We drove out of the
Black Forest to Waldkirch early to a Ford dealership, hoping to have Dusty
looked over. After a look under the hood and a quick drive around the block,
they decided there was nothing wrong with him (we were annoyed as every time he
gets hot there is a knocking sound in the clutch and occasionally the
accelerator sticks). We took a phone number off them (for Ford Dealership
details in Germany) and decided to drive onto Rust, to spend the day at Europa
theme park.
Europa Park was
amazing. Much better than Eurodisney, it was divided into European countries
and was decorated to reflect each countries point of difference. The first ride
we took was the Silver Star, designed by Mercedes Benz. Given it had no big 360
degree loops I decided to join James. It turns out it was the highest (73
metres) and fastest (130km/hour)ride in Europe. I was shaking for the next half
an hour it was so intense! It did not help we were in the back row.
After this experience
the rest of the rides were a breeze! 11 Rollercoaster’s in all and we did 9 of
them (the last two were for small children). Our favourite was the Blue Fire,
which accelerated you immediately into a high turn that twisted you left on the
way down before a 360 degree loop. And we also rode our first wooden roller
coaster with an insane drop whilst maintaining a really high speed. We were
there riding rides solid from 10am-8.30 pm until the point of exhaustion!
Definitely James’ favourite day of the trip so far. Tired, we spent the night
free camping outside a Petrol station alongside other campervans.
We drove onto to
Stuttgart and visited the Porsche Museum (choosing this over the Mercedes Benz
museum). It was a really interesting and interactive museum with great stories
about the family run business. We had photos taken in a Porsche 911 and had
another tasty lunch of schnitzel and currywurst here. We drove on towards
Nuremburg, stopping 50km East of Stuttgart to a camping ground in Essingen. The
campground was lovely and we had the biggest pitch yet (it could have held 4
Dusty’s). James was particularly fond of the two tabby cats walking around the
campsite.
The next day we
arrived in Nurenburg and headed straight for the Documenstrum-a museum held in
one of the old Nazi buildings Hitler built to host his Nazi meetings. The
museum spoke of Hitler’s rise and fall and showed footage of the buildings in
use, all supersized but bleak and ugly to look at. Afterwards we walked around
some of these buildings, it was very easy to imagine what it would have been
like. Interestingly, these buildings were left standing to remind us of their
past but at the same time they are put to some use, albeit a road or a football
field or a park. Grass was growing out of the sides of the buildings so it was
clear that although they are left standing there was no significant care of
attention given to them.
We checked into our
campground, which turned out to be around the corner (and still on old Nazi
territory), which was a sobering feeling. And at a cost of 32 euro’s, our most
expensive campground to date. Annoyingly they did not have great facilities,
but as it was the closest to town they were able to mark the price up. We also
spotted our first woodpecker there. We took the underground into town and
walked around the Old Town, another beautiful setting (I imagine the Christmas
markets here would be beautiful). We also stopped for dinner sampling delicious
smoked sausages and pork knuckle.
Given Berlin was
around 400km away, we drove the next day, most of the day but did stop at a
small university town called Bamburg to sample their own local beer-smoked
beer. We walked through the Old Town and found a pub famous for their beer. You
could get white or dark beer but as our waitress spoke little English we got
what we were given-dark beer and a ploughman’s platter. It smelt smoked and
tasted like bacon. It was so tasty we bought a six pack of both to take
home. We drove on closer to Berlin
and free camped outside a service station, huddled between trucks, other
campers and caravans. I managed to cook an Austrian-German-Netherlands dish in
the van called heaven and earth-mashed potato with bacon, onion, pear and
butter. Was not as good as our first sample of this dish three years ago but
tasty all the same.
We arrived in Potsdam
the next day, which is a town just outside Berlin. We took a ferry cruise in an
old steamboat up the Tiefer Sea past many of the old Royal Palaces. After, we
walked through Sanssouci Park to view the impressive Sanssouci Palance and
gardens, which was so grand it reminded us of Peterhof Palace and gardens in St
Petersburg, Russia. After snacking on currywurst and ice creams we made our way
back to the campground for an early night.
The next three days
(and four nights) we spent in Berlin. The first day we joined a Bike tour which
was great for orientating us to the city itself and took us past the major
monuments; the 200m remains of the Berlin wall, the Jewish memorial, Checkpoint
Charlie (the USA manned border that divided the East from the West) and we also
enjoyed a tasty lunch of bratwurst and meatloaf, beers and topped off with a
nice slice of apple cake. We had a great tour guide (an English girl who came
out for a weekend and ended up staying) and some great people on the tour. We
met a nice couple from Farrow Islands (an island between Demark and United
Kingdom which is its own country) who were also travelling around Europe but
were backpacking instead. And some very funny twin gentlemen in their 60’s from
New York, who fought with each other the whole way around. It reminded me of my
brothers fighting with each other as kids! We left the tour and went up the
large Television tower built by the East as a landmark of dominance, or so it
was suggested. At 368m high it had a great view of Berlin. Given the communist
rule until 1990, the city reminded us a lot of Russia, with large roads and
lots of open space and huge bland buildings. We spent the evening at a local
pub watching the Olympics (with some Brits) and saw Ussain Bolt win the 100
sprint-yet again.
The next day we
visited the Topography of Terror-the former site of the Secret Service and
Gestapo Police in World War Two. We learnt about the goings on inside the
building itself, which held people in cells and it highlighted the way they
used humiliation and torture to those who did not support the Nazi party.
Pretty ugly and heavy information but very interesting learning. We balanced
this by spending the afternoon at Berlin Zoo, one of the World’s top 10 zoos.
It was great and they had some neat displays, such as the hippos with a glass
wall under the water so you could watch them when immersed. We also saw some
amazing birds; condors, owls and eagles, plus some very funny and strange
looking monkeys, mainly from South America. Shame they didn’t have any kiwis in
the nocturnal section.The last day we spent
at the Jewish memorial, which had a great display of Jewish life pre and post
war and some very personalised sections where they showed you the lives of 15
Jewish families from across Europe that were affected. This showed that whole
families were lost in the holocaust, just so devastating.
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We walked back to Checkpoint Charlie and then onto the Stasi Museum,
which showed files of people who attempted to cross the wall from East to West
and were caught. Then onto the DDR museum which showed how life was during
communist rule. All really interesting. After more snacks on bratwurst, we
headed home, too exhausted to try out the nightlife.
