Photo quiz time! Can you name the cities in the photos below?
Some of these are easier than others (I’ve tried to put the hardest ones first), so extra points if you can also name the building(s) in the photos!
I’ll send all comments to moderation for a few days, to give everyone a chance to play.
1 – from a train window
2 – ditto, but on a different day
3 – not King’s Landing
4 – if you know the name of this building, you’re one step ahead of me!
5 – featuring Mr E Man and my Dad
6 – taken the day before we started suffering from Golden Dome Fatigue
7 – there were dozens of teenagers dressed as vampires running around, for added atmosphere on this moonlit night
8 – still not King’s Landing, believe it or not. You can tell because a) there are modern vehicles in the shot, and b) King’s Landing is fictional
9 – this was part of the official sight-seeing tour on the first day of the conference that was the reason for this trip
10 – the view from right outside the door of my favourite hotel on the whole trip
11 – one of the most important and influential people in modern history, and some dude on a pedestal
12 – a different part of one of the buildings already pictured
13 – and the view from inside it
14 – two famous sights in one shot
Have fun!
“Restaurace” suggests Czech Republic, whereas the black eagle crest in photo #3 makes me think Poland. The Lenin statue and the pointy thing in photo #13 make me think of Russia though.
Obviously, my answer is: no clue.
Well, you were somewhere in Germany, and in Berlin in the Reichstag, and in Prague on the famous square with the famous clock en the famous other thing, where I once ate famous cinnamon snacks (called something ktrcln-like). Probably also in Romania and the first photos are definitely Dunedin, New Zealand, in a future where NZ has more inhabitants.
Hope this earns me points.
Ok, some better guesses. Can’t get them all though.
#1, #2 have me stumped
#3 still not sure about this one, that black eagle looks Polish though
#4 St. Andrew’s Church in Kiev
#5 Ceremonial Hall, Jewish Quarter of Prague
#6 Bohdan Khmelnytsky statue, Kiev
#7 Our Lady of Loreto, Prague
#8 Rothenburg (Market Street?)
#9 Reichstag Building, Berlin
#10 looks like a street in Prague
#11 some statue of Lenin, I have no idea where though
#12 Reichstag Building, Berlin
#13 View of Alexanderplatz and other bits of Berlin from the Reichstag Building
#14 Astronomical clock and Church of Our Lady Before Tyn, Old Town Square, Prague
4 looks like Helsinki, 13 Toronto. But everywhere looks rather overcast.
I have no idea, but it makes me want to travel!
I obviously don’t get out enough:
13 is the East Berlin radio tower
14 is the Prague astronomical clock
7 is the Loreta in Prague
is 12 on Museum Island in East Berlin??
Lots of eastern Europe and maybe England due to the rain? 🙂 Oh, you wanted cities? hmm….
1&2 no clue… Cologne?
3. reminds me of the castle of Prague – where I shot cross bow when I went on my “eastern europe tour” long time ago….
4. Looks like water behind those domes… maybe somewhere next to the Black sea? Odessa?
5. Krakow? (because they still had some jewish places left even after WWII)
7. pleeeease tell me this is Romiania? (I know that’s a country but still…. why would you mention the vampires otherwise?)
8. did you go to southern Germany? Looks like München maybe?
9. Berlin
11. Kiev (the Leninstatue, right?)
12 & 13 Berlin (Bundestagen in pic 12?)
14 tempted to say Prague (or maybe Krakow)
Answers time!
The trip was Berlin-Prague-Kyiv-Prague again (my parents and sister joined us for this part)-Rothenburg ob der Tauber-Berlin.
1: Děčín castle, Děčín, Czech Republic. We didn’t actually visit, but came through twice on the train.
2: Dresden, Germany. We came through on the train on the way from Berlin to Prague, then on the way back we got off the train here to pick up our rental car – it’s apparently still very difficult to book one-way rentals that cross borders!
3: Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany – one of those ridiculously picturesque places that looks like it was built solely to sell postcards. We drove here from Dresden after discovering while we were in Prague that the train tickets Mr E Man had bought online from Canada were for Rothenbürg, which is a whole different town. Stüpid umlauts! This mistake took hoürs to fix and caüsed my Dad endless amüsement; however, Mr E Man enjoyed driving the rented BMW on the Autobahn so much that I started to suspect that he’d done it on purpose.
4: St. Andrew’s church, Kyiv, Ukraine. Mr E Man’s brother, his awesome new wife (who we’d met once before) and adorable baby daughter (who we’d never met before) are living in Kyiv at the moment, and were excellent guides in a city that is not exactly tourist-friendly!
5: Jewish Ceremonial Hall, Prague. The tour of the city’s Jewish quarter was one of the highlights of the trip. We saw several synagogues, which host exhibitions about the history of Prague’s Jewish community, and the old cemetery. No golems though.
6: St. Sophia’s church and Bohdan Khmelnytsky statue, Kyiv. We went up the bell tower that’s behind the statue in the photo, and found it excitingly rickety.
7: Our Lady of Loreto, Prague. No idea what the vampires were all about, but there were lots of them around that night…
8: Rothenburg ob der Tauber again. Did I mention how ridiculously picturesque it is? It even snowed while we were there! Also, beer tastes better in a 500 year old pub – 100% science FACT.
9: Reichstag, Berlin – the city where we started and ended our trip. I’d never been before, despite visiting Germany many times and even living there for a couple of years as a kid. It was fantastic – it reminded me of London far more than any other city has to date.
10: Prague, looking down the hill towards the castle complex. I’d been trying to come here for years; my sister and I were planning a train tour of Central and Eastern Europe in the late 90s that would have included Prague, but then three of my friends got married in the same year and the hen nights, hotels, train tickets, and gifts completely wiped out my meagre grad student disposable income. I’m happy to report that Prague was well worth the wait, and became my new favourite European city after about 20 minutes of exploration (sorry, Madrid).
11: Lenin statue, Kyiv. Until very recently, this was the last Soviet Lenin statue still standing outside Russia, due to heavily armed members of the local Communist party showing up to protect it on the day the USSR dissolved and then sticking around (we saw a couple of them hanging out in a little red tent close to the statue, still armed). However, it was toppled by demonstrators just a couple of weeks after we were there. We live in interesting times…
12: The Reichstag again. I’m involved in organising the 2014 edition of the same meeting, and thinking that Vancouver City Hall might not quite meet the same standard…
13: View of Berlin from inside the glass dome of the Reichstag.
14: Astronomical clock and Church of Our Lady Before Tyn, Old Town Square, Prague. This was low season, before the Christmas markets start, and the square (and the Charles Bridge) were jammed with people. I can’t even imagine what it must be like in August or during Christmas. Having grown up in a very touristy city myself, I feel for the locals…
So, points!
Richard was clearly the winner, with a total of 20 correct building / city names (I’m not counting “some Lenin statue” in that tally ;-p )
I make it six points each for Nina and Phillip, five for Chall, and none for Henry 🙂
Don’t mind at all scoring nulle points. Sounds like a super trip.
it was great, thanks! I highly recommend it (but don’t go to Kyiv without either a working knowledge of Russian and/or Ukrainian, or local guides. Mr E Man has travelled all over the world and lists Kyiv as one of the most challenging places he’s been).
Richard, I’m impressed. If we are ever in a pub quiz, I hope we are on the same side.
And we thank you.
I could claim superior knowledge based on my extensive travels through central and eastern Europe, but that would be a LIE. The truth is that reverse image searching is surprisingly effective, particularly when used on popular tourist destinations. The results for the “out-the-train-window” photos were unhelpful though, if humorous.
Oh, you great big cheater!
I hereby retract my “Richard was clearly the winner” statement. Based on your first comment, your score was actually (drumroll)… zero. Nina and Phillip win 😀
Yippie! I knew I would win!
If also I felt I should know much more of all these things, especially having travelled to Berlin recently, and to Prague recent enough. Agree that Prague is a favourite EU city, however, tell me if you also visited the communist student flats (and slept there), because they really take away points from Prague as the best EU city. But then again, so did the student flats in Montpellier, and not to mention some dungeons where students live that I have been to in Amsterdam.