June 6

Our place was about 30 minutes from the Rotes Rathaus (Berlin’s red town hall) where we would meet Neil MacDonald. We bought a day pass for the transit system with a goal of meeting Neil and then starting our tour of Berlin.
Neil is active on the New Waterford and St Agnes Facebook sites and lives in a town not far from Berlin.

We arrived at Alexanderplatz and walked around. Berlin was mostly destroyed during the Allied Invasion in WWII. It was the headquarters of Nazi Germany so it was a target. The city has a new modern look and the building activity is significant.


Alexandria Bus/train station


Mike in Alexandriaplatz


Lunch on Alexandriaplatz


Beverly @ Rathaus


The Rathaus


Some features in Berlin are like Seattle.


A very tall tower in downtown. In Berlin it is a TV tower. Seattle has the Space Needle.


Seattle has so many cranes that it is sometimes referred to as the state bird. It looks like Berlin has even more.


Seattle has Bertha, the boring machine.

We met Neil and stopped for a . The stories of people and events in New Waterford started, the was good and the discussion took its own course. We talked a little about Berlin and what we had done outside New Waterford but it was mostly 4 hours about growing up there. My accent got thicker as we spoke and Beverly just watched.


Mike and Neil

After Neil left to take the train home, we took the local bus to some of the tourist highlights. Berlin was two distinct cities separated by “the wall” so it doesn’t have an old town core like many of the European cities.


Our bus


The 100 and 200 buses




An expanded sort of bicycle power


Brandenburg Gate




It is getting late

After a long day we took the train and bus back to our place. We stayed in an area of Berlin called Moabit. Berlin is a city of 3.5M people and although we were inside the ring road, we were still a 30 minute train ride from the tourist area.

June 7

Our goal for the day was to learn about East and west Berlin and visit “the wall” The Berlin wall surrounded the city of West Berlin to restrict travel to the west and was the symbol of the cold was that lasted from 1961 to 1989.

Artists of the cold war period were invited to paint on the wall as a memorial. The blank area shows that some artists refused and didn’t want that time to be remembered.







Kissing picture of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and East German president Erich Honecker. It was referred to as the deadly love.



For us, it was a great posing opportunity.


Our modern day equivalent on a wall in Lithuania. Trump and Putin.

Check point Charley was the main border crossing for Allied Military.
The wall was constructed through streets, parks and residential areas.


Then



Now


Beverly and Amy who we met on the streets of Berlin. Amy works for a tour company. She is from Birmingham and has only lived here for less than a year but still refers to the East and West.


Beverly sitting on where the wall once was. This bricked line shows up in many places in Berlin

Wall museum and a park in the death zone on the East side of the wall. Many East Germans were killed trying to get to West Germany.


The wall and the death zone

We visited lots of other sites and saw many things:



It might have been fun to stay here.

We stopped for a late dinner, not because we were hungry, but because we couldn’t move any more.


We did a lot of this in Berlin. It was very easy to get around.



We did a lot of this too. This first pedestrian crossing figures in the world to wear hats originated in East Germany 50 years ago. Surviving a post-reunification attempt to have them removed, the jaunty figures have since gained cult status.


These guys did NOT want their picture taken. But it is our adventure so here they are. Our "24 hour pass" as referred to in one tourist office purchased last night ran out at 3AM. Really, it is a day pass (not 24 hours) regardless at what time you purchase it. We were busted.


A little laugh while we were walking around.


When we arrived to our place, we had a glass of wine with Yuli and Marcus. Yuli is studying to be a pediatric surgeon and Marcus is a psychoanalyst. They are a very cerebral and friendly couple. We were very comfortable at their house.


Our place in Berlin


Our room -- books an bike helmets


Mike with Yuli and Marcus

The next day, our goal was to drive 550km to Sundern to visit Marta and Uwe, our friends we met in Norway on a motorcycle trip.

June 8

We were on the road by 8:00am. Berlin is a big city and it took us 45 minutes to get out of the city.

The road to Sundern is mostly Autobahn, so 130km/hour and a stop every hour and a half and we were there.

We arrived about 4:00 to Ferienhaus Blome. Our Airbnb hostess was Hildegard who welcomed us and showed us around. We had the whole house to ourselves. It was quiet with a nice patio. Great place to rest and just hang out if we had the time.



This is where we stayed

We met Marta and Uwe. We have kept in touch and the visited us last year in Washington.


Uwe at Mount Rainier last year

We had dinner at a local hotel that had a sister hotel In Kenya. It was African night.[/B]

Berlin! I love this city, I have been a few times. The first was in 1984 when I was in the Military and the wall was up. I was stationed in Spandau
I hope you managed to get up to the Tower, you get a 360 views the city and there was a restaurant up there too.
Keep up the good work Mike

Wayne

__________________
The Balkans
https://new.horizonsunlimited.com/poi_entity/8417

June 8,
Today,we went to Munster with Hike, Uwe,s sister, Uwe and Marta.. Munster is a very old city but many of the old buildings were damaged in the war. The city is noted for the many political negotiations taking place here and especially the Spanish Dutch Peace Treaty which established the country of the Netherlands.

Munster is a university city with 50,000 students and is the bicycling capital of Germany. 45% of the distance traveled in the town is by bicycle.


bikes


and more bikes









We visited Martin who is Uwe and Marta’s brother in law and Hike’s husband. His company sells seeds to the European farmer community. They have facilities for testing different strains and fertilizers and sprays. Very interesting and definitely no GMOs.

Marin gave us a tour of the fields of various strains of different grains.






That night we ate at a local restaurant that has been in the family for many generations.


At dinner with Uwe, Marta, Hike and Martin.

June 9

After breakfast with Uwe, we went back to our place to do laundry, some blog work and other errands. It is hard sometimes to fit in the time to do the day to day stuff on the road.

We stopped at a store near their house that sells only local goods: jams, mustard, honey, produce, dairy etc. They were taking the horses including two young ones born in April and May across the street to the pasture. It was fun to watch.






Uwe is the president of a sailing club and has been running it in different capacities for 15 years. He needed to stop by and take care of a little business. We went out to see the boat. The sun was shining and there was a little breeze……











We drove up to the local ski hill and climbed the TV tower for a 360 view. We didn't go up in the Berlin tower but we did see this one.



The area around Sundern is forested with lots of rolling hills, yet every square inch is used.


Mike and Uwe coming down. The viewing platform is halfway up the tower.

That evening we had a family dinner with the family. Uwe’s family live together in a complex of 4 dwellings. Helga, Uwe’s mother, still works as a tailor. Thomas, Uwe,s son is a carpenter, but he builds and installs prefab buildings. Hike works in a bank, and Marta runs a doctor’s office. Jan is Hike and Martin's son. The hospitality was wonderful and we were privileged to be part of their family for a few days.


Back Row: Uwe Marta Martin
Front Row: Jan Mike Helga Hike Beverly

June 11
Today we are off to Heidelberg for the last leg of the trip. Uwe and Marta took their bike and drove the first 45km with us. It was like old times in Norway.




The trip to Heidelberg was 150 miles, half on the autobahn. An easy day riding. We stopped in at Stephan’s, talked to some bikers who were starting their trips, went to dinner, and went to our place to sleep as long as we could.

June 12 and 13

We had been to the Heidelberg area 9 previous times and never spent much time there. We wanted to see a bit more of the city. We stayed at an Airbnb. When we arrived it was starting to rain. Then spectacular thunder and lightening. We stayed in and watched the European soccer championship games (Croatia and Turkey) in German then went to bed.

We took the bus to old town Heidelberg and walked around to see the sites.













People were getting all geared up for the soccer game between Germany and Ukraine that started at 9PM. We had dinner and a on the square but didn’t stick around for the game.

The bus was going to be a 15 minute wait. We decided to hop on the rail tram back because we had never ridden it.