Berlin and Potsdam

I have Odysseus, my Vstorm, parked out in the cold, drizzly rain (hope he doesn't mind), while I am cozy warm in my room in the Hostel.

Each day, I wake up thinking I will head off toward Poland, and each day I look out the window, see the rain, and say: "Nah. Poland can wait. I'm not riding in this weather." Instead, I have been exploring the heck out of Berlin. Mostly, I have been taking tours led by young university students from the United Kingdom. They are here working on on a PhD in history (or some other subject). The tours have been excellent.  Meeting place for them is at the Brandenburg Gate.

The first tour I took told us all about the Hitler years. We stood on top of the bunker where he committed suicide. Now a parking lot is built over the bunker. Germans wanted to erase all memory of him and of those terrible years. After he was dead, his body was burned so that nobody could come see it.

Just down the street is all that is left of the infamous Berlin Wall. What a brutal time in history that thing represents.

Around the corner and down the street is Checkpoint Charlie. It was the only crossing between East and West Berlin. There is nothing there these days except souvenir stands. I didn't even take a picture. I did take a picture of this guy, though. There are hundreds of these pedal cabs running around, taking tourists here and there. There are also lots of people zipping around on bicycles. I guess with 27% unemployment, a lot of Berliners can't afford a car.

Today, I took the train to Potsdam. Here is a picture of the palace where Stalin, Churchill and Truman met to divide up Germany and Berlin at the end of the War. See the red star? Stalin had that planted just to show the other two guys they were on his territory.

The "Wall" ran right through Potsdam. The orange pole shows where it once was. The grassy strip between my camera and the wall was a "No Man's Land". Try to escape through there and you got shot. Maybe you can see the machine gun "tower" just to the right in the picture. It is just to the left of the blue sign.

Here is the "Bridge of Spies" across which the Soviets and Americans would swap spies back in the day. There is a marker right in the middle which shows the demarcation between Soviet and American territories. This bridge was opened to the public the day after the Berlin Wall fell, and it has been open ever since.

Potsdam is a very interesting place. It was the home of the German Kaisers, and it has some beautiful buildings and palaces. The Soviets let the place fall apart, but now it has been renewed (tax money hard at work). Probably the most beautiful of all the palaces there is Sans Souci. It was built by Fredereck the Great who, among his many accomplishments, introduced Europe to the potato. Here is his grave. Can you guess what people put on it? You got it: potatoes

This internet connection has slowed to a crawl, so I am going to shut down this post. It probably is not all that interesting to most people anyway. I plan to get back on the road tomorrow, so maybe I will have more motorcycle tales to tell in my next post.

Bye for now,
Ron

On the road to Berlin

It is time to leave Stefan's house in Heidelberg. Everybody is finished working on their motorcycles and finished with their packing (All but Ruth and Terrick from Quebec -- they are doing a major overhaul on their two bikes, getting them ready to ship by plane to Vancouver, and then to ride them down through Utah toward home).

We all left about the same time.  First Kelly headed off toward Spain by way of Italy.

 

 

Followed later by David who left for the Frankfurt Airport to catch his long flight back home to Australia.



 

 

And then Vinnie and Noel left, all loaded down, to ride toward Prague.

 



And then me. I plan to motor north and east toward Berlin.  Thanks for taking my picture, Mary.

I like taking the back roads. Even the most narrow lanes are paved in Germany. A lot of my trip will be through the "Walds" or "forests" northeast of Frankfurt and up toward Berlin.

I like camping -- I have not found any public campgrounds in Europe, but there are scads of private camping sites. All you have to do is look for a camping sign (or key camping in as a search into your GPS) and, once there, pull up to reception and sign in.

I had a very, very nice campsite for my first night on the road. There were only four of us there: a lady in a tiny tent who is hiking through Europe; a young man from Oregon who is bicycling through Europe; and a retired couple in an enormous camper (I don't know how they can afford the European gas prices for that big rig).

This campground was right outside Buchenwald, the infamous German concentration camp. Do you remember that "Wald" means "forest"? Well, Buchenwald means "Beech Forest". It was a very popular place in the woods back in the day, and the people who lived in the neighborhood had absolutely no idea what was going on there during the War.  Thousands of prisoners were starved or hanged or tortured to death in Buchenwald, and when they died, their gold teeth were removed and they were cremated in these ovens.

After the American Army liberated Buchenwald, the people from the surrounding communities were rounded up and made to tour the facilities.  They saw piles of dead bodies, the crematoriums, and the places were weird operations and experiments were done on the prisoners. They also saw the camp commandant's mansion built by slave labor, and the private zoo for his children paid for by money extorted from the prisoners. I bet there were very few dry eyes among the general populace on that tour.

Back on the road, I headed for Berlin. Unfortunately, the fog rolled in and so did the rain. The narrow lanes were too dangerous for this old man, and so I rode the autobahn. I didn't much like zipping along at 70 mph in the center lane while passing slow trucks in the right lane and being passed by cars going twice my speed in the left lane.

So, I'm in Berlin. I knew that with the rain there was no camping for me tonight --- but where is a man going to stay in a big, strange city. I stopped at a rest area, texted my wife back home in Illinois on my cell phone, and had her find a place for me on the internet (modern life is amazing). She texted back an address of a place that looked good to her, I put the address into my GPS, and now here I am at the "Backpacker's Hostel".  The place is beautiful. Thanks Patrice. You did good.

At 55 Euros, it is 5.5 times the price of camping, but I have a nice dry room, a hot shower, and a comfortable bed. Life is good.

So I'm off to bed (snore). Gotta get up early tomorrow. There is a lot of exploring to do here in this big, historical city.

More later,
Ron