Euro Trip 2011

WEEK 3. Following on from my last blog, we are still in Berlin, this is an amazing city. After speaking with shaun mikes brother, he told us about this tour company that do free tours in a lot of big cities around Europe, we showed up at the one for Berlin and it was awesome, the guy was so enthusiastic and knew everything about Berlin and History in general, he showed us around for almost 5 hours we saw everything from the balcony where Michael Jackson held his baby over to the actually place where Hitler committed suicide which ironically is now a pretty boring looking car park. The tour finished up around 5 pm and the only place we didn't get to see was the east side gallery, we found out this was only 3 train stops way so we went to check it out. this is amazing for those of you who don't know what it is, this is a part of the Berlin wall which a bunch of people have pained different artworks relating to peace ect. some of them were amazing, there was a part where everyone had signed there names so we thought we would add to it as well and of corse mike had to draw a wave on there. After 7 hours of walking around we were pretty buggered but couldn't pass up a night in Berlin so we went and had a couple of beers and a snitzel and made a night of it. The next day we were off to Rostock, but on the way our tour guide from the day before told us about Berlin's first concentration camp which was only 30min away so we made a detour and went and checked it out. There anrt lot of words to describe what we saw there it wasn't a very nice place, it was very erie ,the things that they did to the POW's were horrific, we spent about 3 hours there and thats was enough we both felt pretty sick so we left, i think that even though it was horrible to see, if you are ever in Germany or Poland you have to go to a concentration camp, it will defiantly open up your eyes and as our tour guide said "the more people that come and see and remember how terrible and horrific this event was hopefully this will mean this is never repeated " the rest of the day we didn't really talk much i think we were both a little in shock. once we got to Rostock we headed straight to the campsite, which was really beautiful after the day we have had. it was amongst a Forrest which had amazingly big trees but was right on the sand of the baltic sea(mike was pretty excited to see the ocean, and the waves were pumping… they were a whole 1/4 of a foot ). we had a pretty eairly night and the next mooring we went exploring in Rostock, this wasn't the most exciting place, we drove around for a while and stumbled across bottle shop called "Get Ranked land" were we found 20 x 500ml Beck Beer for $24aus and a 750ml bottle of Johnny walker green for $39 aus ,awesome, that night we went down to the beach and watched the sun set, it was beautiful. The next morning we thought we would head off to Hamburg. This was a cool city, it was rely clean and had really pretty buildings very different to Berlin, Hamburg is the richest city in Germany and you can really see it. It has a massive harbour and an amazing square with a massive really beautiful town hall, mike took about 40 photo's of it. the first day we were there we had a wonder round our selves, we saw a whole bunch of massive white swans and we later learned that the Swan was very special to the hamburgians, and it is even illegal to verbally insult them…of corse being in Hamburg we had to go find a Hamburger, we found this cute restaurant which was set up like a beach party they even had sand of the floor, and we managed to get the most amazing hamburger it was huge, and came with a big dollop of mayonnaise for you chips (this seems to be how you eat your chips in Germany) the next day we did another one of those free tours, it was really interesting to learn the history and stories behind the buildings we had seen the day before by our selves. mike couldn't help him self he had to ask the question "did hamburgers come from Hamburg" the lady laughed i guess she has heard this a million times and the answer fro everyone is, no. We wondered though cobblestone streets, alley ways and canals and we came across a pretty boring building that had a memorial sign on it stating all the concentration camps, we found out that this building which belonged to a pest control company, was the actually company that supplied the Nazi's with the toxic gasses which were used in the gas chambers for the holocaust. the company's Ceo's actually advised the Nazi's how to use the chemicals and what the lethal dose would be. after the tour we went down to check out the red-light district, this was well really seedy, i guess if it was a saturday night and the clubs were pumping it would be ok but on a monday afternoon it wasn't very nice and there were scary look people everywhere so we found the closest tube station and went back into the city centre and had a few beers. The next day we wanted to start to make our way to the Netherlands but as it was about 7 hour drive we thought we'd have a stopover for a night to break it up, the chose this place called osnabruk, which as about half way, wow we turned up at the campsite which looked ok to stat with, we started to get settled and then this transitive came walking down to talk to the manager, literally it had a really deep voice but was wearing a whole bottle of foundation and eyeshadow, and a skirt, it looked over and smiled at us, we really didn't know what to do, we kinda just looked at each other and tried not to laugh, we also had a permintae resident come up to us and start talking, he was a true west german, he kept saying the east germans were communist, im glad we were drinking Beck beer (as it's a west german beer) and didn't have an east german car, after talking to us for a little while, he said ok i have to find my 6 cats now they are wandering around somewhere, again we looked at each other and cheeresed to our second weirdo camp site. Were off to Amsterdam today, we left pretty early this morning about 8.30 well this is early for us anyway, we got our passports and all our info ready to cross the border and as we were driving mike said quick take a photo, there was a sign saying welcome to the Netherlands, that was it, that was the border, no stopping, nothing, just a sign, i hope the rest of the borders are like this…. Till next time…. (hopefully we survive amsterdam)