Germany

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As we arrived in our destination - Rostock the largest city in Northern Germany - late in the evening we headed straight round to our hotel. It was a bit of a shame that having made it this far around the world without staying in any major chain of hotels, we checked into the Hotel Irbis. Alas, there was not much that we could do about this as Rostock seems to have a dirth of hostels.

We got up early the next morning eager to see something of the city before we left on our way to Berlin. Rostock is a somewhat odd city. Its main attraction is by far in a way the city walls, and accompanying towers, which once defended the city. These walls have all largely been removed as they obstructed trade, either from the sea or the land. Whilst they are no longer complete, there are still large sections of the walls that are intact and it is a good way to see a lot of the other attractions in Rostock as they are all near the wall.
Of these other attractions the main one is the rather pretty and historic main square. This comes complete with what can only be described as a slightly obscene water fountain that probably shouldn’t be viewed by young children! It also had an impressive array of churches with some amazing steeples. However, the main attraction of any of the churches , eclipsing even the impressive organs and altars that characterised the Lutheran style churches, is the astronomical clock. Built hundreds of years ago the clock not only tells the time, it gives you the day, week and year along with the sign of the zodiac. It also calculates Easter every year up until about 2050 and, most impressively of all, is a march of the 12 disciples every day at noon.

After we had explored the sights of Rostock we grabbed our bags and caught the train from Rostock down to Berlin. Our train ride gave us the opportunity to see some of the German countryside. There were only about two differences from the German and the English countryside. Firstly it lacked the patchwork effect of the hedgerows that gives the UK countryside its distinctive flair; secondly it was littered with wind turbines. This was perfectly fine for me as I happen to like the look of them however, there will probably be some who are not so taken on them as I am.

Berlin’s main train station can accurately be described as a multi leveled glass behemoth. It was therefore not surprising, given the amazing skills we had displayed to date, that we got lost before we even left the station! Thankfully someone was able to show us to the subway station. It was therefore with some skill that we ended up instead on a bus heading over to the hotel.

It can always be a little dicey, staying in a staff training hotel as you can never be certain how much training they will have had prior to your arrival. Luckily for us, the staff in our training hotel were more than capable. Our evening was spent heading over to the one of the main shopping malls in central Berlin to pick up a guide book.

The next morning we headed out early in order to start the large walking tour around Berlin. This took in a lot of the main sights and attractions in Berlin. This clearly involved a lot of references to WWII and the cold war period. It was hard not to be affected reading the signs around checkpoint Charlie at the desperate plight of the East Berlin people as they attempted to flee from the East to the West and the hardships that they endured under the Soviets reign. It was also a testament to them that, despite being faced with military responses they continued to protest about the country being divided.

They had also managed to create a thoroughly unique and thought provoking monument to the atrocities of the Holocaust. Granted when I first saw the odd memorial, which looks largely like a lot of concrete blocks on a bumpy hill, I did not realise that it was a memorial, but I was later assured that it was. After more stops at the Brandenburg gate, the Berliner Dom (Berlin Cathedral) and the Reichstag (among others) and I was beginning to wonder if there would ever be an end to the sights in Berlin!

After spending an enjoyable, if frantic, day in Berlin, we picked up the rental car and headed for the greener pastures of Lübbenau, in the Spreewald. This seemed a fantastic idea after a day a long of sight-seeing in the city. Alas, it was not such a good idea in practice, to turn up in a small countryside village when there was a music festival going on. Soon enough we were standing in the nearby town of Lübben, still desperately looking for some accommodation. Eventually, after much searching, we found somewhere in what was effectively the upstairs of the landlady’s house. Still it was quite nice, had some comfy chairs and a bathroom bigger than half the rooms we had stayed in in the past 5 months.

The next day we were met with dark clouds, but, after a little while, the sky cleared and we had a roasting hot day as we wandered around in the countryside heading from Lübben along the gherkin path to somewhere I can’t remember. This path was the start of what would be a running theme of cucumber and gherkin based names – in an area that apparently produces 400,000 tonnes of cucumbers a year.

The walk itself could only have been better if I had pre-armed myself with some hayfever tablets. Alas, I had failed to do so and was soon reduced to a teary eyed sniveling mess. Nevertheless it was really good to be out walking in the countryside after all of the time we had spent recently in big cities. We were walking in some amazing scenery, along beside the Spree River, which was good really because otherwise it might have been a slightly dull affair as the only difficulty to the walk was finding the path through some long grass. It was also a slight shame that we hadn’t realised all the shops in the village were closed on a Sunday, leaving us unfortunately picnic-less in the woods! Fortunately we were able to find a nice little café/pub on a camping site just before we headed back to Lübben.

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Photos

Astronomical Clock
Rostock

Holocaust Memorial
Berlin

Comfy Chair
Lübben