Back in Norway we met a German family who gave us some tips for places to visit in East Germany to see nature and wildlife. Their list included a nature campsite at Lychen so we headed there to check it out. When we found the campsite there was only a phone number to call, we were told to find a spot and they would come to us in the morning. We loved this campsite right in the forest, on the edge of a lake.We were visited by deer, a mouse, spotted woodpeckers, red squirrels, and a rare black woodpecker. We enjoyed a good hike around the lake and C even had a swim.

After three nights in the woods with no phone or internet reception we headed to the big smoke of Berlin. But on the way, we took a bit of a detour towards the Polish border, to visit the ‘Old Niederfinow Ship’s Hoist’ - a massive bath that moves boats up/down 36 metres in the Oder-Havel canal. We watched Polish barges full of coal come up the hoist - very impressive - especially as the gates let not even a drop of water through..

We have a sticker in the van that states Connie’s pollution level, it’s a green badge with 4 on it meaning we have access all areas which is quite surprising. We chose a campsite on a marina just outside the city, programmed Sally sat nav and set off. Everything was going well until with just a few miles to go the Berlin authorities had completely removed a bridge from a Main road. Sally couldn’t understand why we’d taken a different route and wanted us to uturn. There was no signed diversion and the traffic started to jam. Sally gave up, Vanda was unable to find us on a map and Craig was stuck in the traffic jam. So we decided to make for the nearest campsite, a parking area in a disused industrial site. It didn’t look up to much but this was actually a great spot, old but clean facilities, nice folks running the place and excellent connections to the city by local train, the UBan.

Our driving in Germany seems to take a lot longer than we or Sally expect. We’ve found that the main roads and autobahns can be very busy while the local roads are very slow and are sometimes completely closed for work without signed diversions.

So to Berlin. Our host gave us lots of advice about getting to and around Berlin and sold us a combined tourist bus and boat tour ticket. The trains to the city run much like our London Underground but on a trust system where you validate your own ticket, no barriers or turnstiles and we didn’t see any ticket inspectors.

We joined the hop on hop off bus tour which was interesting apart from when our headphones flipped from English to Russian. The boat trip was excellent with live commentary. We learnt and soon forgot a lot of information about the history of the city. Most of the tourism is based around the Berlin Wall. They generally avoid WW2.

A few of the highlights:

The hollow tooth, the only remaining part of a church bombed in WW2, it is now a memorial against all wars. The tower is beautiful inside with fantastic murals but still looks derelict from the outside.
The government building, the Reistag. Rebuilt after the reunification as it was in the 1700s but with a glass dome on the roof through which you can watch government in action.
The DDR museum which is a great interactive museum showing life in the communist part of the country.
The East Side Gallery. This is a 2km stretch of the Berlin Wall that wasn’t removed but offered to artists to decorate in commemoration of the wall. There’s some great thought provoking art here.
The Berlin Wall museum. Gives a great insight to the building of the wall, why it happened, life with it and its final removal. A real eye opener, the West’s activities were a major cause of the problems that bought about its building.

We managed to get tickets to the Lollapalooza Festival which is held at the Berlin Olympic stadium. We had a great day, saw some good bands and shows including Rita Ora, Dean Lewis, Hozier and finished off the evening watching the Kings of Leon.

The campsite had a classic car show on the Sunday morning which was great, we saw some lovely classic Volvos, BMW’s, Mercedes etc along with a few British cars. When we came to leave the campsite the owner asked to take Vanda’s photo as she is a doubleganger for one of his friends (allegedly!!)..

Getting away from Berlin was almost as much fun as getting in, we were advised to avoid the main east-west autobahn as it has lots of have traffic and so we took the smaller roads and got pretty much lost. It took us about an hour to escape the suburbs. Then slow small roads to the Spreewald. 75 miles in 3 1/2 hours!

In our last blog we started to tell you about the translator app. Great for menus etc but sometimes a bit too literal. Our favourite so far is “pork steak, served with cum and fried potatoes” presumably the chef’s special. We didn’t order it!

Cx Vx