Today was another great day of riding. For the third day in a row, the temperatures reached the 30s but today, we stayed away from the autobahns, which made for a much more enjoyable time. Billiard table smooth twisty A roads, threading their way through pine forest and open farmland, made for a most enjoyable time.
Our first POI stop today was at Checkpoint Alpha, the Helmstedt/Marienborn border crossing between The West and Russian occupied Germany, the German Democratic Republic (GDR). I imagined it was just a few old buildings that you could photograph through a fence but, it turns out, it is quite a tourist attraction, with coach loads of people dropping by. There's a huge site, with many buildings and lots of information boards dotted around to explain what each building was and what went on there. It was very interesting and such a surpise to me. I had a fairly good look round but could easily have spent more time there than we did.
A few miles up the road was our planned fuel/coffee stop. As it turned out, it was just coffee at McDs, as the petrol station didn't have any E10 Unleaded and we didn't like the price of the Super Unleaded, Grizzly had quite a few miles left in the tank, so we filled up further along, with the cheapest E10 we've had in Germany, €173.9 per litre. From there, it was full steam ahead for Berlin, with a quick stop at a Netto supermarket (sorry Elly), to get a snack and some water. The latter needed, as the temperature had gradually risen into the low 30s. This is the best weather the two of us have experienced in Germany and we're hoping it will continue, for another half day of riding on Saturday, before we enter Poland. The Netto car park unexpectedly threw up a sample of GDR's finest engineering, as you can see from the photo below.
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| A real life Trabbi! |
Early impressions of Berlin were favourable but it soon turned to shit. With about 5 miles to navigate to the hotel, on the other side of the city, we encountered road closure after road closure, diverting this way and that, sitting in queues of traffic moving nowhere fast. Ginny was showing the temperature at 34 degrees, so we were both hot and bothered. Finally we broke away from the traffic and made it to our hotel. Grizzly reckoned we probably spent 2 hours covering what should have been, the last 5 miles. How many more than that we ended up doing, I have no idea. It's just unfathomable how the authorities have allowed so manjy road closures on so many important arteries into and through city, at the height of summer.
Freshened up, dinner was taken 3 doors down from the hotel. We had a table on the pavement, allowing us to watch the locals go about their business, as we relaxed with Berliner Pils or Weisse Beer. To eat, we both had Weiner Schnitzel, my third in 3 days. I fecking love schnitzel!
We've now covered about 730 miles since Sittingbourne. Not bad for 3 days, eh?
We have no riding tomorrow, as we shall be sightseeing. Hopefully, the thunder and lightning going on as I write, will have stopped by the time we head out. More about our 'day off' tomorrow.
That's all for now.
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