Prague

Prague is very beautiful, but not really our kind of place, being completely overrun with backpackers and other tourists.  We prefer to be the only obnoxious tourists.

On the plus side it has a fantastic airfield (Letnany) with kind and friendly staff that is only a short walk from a train station that takes you straight into town.

We had a menu misunderstanding, it seems that all dishes are actually sharing plates.

Julian up the tower with one of the fantastic tower guys.

Latvia, Soviet infrastructure: Cesis

1 litre beer cans, well I never!

After the hassle and expense of Talinn airport we decided not to be suckers and to land at Cesis and take public transport to Riga. All our net research indicated that the bus is by far the better option, but with the bikes it had to be the train.

Flying over Latvia we were a bit confused by all the pinkish roads, a new type of road surfacing???  No, no surface.

That morning I'd called a hotel to check the pricing and we cycled directly there. Only problem, the price she quoted 'thirty-two lat', did not equal the price she wanted 42 lat. We circled around this point for a while, with her sometimes agreeing 'yes thirty-two lat' and sometimes disagreeing, 'no, thirty-two lat!' whilst pointing at the number she had written '42'.  Despite our best efforts I don't think we managed to disabuse her of the notion that 42 is pronounced thirty-two and we eventually left.  (These two sums represent €45 and €60).

We couldn't really understand why the hotels in town were full, but luckily one lady on reception kindly called around for us (we hadn't found the correct mobile provider at that point and couldn't call ourselves).  Oddly enough the hotel we'd just been at was not on her list of places to call.....  So we ended up a bit out of town, but it was cheap and a shelter from the rain.  The next day we had a look at the quaint old town and discovered hundreds of mountain bikers.  Turns out there was a race....

Cesis town walls tower

Mmm wild strawberries, just the thing for the train ride to Sigulda

Regarding Cesis airfield (link to their website), we didn't actually see anyone there, except for the watchman with his kinda scary night stick thingy.  No one wanted any payment, the watchman was in fact horrified when I wanted to give him my change as I was leaving Latvia.  So despite being on the side of a main road it seems a secure position.

It is about 4-5km to the main station, which would be an easy enough walk, the most direct way ended up via a large amount of roadworks and stone roads which was less ideal with the bikes.

Talinn

We really didn't know much about the Baltic before we arrived.  So we were pleasantly surprised with Estonia, the people are very polite and friendly and enjoy sharing their culture of singing and dancing with tourists (!); everyone speaks excellent English; if they do something they do it right first time and are generally brisk and efficient.  They explain this attention to detail and go ahead attitude as being due to a Germanic aspect of their culture, Talinn having been a Hansa trading guild city ruled by German merchants from 1285, who remained powerful after the Hansa disintegrated, even under Swedish and later Russian rule.

Talinn is a beautiful old walled city

The old town has two sections: upper (back of photo) and lower

The wall towers

View from upper to lower old town

Some of the Talinn highlights for us were the museums.  Kumu, the contemporary art museum cut out of a limestone hillside and the architecture museum.

Kumu, great museum, fun exhibition of busts

I loved this sculpture at Kumu

The recent art at Kumu was really good.  I posted with a video a while ago, and there were several other thought provoking exhibits (no Tracey Emin bs!). Another aspect we found really interesting about this museum was that it had sheets in each room explaining Estonia's recent history as the background information to the art.  The audio guide was of the nature of: in the middle of this painting you will see a big yellow... so I can't recommend that.

One of the displays at the upcoming garden show

Funny combinataion of flavours?  No it's all marzipan...  

The airport itself was a big international airport with all the going through security big charges hassles that you'd expect.  It cost us around €80 for landing, handling and 2 nights parking.  Knowing what I know now I would chat to the lovely people at Rapla (EERA) 35km south of Talinn and take a train up to Talinn from Rapla.

Aerø half timbered houses and model ships on windowsills

Aero from the air

A particularly nice picnic lunch on the airfield at Aero

We had a few more days to spare in Denmark before the Eslöv fly in, so we decided to finally see Aerø - something we hadn't done so far as we try to land where the landing fee is cheap. There is no club at the airfield, as it is a commercial enterprise, but we were lucky to be allowed to camp and use their shower for 2 nights.

The airfield dog inspecting our equipment.  Why do dogs never smile for photos???

Aerø seems wealthier and more touristy than Samsø, with very attractive half timbered houses in Aerøsköbing, a short bike ride away. (Bikes and a car are also available for hire at the airfield). Nearby Marstal also has a lot of museums and is restoring an old ship, so is another interesting place for a visit.

Marstal from the air

We were probably lucky that we arrived a couple of week before the main tourist season started, as there were already quite a few Germans bobbing around in hire yachts and I can imagine the narrow cobbled laneways get clogged in the season.

Ju at the beach

Aero used to be to a large extent under water, one of the things we saw from the air was this fantastic raised farmhouse....

raised farmhouse with bridge between house and barns..

Bonn Hangelar, destination extraordinaire, sanctuary for endangered species

Weeks later I realise that I neglected to post anything about Bonn Hangelar, outrageous!  We were met with an extremely warm welcome from Juergen who runs the airfield and he had organised that we were met by representatives of some of the clubs on the airfield - it is the second biggest general aviation airfield in Germany and has around 160 planes based there.  (General aviation or GA is people like ourselves, as opposed to commercial aviation or scheduled flights which is people like Ryan Air).

Christian in the middle, Juergen on the right

Juergen is a pilot himself and very kindly took the time to suggest local destinations, copy their information and contact their aeroclubs, which is incredibly kind in someone running such a busy airfield.

Christian who was Germany's ambassador to China in former times organised a meeting with a journalist from Aerokurier who wrote an article about our trip.  He also helped us with some ideas (and charts!) for our eastern block travels.

Julian and Heiko from Aerokurier, with a Fieseler Storch, owned by a member of his flying club

Bonn Hangelar is basically a very large field, which means that a special, endangered, flower grows well there, which it can't in the surrounding built up area.  Maybe not quite as sexy as the pouched marmot that lives on Brno's airfields, but preserving bio-diversity is an important, though little considered aspect of an airfield's role in its community.

This special flower meant that the pope was unable to hold his youth congress on the airfield in approx. 2000, I think the plants are much more important.

Bonn itself is a lovely, quiet town, with some beautiful buildings, its location makes it a good destination as there is a lot to be seen in the area, as evidenced by my previous posts!

Day flight from Berlin to Eberswalde Finow

68ha of solar cells, awesome MIG shelters, how cool is this place?

This isn't a really long trip from Berlin, but as usual the people are what made it great.  We landed on a 2540m asphalt runway thoughtfully provided by the Russians and weren't quite sure what to do.

Luckily after a short chat at the cafe next to our plane's parking spot, Matthias from the tower offered to give us a tour of thee airfield, with its three different types of MIG shelter, one of which now includes an apartment where the exhaust gas ducts once were.

We also scrambled on top of a shelter to assess the roof terrace potential. Fabulous. Each shelter cost the same as 10 DDR homes did, back in the day, and is now yours for only €30K. Bargain. The runway looks like soon being shortened  to 1000m as the 68ha solar array (we thought it was a lake when we were approaching it) is extended. We shall see.


Still to come, a photo of the famous boat lift in Finow.....

Onwards to Berlin - Strausberg review

We were quite sad to leave Bonn as we met so many fantastic people, but it was time.
The fueller gave us the tip that Strausberg  has the best public transport connection to Berlin, so off we went.
It felt like a fairly long trip so we were pleased to hit the ground and meet the friendly handler.
Strausberg is a great airport: a long tarmac runway only 700m from a Berlin train station, so very convenient if you don't have bikes. However it is a good 1.5h journey into town on trains that go twice an hour.
We ended up staying a night in their pilots rooms (€30 for a double), wjich were new and nice and with kitchen corner in the hall we could heat our frozen pizza from Aldi and chill our breakfast yoghurt overnight.
Landing and parking all were quite reasonable and the €5 we paid for hamdling was fantastic for their services in bringing our plane contents from our plane up into our first story room.



For the smaller pilots



Airfield review Salzgitter Schaeferstuehl EDVJ

This is a cute little airfield with a lot of activity.   When we landed gliders were out and about, others were preparing to be winched and there were a lot of parasenders preparing to jump off the hill.

It's a nice well tended little 950m grass runway.  Despite a whole heap of people being around everyone kept very much to themselves, so it took us a while to work out where to pay our landing fee (€6) before the short walk into town (about 2km).  It's a pretty little town, very quiet on a Sunday, with about 5 gelati shops.



http://www.lsg-schaeferstuhl.de/Home.htm

Airfield review Hannover Updated and downgraded

`We wanted to go into Hildesheim,quite a long way out of Hannover as part of our avoid large airports, avoid large fees plan.   But they were having racing on their airfield that weekend so we couldn't land there and Hannover.

Landing on the shorter (app 1.3km) runway

So we went into Hannover airfield and Kerstin picked us up.  Which was most convenient.  Hannover hosted the World Expo in 2000, which means that the airfield is well connected to the town by a train that goes to the main terminal and takes about 20 mins to get to the main rail station at a cost of €4.20 per single.

For the size of the airport, landing wasn't expensive at €10 and some change, with our total bill for 2 landings and 3 nights parking outside being €48.  Parking in the hangar is in the €50-60 per night range.  We were chauffeured around by a follow me bus.  And everyone was really, really, nice.

Then we got the bill in the post.  Apparently we were meant to be charged for take-offs as well as landings.  In and of itself no problem, but it's a lot easier if they charge us at the time, as it was the bill went to an English friend's place and they had to then email us all the details and then we had to organise to pay out of Australia with the most inconvenient time lapse.  Really such a pain and has left me with less than charitable feelings towards the German bureaucracy that occasionally frustrates us all.

And they put us on the arrivals board!!!!  (GCGOL)

Hannover: Friendliness 10/10
Value 1/10  I hate thinking I've paid for something then getting a bill in the post 'oh by the way we forgot to charge you, pity that paying on the spot is more convenient for you and therefore you usually do it that way!'
Location 7/10

No restaurant at the GA terminal, but lots of cafes for punters in the terminal.  This is not a place you would camp, but if you're interested in going to Hannover it is convenient place to stop with good rail connections to town from the main terminal which is a fair foot march away.

Airfield reviews: Frankfurt Egelsbach and Konstanz

Frankfurt in the distance, us doing the very large circuit required by Egelsbach.

Frankfurt Egelsbach is I believe the busiest GA airfield in Germany.  It is close to Frankfurt, the financial capital of Germany and has a good runway.  On approach our GPS freaked out by all the different airspaces and shut down, which is always inconvenient as we were working on the GPS, not on charts and  swapping at short notice isn't so easy.  ATC vectored us in, which was most kind.

Taxi-ing in

Nice looking tower

We fuelled and then tried to park at a logical place nearby.  So the tower sent out a flunkey to tell us that the tower wanted us 3m to the left and closer to the taxi-way.  OK.  Whatever makes you happy.  (Later we saw someone forget to turn of the master switch when about to fuel - visible by his navigation lights still flashing, wow did he get screamed at).   We had lunch.  Vincent kindly invited us.  It was overpriced and poorly conceived - I give you breadcrumbed sausage slices with mustard foam - German food pretending to be pretentious French food.  Then when we went to leave it turned out that out stop would have taken more than 2h so we were charged €6 for parking plus the €14 for landing.

Egelsbach: Seeing Vincent (plasticpilot) 10/10
Value 0/10
Friendliness 0/10

Coming in to land at Konstanz

Konstanz is a very different airfield.  For the last few decades they have been struggling for their existance with 5 or 7 year contracts from the local government, which makes it impossible to invest in the airfield and develop it.  The airfield is a really nicely tended grass strip of around 800m, in a more marshy part of town, as evidenced by the swarms of mosquitos that appeared around dusk.  The location is fantastic as it is so close to town, so it would be a real pity if it weren't to continue to exist.

The tower is very helpful and friendly (they gave us tips on castles to fly around) and really I cannot recommend it enough as a destination.  Landing around €6, parking around €4 per day.

Konstanz: location 9/10
Value 7/10
Friendliness 10/10

Airfield review of Berlin Bienenfarm near Nauen EDOI

We were going to see Julian's sister Clare who lives near Jungfernheide station, so decided to drop in to Bienenfarm.  Bienenfarm is a very friendly airfield, quite close to the station Paulinenaue and they kept offering to drive us to the station so even without bikes getting into town would not have been a problem.

the airstrip is the long green strip across the centre of the photo

Trains go once an hour, take 35mins to get to Berlin's western main station, Jungfernheide and cost €5 if a ticket sales person comes past to sell you a ticket (the station does not have a machine).

The onsite restaurant is very good and prices are very reasonable (schnitzel €7.40, bratwurst with potato salad €6) and the bratkartoffel (fried potatos) that came with the schnitzel are really the best I've had in Germany.

There is a wide range of activities available from the airfield, from all the usual air based recreations through to canoeing, cycling and beach volleyball, so it could be a good destination even if you didn't want to go into Berlin.

The only downside that I can see is that fuel is really very expensive, so it is worthwhile fuelling elsewhere.

Costs for a 700kg aircraft €7 per landing, €3.50 overnight.  Airstrip 850m grass.

Hoegenaes airfield review

Long final for Hoegenaes' relatively long, smooth grass runways (600 - 800m)

Hoegenaes airfield is located really close in to town, which means that it probably won't be there in 10 years time.  In the interim it is a fantastic location with heaps for the visitor to do for easily 4-5 days, unfortunately we didn't have that long.

Hoegenaes aeroclub as seen from the outside

Hoegenaes is located very very close to Denmark, which means that the airfield sees a lot of international visitors.  It is also a busy training airfield.  This means that you meet many people at the airfield, all of whom are very nice, but the atmosphere is more business like than the smaller airfields.

Stunning sky, with CGOL wisely wrapped up for the night

About 6 rooms are available, each with a double bunk and a single bed.  Cost per bunk is quite high compared to the rest of Sweden / Denmark at 200 SEK per bunk.  BYO sheets and towels.  You can also camp.  Landing fee was in the usual region of 100SEK.

In short: great destination with lots of fun things to do.  It's not too far to travel from the rest of Europe either.

Stauning: where planes retire

Stauning is Denmark's big air museum and absolutely fascinating if you're into planes.  I quite liked it, especially all the historical planes and the amazing old gliders, where you basically sat on a little plywood seat in the middle of the sky and had one ski on the bottom to land on.  Wacky.  Here are some pictures.

Awesome old training plane, note that there are no flaps / ailerons, the wing itself flexes to control the lift...

see the ski and the little ply seat open to the elements!

We stayed several days, as the weather was less ideal.  One day was well spent at the museum, then Lars and Mercedes came to visit, so we never made it to the local town.

Mercedes finding something magical under the heather

Stauning itself is a nice long tarmac runway.  Landing fee approx. 85 DKK, the first night for a bunk in the pilot's cabin is 150 DKK (20€) per person, which is higher than average & contrary to what is indicated on their website, subsequent nights are cheaper.  2 plate electric hob, coffee machine, fridge & television all available, but you need to fiddle a bit to make the TV work.  If you stay at the cabin you can also use their bicycles for free.

Norway fjord flying: Sogndal to Bergen

We stopped for a breather after the mountains at Sogndal and the stop was a bit of a mission.  The people there were lovely, but....  The card reader would only take Norwegian cards.  (This is quite a large airport)  Then there was a 100 Norwegian kroner charge for paying in foreign currency.  And how could I forget the 25% VAT on the charge.  So all in all we paid €43 for the landing, €15 of which was fees, making this the most expensive airfield of our trip so far (speaking from 3 weeks in the future) and hopefully only to be topped by Rome.

So since we knew how expensive everything gets in Norway we opted to continue down the fjord whilst the weather was good and go in to Bergen.

Somewhere over the rainbow

Light beams

Nice huh, but I still prefer the mountains!

Finally we got to the metropolis that is Bergen, I'd spent some rainy time in the clubhouse in Klanten looking up all the interesting things to see, but of course it was after 8pm by the time we touched down.  Bergen is again a major airport.

Bergen

So we set out to find somewhere to stay.  My prior research had shown that hotels start at around £150 per night for a double.....  So it was time to get out the trailer.  The airport security guy who came to say hello looked somewhat shocked when I came to the conclusion that we would not need our tomahawk that night & pulled it out of our duffel bag and threw it back in the plane.   Luckily Julian talked really quickly about planes to distract him.  We spent the next hour pootling around trying to find somewhere we could pitch our tent out of view.  This was before I discovered that my bicycle Garmin has all sorts of normal GPS features (like find the nearest campground / local museum etc.) so I just scoped a largish area with no driveways marked & headed there.  On the way we found a marginal spot.  Hey sleeping on what felt like a 20 deg slope is worth it when you save that much.  The tough thing was was once I'd prepared the corn, carrots & cabbage for dinner, we discovered that our stove had blown a seal and was definitely not going to be cooking us dinner.  Raw carrots & corn ok, but we baulked at raw cabbage :-(  So we retired with our fly off for reduced visibility (yellow tent not such a good idea under the circumstances).  But Odin or Thor or Loki was smiling upon us and we were given a night without rain (an unusual occurance for Bergen).

Attack sheep, that stared at me & baaed as we put up our tent.

The next morning we packed up and got out of there as quickly as possible.

Ju with a trailer full of camping gear

As always the weather was looking pretty good, but set to get worse.  So goodbye Bryggen, and Stave church, maybe some other time (when we're rich)!  We're back to Denmark.