Berlin has been an adventure! When we first got to the campsite we wanted to stay at they didn’t have any room but there was a hostel there as well which we ended up staying in for 2 nights. This worked out better for Aaron’s ankle anyway which by this time was quite sore & swollen. We debated going to the hospital but decided not to.

The next day we used public transport to visit my old neighbours Carsten & Verena. They took us out to lunch at a Turkish place & then Carsten took us sightseeing in their car. We saw the section of the Berlin wall that is still up, the Jewish memorial, the Brandenburg gate and the Reichstag.

The next day we set out to find a new campsite which proved more difficult than we thought it would be. It didn’t help that our gps had decided to give up. The first one we got to was full. By the time we got to the next one it was the reception was closed for 2 hours. ( a lot of caravan parks here have what’s called a middag pause, sort of like a siesta, no one is allowed to drive their cars & you have to be as quiet as possible) The carpark was a nice shady spot and it looked like the caravan park had room so we thought we would have lunch and read for a bit and wait for the reception to open. However once the reception was open & we walked through the caravan park to get there, we felt like we’d walked into a ghost town. There was literally no one there. There were caravans but no people. It was very creepy. There was someone at reception but they didn’t speak English & jus told us there was no room, even though there clearly was. We were pretty discouraged at this point but thinking back on it we are glad we didn’t stay at that weird place. We sat in the carpark a little while longer trying to figure out where to try next. Then I decided our van would look much better with a big dent in it by backing into a tree. While we were recovering from that a Polish family came up to us asking if we knew of any other campsites because they had been rejected by the creepy caravan park as well. We bonded over our mutual rejection & told them where we were going to try next. Thankfully the next caravan park was normal & had room. But that was Monday which we felt had been a bit of a waste of the day but anyway!

Tuesday we set out to do some more sightseeing. We did one of those hop on/hop off buses which meant Aaron didn’t have to walk as much & that was fun. We went to Checkpoint Charlie & the museum there which is filled with amazing stories of how people escaped from the East to the West. Things like homemade scuba tanks, two suitcases joined together to fit one person inside & a flying fox that was used along the power lines are some examples of how people escaped. Unfortunately the museum was very hot & stuffy and we didn’t spend as much time there as we would have liked to.

We found that without Carsten as our tour guide it was a bit harder to get by with my very limited German. We’ve been a bit spoilt in the Scandinavian countries where everyone speaks English. Here we get a very mixed response.

Wednesday we did some shopping & then had dinner at Carsten & Verena’s. I really liked the area where they lived, I probably could never live there myself, but it was cool to see. Its a very multicultural, busy, colourful area. We are finding it hard to imagine that cities like New York are going to be even bigger & even busier!

From Berlin we travelled south to stay in a castle hotel for my birthday. It’s a beautiful area and we’ve really enjoyed the luxury of a ensuite & comfortable bed. It’s fun to imagine what the castle would have been like hundreds of years ago. Yesterday we visited other castle ruins nearby. We’ve been here two nights now & are driving to Prague this afternoon which is only about 150kms from here.

Till then, Elky

Photos are still refusing to work, sorry!