The final German destination, Berlin

East Side Gallery

Angela put on another amazing German breakfast and then kindly drove us to the train station for our train to Berlin.

On arrival, we dropped our bags at the hotel and hopped on the train across to the East Side Gallery to view the Berlin Wall

East Side Gallery - there was a football game on nearby so the cars were lined up!

We then got back on the train to get to the Charlottenburg Palace and walked around the buildings and gardens. So many people use the gardens as their running track or where they walk their dog - such an impressive place to call that your 'normal' area.

Charlottenburg Palace - from the front

Charlottenburg Palace, from the back

Spring at Charlottenburg!

Church next to Alexanderplatz

The next day we headed out for another big walking day - we started at Alexanderplatz.

From there we walked around the streets of Berlin, past so many incredible buildings - such history. We didn't stop to look in any as we had lots on the list to see!

....and some interesting architecture in places!

 

Just for Camille - there's an entire shop floor devoted to Minis!

'typical' street :P

Checkpoint Charlie

We took in some of the sobering sights of Berlin, with Checkpoint Charlie, the site of all the SS buildings that now has a big museum on the area documenting the rise of Hitler.

We walked through Brandenburg gate, Potzdam place, and took a train to the large department store, KaDeWe. Angela told us that we had to check out the food level and it was pretty impressive. A DavidJones food court on a grand scale.

Brandenburg Tor

A very strange tourist contraption, everyone cycles and one guy steers - often with jerky motions - very strange!

We headed back to the hotel for a quiet night to get ready for our flight to Dublin - two weeks in Germany flew by, but we saw so much, we had a fabulous time.


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Location:Berlin, Germany

Hobbing around Hamburg

We left Cologne bound for Hamburg, to meet Angela and Claudia; Angela spent some time in Thailand while her husband Rainer was working there, she and Mum became great friends and planned a few international visits! We were lucky enough to stay with the Dorrheide family for the weekend.

Without a reservation on the train, we played seat hockey between those who were getting off and those getting on at different places - you never know whether a reservation is necessary, although the system is cool, LED text lights up above reserved seats, showing the parts of the journey that are reserved.

Angela and her daughter Claudia met us at the train door and we headed off for a tourist bus tour to get our bearings around the city. Hamburg has so many little canals, the catch cry is 'more bridges than Venice and the Netherlands put together', they were used to distribute goods quickly from the port.

There is a large lake in the middle of the city, ringed by parkland and super swish houses, millionaires abound! The tour also took in parts of the port, the new harbour area and many of the beautiful old buildings in the city.

Claudia, Angela and I

After the tour, Angela led us across the city, through a few interesting alleys of shops (the picture is from an area set up after the second world war for the widows of sailors) to have dinner at a traditional restaurant that is famous for selling the Hamburg special, Lebkause (spelling?!). We all sampled the dish, which consisted of shredded corned beef (silverside), in a potato mash mixture served with beetroot and dill pickles- everyone who orders it gets a certificate! Random!

We stayed the night at the Dorrheides' lovely house just out of Hamburg. To get there, we travelled on one of the German autobahns, with no speed limit. Oh boy! I have never been in a car so fast, Angela was happily zooming along and changing lanes at over 180km/hr - huge!

The next morning Angela put on a lovely German breakfast of meats, cheese,  yoghurts, spreads and fresh rolls from the bakery - yum! We set of for an English walking tour of Hamburg which was led by an English pianist who talked quite quickly - but Angela and Claudia's English skills are so good they had no problem keeping up. 'Kim' told us many stories, from the growth of Hamburg as a port and how often it was pirated and the story of the most infamous pirate who, when finally caught and brought with his crew to be executed he bet the executioner that he could run beheaded (think a chicken beheaded) and for every crew member he made it past, they would be saved. As the story goes, he saved every one.

Mum, Angela, Me and Claudia waiting for the tour to start

We walked through areas of churches, significant buildings for the town, even the area where the great fire of 1842 started in a cigar factory (it burnt almost the entire city down over two days),

Where the fire started - its now a restaurant

'Sharpest' building

We also saw the 'sharpest edged building' which was built in the shape of a ship as it was a shipping merchant's headquarters

Kim also took us to the new harbour area, that, much like Melbourne's Docklands is facing a glut of supply and its major landmark, the under construction music hall has blown out from a budget of 28MEuro to over 350MEuro last year when they were informed there would have to be major structural re-inforcement works - so the current indication is over 500MEuro - oh boy!

A small section of the harbour area

The building of blowout interest is the on the left at the end

Amazing wood and brick buildings!

From the tour we went back to the Dorrheides' house for birthday cake for Rainer, Angela's husband who had just arrived back from Thailand. Angela and Rainer took us to Lu(e)neberg, a small university town near Hamburg, where Claudia is at university. Luneburg is a gorgeous little town, that made its money off the salt that lay under the town. Unfortunately, the salt mines have removed so much of the salt that areas of the town have dropped around 10m in places, it looks quite strange! In other areas, foundations of the buildings have been, or need to be re-done and the buildings sag a little. Angela told us that the town 'council' decided to demolish the whole town due to the cost of fixing all the foundations, but the history and tourism that the town has stopped that plan. 

The main square - the slant on the buildings doesn't come out on photo great, but if the angles look peculiar, that's why!

This duck had a great nesting spot!

 We had a beer in the beer garden next to this canal in a busy little restaurant

The Dorrheides' then took us out with them for Rainer's birthday dinner to an incredibly traditional German restaurant in an old farmhouse, with period furnishings and a menu that made translation very difficult! We had a lovely meal to finish off an amazing weekend!

Misadventures around Cologne

From the train heading to Cologne

So we set off nice and early to get a direct train to Cologne from Heidelberg, and had a beautiful scenic trip as the train tracks wind along the Rhein. On one side, we had vineyards on impossibly steep slopes and the other side was the river, with little villages and cities along it's banks, and an old castle ruin at the top of almost every outcrop, it was very picturesque and a definite recommendation for anyone traveling by train through Germany.



Once in Cologne, we found it's most famous landmark, the Cathedral, staring us in the face before we'd even made it out of the Hauptbahnhof.

Chocolate museum!

We walked around Cologne for a while, worked out our river cruise for the next day, visited the Lindt chocolate museum and decided to hop back on the train to visit Du(e)sseldorf for the afternoon.

Unfortunately we didn't find the tourist information booth on our arrival and it turns out that the Aldstadt and river area of Dusseldorf is a fair way away from the train station. We wandered for a while, weren't seeing much, got lost, wandered and got lost again, wandered, got lost and finally gave up on seeing anything interesting and made it back to the train station (with a detour, of course!). By the time we made it back to Cologne, we were stuffed! I must remember to always get a map!
 

Bingen, on a powerwalk to get to the boat in time!

Day two in Cologne we rose extra early to get the 5:56AM train back up (current wise, we headed south) the Rhine to Bingen so we could get the 9:30 cruise down the river to Koblenz and take in the scenery from on the river.

After finding the boat platform just in time, we hopped onto the boat to find it packed full with a Japanese tour group, the boat would almost sway to the side when they all clamored to the edge of the boat to take a photo of a castle!

The four hour cruise was very pleasant, we were very lucky as the sun came out and the wind wasn't too strong. There are so many castles along the Rhine, many are now hotels and inns dot the riverside. There looked to be a great bike path along the Rhine, I reckon a week of bike riding, sampling the local wine and enjoying the historic villages will be on my bucket list!

(warning: lots of random photos of castles follow)

We finished the cruise in Koblenz, the town where the Rhine and the Mozelle (I think that's right!) join together. It's a lovely old place, we had a lovely lunch in a square filled with flowers and historic statues. After wandering for a bit, we headed back to Cologne on the train for an early night.

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Location:Cologne, Germany

Zu Heidelberg

For some reason Heidelberg has always captured my imagination so I was keen to spend a few days there and check it out!

I was glad I had printed out all my accommodation bookings and specifically asked for confirmation of rates when our hostel in Wurzburg tried to overcharge us on check out, but happily acquiesced when I showed them their email! Lesson one to remember for travel next time!

Brrrrrr it is chilly this morning, after having such a glorious weekend (I was in a tshirt and 3/4 pants yesterday), it's back to rain and ten degrees, so the scarf makes a return!

We caught a busy ICE train to Frankfurt, businessmen were everywhere; Mum was happy because she found a nougat croissant in the station for breakfast. I'm missing Melbourne coffee though, the machines over here must need a good clean, everything's pretty bitter.

If it's still raining when we get to Heidelberg, we might drop our bags off at the hotel and get back on another train, I'm thinking of venturing down to Freiburg to check out the black forest, but we'll see what the weather does.

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View from the bridge on the way over to the Philosopher's Way

The sun did come out so we checked into our hotel and put our walking shoes on once again. We walked around the Philosophers way, which was pretty steep but afforded great views of the Aldstadt and Heidelberg Schloss.

It was steeper than it looks - I swear!

View from the Philosopher's way over Heidelberg

Pretty garden up on the Philosopher's way, overlooking Heidelberg

Yummm! Its not exactly carrot sticks hey Ming?!

After a huge piece of cake for lunch (oh dear!) we needed to walk it off so we headed to an old medieval forest in the middle of a quasi suburb, even the road deviated around the outside of it, and there were some lovely magnolias on display. From there we walked down and through the university, along the river and retired for the day.

Imagine having this as your playground!

 ………
Simon surprised me this morning with the news that he has booked to visit me in my Scotland-Spain leg of the trip, incredibly special and romantic (Chloe spews). I can't wait!

So today in Heidelberg, after getting lost again and deviating through a different area of the city, we made it to the Aldstadt (old city) and ended up doing some shopping as we meandered to the Markyplatz. It is a lovely area, with beautiful four storey buildings in the old style, cute little alleys at every turn and a quiet buzz about the place, we had a good morning exploring.

In the afternoon we trekked up to the castle (walking again, although the funicular looked pretty cool), got waylaid by a closed back entrance but once up there enjoyed the castle facade and garden area that overlooked Heidelberg, a nice way to finish the day.

Check out the little sheep on the hill! There was a little black lamb too!

One of Heidelberg's big churches

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