Went to Vienna city centre for a few hours and basked in the baking hot sunshine. This is a very historic city and seems to have two big bits to its history – religion and the arts, particularly music of course. They certainly build things big over here – the cathedrals, the musems, even the parliament building is massive – I’ve never seen anything like it before. Also there are loads of parks and gardens. I think they have a lot of pride in their city. The whole flavour of the place was of course captured in that famous song.

Two more trips into Eastern Europe today. The first was to the Czech Republic and I decided to go completely away from the motorway and take an hour and a half long drive (each way) from the Autobahn, through the countryside, to my destination, Bayerisch Eisenstein, a lovely German village set inside a great landscape. On the journey here and yesterday I really noticed the difference between the flat Northern European countries and here. At a point on the motorway yesterday hills suddenly started appearing – and then mountains. Makes for great motorway driving as there’s lots of curves, hills

Two places visited today. The first one was quite exciting as it was my first trip into Eastern Europe. So, I visited Poland, crossing a long-spanning bridge into the East. This was the first big border crossing I’ve seen – just a few years ago these would have been guarded, with passport and vehicle checks in abundance as this was the edge of the EU. Since expansion, it’s just there to remind people what used to be. On the Polish side, where there is a town, I got some Zloty (no Euro here, folks) out of the cash machine and

A walk around Malmo, again a nice Scandanavian city, and a stop-off for a coffee reminded me how lucky we Brits are that most people in shops in the cities abroad speak English. Without this we’d be lost. It’s often said that we are a bit lazy because we know we’ll get by with a local English speaker close by, but I think I am excused from learning 15 languages….? My next destination was Brandenburg Park just outside of Berlin – a long drive and no direct route because of the Baltic Sea. So, I decided to go back over

With Hamburg visited, it was on to the next destination. Heading north from almost the top of Germany can only mean one thing. After an hour an a half of driving, I reached the gateway to Scandanavia. This is the main point to enter this vast Northern European land by road and I’m so pleased they decided to mark this point properly. Big flags of all the Scandanavian nations mark the entry point to this massive region with an identity all of its own. There’s a small car park here so I decided to stop off again. The big welcome

A relatively short journey today (compared to days to come) takes me across the border to Germany. I stopped at the border and took some pictures. There is a service station here and they’ve drawn the border around it. The Dutch side (north of the motorway) contains the shop and restaurant and the other side – German – has the police and customs station. Both are connected via a bridge. There is a sign to mark the point where the two roads meet. It’s a shame in a way, because I think there’s something just a little exciting about stopping