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Published: December 24th 2009
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Over the Oresund Bridge and we arrived back in Mainland Europe. We had planned to spend a few days in Copenhagen to finish off our tour of Scandinavia before the autumn weather started to set in. Copenhagen is a relatively compact capital city and we were able to wander around all the major sites in just a couple of days. First stop was the little mermaid - as small and unprepossessing as expected, but the symbol of the city nonetheless, she was mobbed by tourists wanting to be snapped with her. We spent quite a few hours walking around Christiania, the “free state” within Copenhagen, a 1960’s alternative social organisation, ogling some of the more unusual dwellings, including a cut-diamond shaped house suspended over a lake and some spectacular tree-houses. Unfortunately with photography banned in Christiania, you’ll have to take our word for it.
As heavy rains arrived, we left Copenhagen and headed towards Naestved to visit the Holmegaard glass factory - a particular favourite of Lyndsay’s - but unfortunately we arrived to find it a victim of the recession and the company had closed due to bankruptcy. Disappointed, we headed out onto the Mon peninsula to visit Mons Klint
- Denmark’s rival to the white cliffs of Dover. Annoyed that we couldn’t get into official parking due to a motorhome ban (don’t they want any motorhome visitors??) we parked up in the surrounding national park area and walked up to the cliffs.
The southern end of the Zealand Island of Denmark is very rural and with an unremarkable landscape and nothing to keep us there, we headed straight for Rodby to catch the Ferry over to Puttgarden in Northern Germany. We boarded the ferry straight away and were amazed when a full sized train rolled on beside us - the ferry boat having train tracks in its hull so that rail passengers did not have to disembark.
Rolling off beside the train at the other side, we arrived in Puttgarden and headed straight for Lubeck - home of marzipan and the highest number of church spires in one town. The gradually subsiding Holstentor gateway makes a fine entrance to the city and with so much gothic architecture about the place, it was a real shame the lousy weather stopped us from doing much sightseeing.
Leaving Lubeck, we continued heading further into Eastern Germany and next stop
was Wismar, a hanseatic centre of the middle ages, with lots of brick gothic architecture. Badly damaged during WW2, the town had a run-down neglected feel to it and similar to many other smaller towns we visited in the former GDR, felt like it was slowly being abandoned with many boarded up houses and businesses.
We left the region of Mecklenburg and headed towards Berlin. After a few weeks of damp, cold weather, we enjoyed four days of glorious weather in Berlin and made the most of the opportunity to explore the capital city on our bikes. Apart from the obvious sights such as the Reichstag, Bradenburg gate, Checkpoint Charlie and the modernist Sony centre at the Potsdamer Platz, one of the most chilling exhibitions we visited was located at Prinz-Albrecht Strasse, the most notorious addresses during WW2 where the three scariest Nazi departments had their headquarters, the Third Reich’s security service, the Gestapo and the SS. With all the buildings pulled down after the war, the area lay between the west and east borders and became a neglected waste ground. Now being redeveloped, the exhibition was sited above the still intact torture chambers at the site, with roof
sections cut out to give a view of the chambers below. This open air exhibition follows the rise of the Nazi party, the implementation and the effects of their policies in horrifying grim detail.
Sobered, we head into western Berlin towards the Kasier Wilhelm Gedachtnis Church. The partly bombed ruins remain as a reminder of WW2 but now with a new octagonal glass brick church grafted onto it. Catching it on the hour, the bells are some of the loudest and longest we have ever heard.
As we wandered back to the camperstop that night, we had to detour around several police roadblocks at the opera house, only to be passed a few minutes later by several big black merc’s - one delivering Angela Merkel.
Our final stop in Berlin was the Modern art museum, an eclectic mix of modern art from the 1900’s onwards, the tone set by the huge entrance hall containing an original train carriage and track lines used for transportation of prisoners to the concentration camps.
We left Berlin and headed for nearby Potsdam, and spent a day exploring the vast Park Sanssouci, a former royal summer residence and the site of
the Potsdam conference in 1945. Finding much to do in the town, we stayed another day and wandered around an incredible residential estate called Alexandrowka. Built in 1826 for 12 members of a Russian choir resident in the town, this small Russian enclave came complete with Pushkin fairy tale log cabins and a sugar pink Russian orthodox onion-domed Church. On the other side of town, near to where we had parked the van, we also came across the Gratas park, full of abandoned Soviet-era statues, former ties no longer celebrated in this region.
Having both developed stinking colds after leaving Potsdam, we holed up in the car park of Bocholt for a few days, an unremarkable town. Having visited much of the west and south of Germany in 2007, we decided to head back into Holland and booked into our favourite campsite to recharge our batteries for a while.
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