to Linkoping. The hostel in Linkoping was so good, we forgot the long day we had and the long day ahead of us the moment we landed on the comfortable bed. That room was more like a studio. Here is the link to the hostel webisite - http://www.lvh.se/index.php/vandrarhem
The pictures below are taken by me.

Travelling Budget

This is not 100% precise. I prepared a budget one week prior to the trip and I exceeded it way before the return journey. Let me give you a rough estimate and few things we forget to take in to account and few tips in how to cut down the cost.

Major Expenses

Fuel - our entire journey was 10628 km. Our car had a fuel efficiency of 13-15 km/l . Considering the worst case we took 13km/l as the fuel efficiency. Then the total fuel requirement was roughly around 820 l. 1 l = 1.5 Euros. So the total cost is 1230 for 4 adults. So it costed 308 Euros for me only for fuel.

Accomadation - We stopped at 6 places.

Likoping,Sweden - 1 night

Bonn,Germany - 2 nights

Brescia, Italy - 2 nights ( one night one forward journey and one night on return journey)

Rome, Italy - 3 nights

Paris, France - 1 night

Odense,Denmark - 1 night

Stockholm, Sweden - 1 night

Total = 11 nights. We stayed in hostel. Their charges are pretty descent and they provide bed and breakfast. The charges varied from hostel to hostel. The average cost per night was ard Eur. 35 per head. For 11 nights it costed me 35 x 11 = 385.

Food - We had our almost all of the dinners and lunches at gas stations. It roughly cost around eur. 7 per meal per person. 14 days = 42 meals. You can get the breakfast from the hostel, therefore total number of meals = 42-14 = 28 meals. Total cost for food = Eur. 196.

Those are only the major expenses

Minor Expenses

Tour Guides

Metro Charges

Purchase Tickets for places like Collosium, Eiffel Tower

Toll Tickets

They all will cost you around Eur. 200/ person. (I believe that you'd share the toll charges with the number of passengers in the vehicle )

Total Cost = 308 + 385 + 196 + 200 = E. 704

Other expenses

You may be tempted to buy sourveneers from various places

When you see big sales you are tempted to buy some items from them

Snacks in addition to meals

They will also add up to the cost. So I advice you to keep around Eur. 1000 ready if you are taking a tour like this.

Road Map

Here you can see the road map of our tour. Since I live in Finland it starts from Finland. Then it goes through the coast to Sweden. That's where we were first supposed to stay.
Then the journey resumes from Sweden and passes through Denmark and reach Germany. We spent our second and third nights in Bonn, Germany.
Well then comes Brescia , Italy. Fourth night was spent there. Then Rome, Italy. 3 nights were spent there.
Then comes the return journey. Left Rome and came back to Brescia. Spent another night there. Then from Bresicia came to Paris. This is when all the plans got changed. I will tell about this in future posts. Spent one night in Paris then headed to Denmark. Spent one night in Odense, Denmark. Then once again Sweden and back to Oulu,Finland.
This is the whole road map and how we scheduled everything initially. We went in a car, 5 passengers including a small baby of around 1.5 years.
This was truely an adventure. But I do not advice you to go on this tour with a baby. It's so risky. Luckily we made it.. Once you are through it, you'll have a bunch of wonderful memories. But its too much of a risk that I'd ever take in life again :)

Around Europe

I created this blog specially to document the experience I gained from a 14 day road trip around Europe. There's so much I learnt from this tour which worth sharing with you all. I will start with the route and the initial plan. Then I will tell you how things deviated from the original plan on the fly and what we saw around europe.