Fri, 18 Jul 2003

author Tim	location Billund, Jutland, Danmark
posted 09:43 19/07/03 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Deutschland/Deutschland 1 ( all photos )

Kiel and Flensburg ( 5 photos )
We set out north, destination Danmark. This took us through Kiel where we stopped for our last naughtly McDonalds stop while we could still afford it.
Onwards North, we found cheap-ish fuel in Flensburg, before passing through the rather intimidating border into Danmark.

author Tim	location Billund, Jutland, Danmark
posted 08:52 19/07/03 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Deutschland/Deutschland 1 ( all photos )

Lübeck and Timmendorfer Strand ( 9 photos )
Sebastian was getting up early for a lecture, so we had breakfast before getting our things organised and updating the website. We left with Jessi at about 10:30, dumping our things in Rosie before going to what would have to class as the world's cheapest supermarket, Aldi.
Actually, I'm sure the ones in Australia are cheaper, it's just that Aldi is so much cheaper than where we have been shopping recently that it was quite a shock. Needless to say, we stocked up fairly heavily for not much money with enough pasta, sauce, rice and anything that won't go off to last us through expensive Scandinavia.
We needed to get our spare tyre fixed since the episode on the ferry, and finally located a convenient place in the suburbs of Hamburg. Communicating with the staff was quite interesting at best, as only one of them spoke a little bit of English, but in the end we organised two replacement tyres (the old ones were very worn), and a spare from the old ones. We should get the other two changed at some stage in the future, but they are quite pricey.
Onwards from there, we headed up the A7 motorway to take the scenic route across to the city of Lübeck. We located the Park and Ride on the outskirts, fired up the GPS and got the bus to the Hauptbahnhof (central train station). From there, it was a quick walk across the river which surrounds the city, past the impressive huge, inwards leaning gate tower to the city itself.
Besides a nice walk around the town square where we ate some fresh raspberries and a strange street with British flags everywhere, by far the highlight of the town was a trip to the Lubecker Marionettentheater Fritz Fey, a puppet theatre. Everyone else there was either a child under four or looking after one, so we felt a little out of place. However, combining our almost total lack of understanding of the language with a great display of puppetry, a plot we have no idea about, and fifty or so three year olds constantly screaming out the Deutsch equivalent of "behind you!" (we think) whenever the goodie was looking for the baddie was a sure-fire winner. Just laugh when everyone else does and you will be fine.
With the combination of the American military's satellites and Liz's excellent memory for streets, we decided to walk the three kilometres or so back to Rosie at the Park and Ride and save some money. Being quite a hot day, we grabbed some water first, and were tempted to stock up at The Bierspezialist we found along the way, but made it in the end.

It wasn't far from there at all to the village of Timmendorfer Strand. This was on our destination list due to it being where Liz's father Ingo was born. However, we suspect the town he remembers is not very similar to what exists today. Plenty of high-rise tourist accommodation, expensive beach huts, shops selling lots of things nobody really needs and map-dispensing machines which eat your money. Should have learned my lesson after Chester, but I'm a sucker for information. As it turned out, the actual Information Centre was right behind it, but was only given away by the tinyest of plaques. We dropped in and were directed to Vogelpark - which was essentially a carpark nearby to camp in.
Driving there, we relaxed for a while before going off for a wander down to the little harbour. If you look around hard enough, this is still a great little place. As we walked around the beach, past plenty of boats and trying to ignore those trampoline-with-bungie cord tourist traps, we found what is almost a different town.
Back to relax at the van until the morning.

author Tim	location St. Pauli, Hamburg, Deutschland
posted 10:05 17/07/03 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Deutschland/Deutschland 1 ( all photos )

Around Hamburg ( 26 photos )
After late wake up, we took a train into the city, now experts in buying tickets, at least for this city. Sebastian showed us around a few of the city's sights, including the impressive St Michels church, the city's old dock area (now home to residential areas and the Hamburg Dungeon), the bombed and not rebuilt St Nicolai church (quite a moving experience), then a drink by the city's central lakes.
From there, Sebastian had to go to work for an hour or so, so Liz and I amused ourselves wandering into shops, around the Rathaus with its quaint fountain in the central courtyard, and generally not doing too much due to the heat.
We met up again and saw what appeared to be the Indonesian Navy band wandering through town, watched that for a while before escaping down to the underground once again. Sebastian took us down to the docks for a ferry ride along the river to the Fischmarkt, a good cheap way to see the river Elbe. From the market, we wandered down to watch the Elbtunnel in amazement. It is an old tunnel under the river, which now has lifts at each end for cars to be hoisted twelve metres up to road level. It's amazing that it still survives in this day and age, but plenty of cars were being hoisted around.
Sufficently entertained by that, we wandered back to the flat. Dinner was rung-in Pizza, since Jessi is studying for exams, and we didn't want to spend too much.
A much more tame night was spent at a local pub where one of Sebastian's friends was DJing for the first time, and learning just how fanatical the Deutsch people are about table football, as Liz and I were reduced to complete humiliation at the hands of Sebastian and a random local keen to show off his goalkeeper high-kicks to score.

author Tim	location St. Pauli, Hamburg, Deutschland
posted 09:21 17/07/03 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Deutschland/Deutschland 1 ( all photos )

Bremen, into Hamburg ( 21 photos )
We awoke wanting to have a look around the city of Bremen, so that's pretty much what we did. Liz drove Rosie out of the park and up the road to a parking lot, which appeared to have people wandering to a nearby beach. More on that later.
A walk back up the road past the park and a little further brought us to a tram stop. The driver waited while we ran and jumped in, and we expected to be asked to pay. No such luck. In fact, try as we might, we couldn't work out how to pay for the ride. Many cities appear to have chosen their own way of accepting fast payments with a special card, thus increasing the speed of payment for the locals who use it a lot. Unfortunately, by doing this it means that the tourists, such as us, have absolutely no idea how it works.
Perhaps a conductor would come and fire some Deutsch at us we thought, but no such luck. We alighted near the centre of town for a look around. With Liz around, it's hardly suprising that we found a chocolate shop fairly quickly and made a purchase which was quickly opened and "tested".
Attempting to see some things around the place, we wandered around the pretty central pedestrianised section of town, taking in quite a few of the sights, such as the Rathaus (town hall), obligatory over-bearing St Petri-Dom cathederal and plenty of street cafes. Also, we wandered down the Bötterstrasse, a re-created medieval alley with lots of little shops attempting to snare the tourists in. We managed to avoid spending more money, heading instead to the Schnoorviertel. This was a similar place, instead focusing on the history of fishing in the area. There were some great little shops and alleys however, and we wandered in and had a look around a music shop, where Liz bought a notebook.
Lunch was next, and we attempted to decypher the menu of the cheapest looking place in the central square, eventually settling on zwei rostbratwurst, meaning two large sausage things in two tiny bread rolls. Oh, and zwei Coca-Cola to wash that down. We're getting better and better at spending as little as possible in these places, including dodging the expensive tomato sauce in favour of the free mustard.
We needed to post some things at the post office, so we of course needed to find it. Liz cheated and asked for directions in English, which at least meant that we found the place alright. Letters sent, it was time to head back to the van. Again we attempted to find a way to pay for the tram, but no luck. We promise to spend more in the next city to make up for free-loading on Bremen's public transport.
Re-tracing our steps, we got back to the van and decided to find out what the fuss wass all about with the beach nearby. By now the carpark was overflowing with people, so there had to be something interesting going on. We wandered down the forest path for a while, and eventually it opened up to the beach with lots and lots of people. With a difference. We had wandered into a nudist beach. Trying to look unfazed, we walked a little while down to the beach itself, past people ordering ice creams, wandering down paths and playing games all stark naked. Deciding this was not for us, we turned and wandered back. Sorry, no photos from there are available.
Next on the itinerary was a drive into Hamburg, to meet and stay with friend Sebastian (and his girlfriend Jessi), who was an exchange student at Sydney Technical High School when I was there, and we got to know each other well due to his musical interests. We met them a little while ago when we were in Amsterdam the first time.
A hot drive later, we found our way into the middle of town via his directions, parked, and called him up to come find us for the last tricky part of our journey. We opened up all of the doors for some cool air while parked in a little back street awaiting him to wander down, which he did after not too long.
He guided us to a good parking spot just down the road from his place in Paul-Rossen Straße, St Pauli, where we climbed the stairs to arrive at the great little flat they live in.
After a while of cooling down, he took us out for a wander around the western area of the city to get familiar with the layout of the place. This included a wander down the nearby Große Freiheit, Hamburg's famous Red-Light district (quite an eye-opener, even after Amsterdam), then down to the Fischmarkt, which still operates on Sundays. Wandering along the Elbe River, we cut back through the city along the Reeperbahn, then grabbed a few European plugs and adaptors at a cheap electrical place on Talstraße.
After a genuine Deutsch dinner (or so we are told!) prepared by Sebastian, he had a band rehersal for his band Mindcuffed. Not having any other plans, we tagged along. This involved a ride through the city on the underground train to a place in an industrial area (with a few brave souls living nearby) where rooms were rented out for bands to use as practice space. Luckily we had Sebastian with us, as he had enough trouble figuring out how to buy a ticket, so I hate to think how we would have done.
Liz played Wonderboy on the laptop as I bravely attempted to insert some saxophone lines on Sebastian's Alto we had brought along into the band's heavy guitar riffs. It was good playing again, as I don't have my sax with us and am missing playing it after almost a year(!).
After the rehersal, we came back to the flat before heading out for a night at one of the local bars. This involved riding there on bikes - quite an experience with four of us on only two bikes. Liz manged to balance well on the back of our bike, better than I can say for myself riding it as we swerved and nearly topped while dodging traffic. I didn't care what gear I was in or give more than a passing thought to the road rules, but it was a huge amount of fun.
The night was passed chatting to various friends of people, who, on discovering that we were from Sydney were suprised and interested, but mostly a little worried that they would have to speak English to us. This didn't stop some whose English was very good (as in far better than our Deutsch), and we had a great chat to lots of people, not even noticing that the clock ticked over to something like 3am before we decided that pushing the bike back was a better idea than trying to ride it.

author Tim	location St. Pauli, Hamburg, Deutschland
posted 19:20 16/07/03 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Deutschland/Deutschland 1 ( all photos )

Driving into Bremen ( 1 photo )
(Continued from Netherlands 2)
Coming across the border, as always, is new and exciting thing. We have both been quite interested in Deutschland since learning (or at least trying to) the language at school. Also, Liz's father Ingo came out to Australia from the country at age six, so she has wanted to see what the place is all about.
As a side note, you may note that we are calling it Deutschland, not Germany. From speaking to Sebastian (our friend in Hamburg), the word Germany is only ever used when communicating with people speaking English. So, we are going to try, where possible, to use the local names of places and things as we launch further and further into the non-English speaking world.
So, back to the border crossing - besides small signage style changes, and the obligatory speed-limit changes (you mean we can attempt to push Rosie to 130kph now? No thanks!), not much is noticable thanks to EU semi-standardisation of most things.
We pulled in to get some fuel and cool down at a road-side services, where I was rapidly required to test out my Deutsch on the attendant to pay for fuel. Back on the road, it wasn't far before we noticed the first occurance of the word Autobahn, accompanied with a sign showing the number 130 with a line through it. If you haven't worked out by now, that means there are no speed limits. We kept Rosie to a sensible 100kph, as chosen by her lack of fifth gear, lack of overtaking power, tendincy to swerve all over the road at the slightest breeze (let alone taking over a truck), and massive fuel consumption at anything faster.
As such, little dots in the rear-view mirror rapidly turned into screaming Audis and BMWs as they overtook, leaving a space-shuttle like slip-stream in their wake to rock us around.
And so it went as we drove ourselves into the city of Bremen. We had directions to a caravan park of which at least the first half were correct, but they rapidly turned into a work of fiction. We were able to follow the signs and arrive at Campingplatz Bremen, staffed by an extremely helpful woman keen to see that we had a great time wandering around the city by providing good advice and helpful directions.
Picking a space in the half-empty park was fairly easy, where we sat in the sun for a while before walking around to check out the BBQ (we would have to locate fuel for it), doing some washing, then cooking a Chicken Tonight with rice. The remainder of the night was spent watching the second half of the Lord of the Rings DVD, resulting us having watched the movie over two countries.

(customised)