Sat, 23 Aug 2003

author Tim	location Hotel and Camping am Wasser, Berlin, Deutschland
posted 09:26 CEST 25/08/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Deutschland/Deutschland 2 ( all photos )

Drive to Berlin ( 12 photos )
After loading up the bus, and cleaning the flat, we did one last run around Aldi before heading off.
However, we had one last stop in Hamburg - Liz's father Ingo's old house in Gryphiusstraße. We hadn't walked here earlier as it was quite a way from where we were staying. Liz took some photos around the area while I parked illegally (very busy area now), before we headed back through town.
It was a little harder than expected to locate the autobahn out of there, but in the end we were on our way to Berlin.
Some of our initial plans had included making it to the Berlin Love Parade, but in the end we didn't quite do that. Here we just drove and drove, through strange dust blowing of freshly-ploughed fields which looked like brown smoke in the distance.
It was interesting driving the bus again - a little more power, quite a bit less wobbly on the roads, but still being blown around in the strong winds like only a top-heavy high-top combi can.
Upon reaching Berlin, we drove down the western side towards one of the camp sites picked at random, the best of a bad bunch. This is the closest, and it is 15km out of town! I guess tourism has only become high on the priority list since 1990 or so, so perhaps this will improve with time.
After our drive, it was quite late in the day, so we decided against finding our way into town, instead opting to relax at our site by the river, and eat some bbq-ed steak cooked at the outdoor restaurant here. When it became apparent to the cook that he couldn't quite get his point across about what type of meat it was we were able to purchase off him, he completed the picture by snorting, making some truly great piggy noises.
Bill Bryson (the travel writer) describes travelling in foreign countries as being like a child once again. You don't know what the signs mean, people are saying, or what meat you are eating. It's nice when someone is willing to jump in and help out like that!

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