All posts tagged: Germany

One more dash around Berlin

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How quickly it rushes by, before you know it your time is almost up in Berlin! We’re re-covering a bit of territory today, and hoping to just wander a bit. First call is coffee and breakfast, then by U-Bahn to our first drop, Topographie des Terrors, which tells the story, in all its chilling detail, of the rise of the Nazi Party. Housed on the block where Nazi Germany’s most feared instituions – the security services, the Gestapo and the SS once stood, it is a sobering reminder of what can happen when democracy does astray. The remains of the former torture cells are used to mount an exhibition chronicling Nazi war crimes, especially against the Jews. Somber stuff, the whole place is jam packed with information, quite overwhelming in its detail. Pretty essential viewing! Keeping the theme going, we traveled to the mainly Jewish centre, formerly Spandauer Vorstadt,  just north of centre. Walking the streets we passed the Grosse Hamburger Memorial to concentration victims, right outside the rusty gates to the old Jewish Cemetery, …

Potsdam

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Time for a small detour out of Berlin today, some 30kms away to Potsdam, summer vacation jaunt for the Royals of days gone by. But first one must fuel the fire, so another cafe for breakfast, and a ripper at that. We are quickly discovering Berlin’s love for coffee, and have found another beauty just up the road from home. Plus, parked out the front has to be the crappiest car in Germany. It fair dinkum looks like its just been pulled from the river, covered in mold, grit and grime. Remarkably, it still drives, evidently! We didn’t witness this miracle, but the staff assured me it does in fact start! There’s an article about it on the counter inside, but our waitress was Dutch and couldn’t read it, or explain this wonder of modern mechanics! Anyway, breakfast was fabulous, so much so the wasps attacked in number. Germany is in the grip of drought and wasps are in plague proportions, dive bombing anything sweet. Evidently they dont like croissants, which is reassuring! Fueled, we …

Hamburg

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And we’re off again, mixing this trip up between ‘us’ time in Hamburg & Berlin, frolicking in the French Alps with a bunch of Aussies, then to Paris again, moving to Brugge and finishing in Amsterdam. We are super excited about this trip, for which the planning started two years ago when we paid our deposit for the tour du Mont Blanc, having to get in that far in advance to secure our time slot of September 2018. It’s only a short walking season, so slots are precious, and popular. We can’t thank Maddy enough for having it on her ‘bucket list’, thus forcing our hand to join her on what promises to be an epic walk through, what appears to be, a spectacular countryside. We have heard nothing but glowing reviews on this walk, and we await the start with eager anticipation. The great thing about doing this walk is it enables you to add on travel before and/or after, which is what we have done, visiting Germany, Belgium and Amsterdam for the first …