Day 15
Tuesday 11th November
Freiburg, Germany - Würzburg, Germany

 

GERMAN MOTORWAY AT SUNSET

Driving through the flat plains of the Rhine, Grandpa Pete and the Child Bride are now without language. German is incomprehensible to them, road signs meaningless. The traffic thickens with freight but is orderly. The unlimited speed in the fast lane separates the men from the boys. The men flash past insouciant and the boys bumble along together quite reasonably in the other two lanes.  Driving through flat plains punctuated by small villages clustered round their church spires, an easy day's driving slips by.

Gordon runs well, all that troubles is an irritating noise - close to the sound of a gaggle of mice knitting fuse wire with glass needles. Benign, it appears to be related to the position of the passenger in the seat and not engine-related. Just really annoying. 

Würzburg is unprepossessing and GP and the CB mess with the winning 'concentric circle' formula in favour of following tramlines. Right out of town.  Another fantastically helpful German points them in the right direction and they find signs to the campsite, Kalte Qelle.  Following a country track in the dark they come upon the river too abruptly and retrace their steps back to the correct turning and stick with the tarmac.

The welcome is a stark contrast to the night before. A curt signing in with just enough time to grab some tinned veg from the shop and they are pointed towards a pitch. This site has long term residents too, a workers camp.  The pair, with their Land-Rover-With-Tent-in-Roof, get some quizzical looks as the workers return home at the end of their shift.  Half an hour, and probably a beer or two later, the workers pass again, this time at full pelt, in their underwear only, heading for the shower block.

Grandpa Pete begins a battle with the washing machine that is to last well into the next day while the CB boils the tinned veg. They retreat to the tent with the laptop and a watch The Thirty-Nine Steps, letting Richard Donat transport them from Auf Weidersein Pet to 1930's Scotland.

Day 16 Wednesday 12th November
Würzburg, Germany - Leipzig, Germany

THE MOON OVER LIEPZIG

Dawn and sunlight flatter Kalte Qelle camp site. The sun has revealed the River Main, a huge barge pregnant with cargo sliding past gracefully and a bank of vineyards on the hill opposite. The womens' showers are still broken though and the Child Bride declines the offer to shower in the men's washrooms.  Würzburg is also much nicer by day, and as they skirt the old city walls they see wooden watchtowers and medieval-looking frescoes on house walls.

At lunchtime they stop in Bamberg.  Declared the 'best town in Germany' by the guidebook it is a collection of 17th and 18th century buildings scattered between river and canals and islets.  It is also gearing up for Christmas in a way that German traditional style and taste seem designed for.  Shops and and restaurants are cosy and glowing with decoration and stöllen.  The town market is abundant in produce and gleefully Grandpa Pete and the Child Bride stock up on fresh vegetables for supper.

They make a stop in Café Muller, which has a more Parisian feel, light and airy with its beige walls and dark wood.  All German menus are now a mystery to them so they make a random choice and get a brunch plate loaded with cheese and meats, croissant and breads.

Advent calendars here appear to come with tea bags rather than chocolate. The CB ponders a plan to bring chocolate advent calendars to Bamberg and make her fortune, whilst at the same time, of course, bringing pleasure to thousands of children. The marketing of this will naturally exploit GP's striking resemblance to one Mr S Claus. It can't fail.

At Bamberg tourist office the staff again take a tentative query from the pair and embrace it with both arms to comprehensively own and solve their problem. They go to great lengths to find a not only an open, but also a pleasant campsite for them that night in Leipzig.

As they head North East, streaking into these German towns at twilight, every evening has brought the most striking red sunsets in the wing mirrors, setting the fields a vibrant bright green and lighting up a paper moon.  The light gives out finally as they come off the motorway and into the town centre, the concentric circles in the dark begin and the cyclists come out. Sometimes singly out of nowhere, sometimes in great cheerful hoards that block en masse an intended left or right turn, they gently frustrate navigational efforts. Somewhere far away, cars are threatened on an industrial scale. Tanks like Gordon are no longer viable environmentally or desirable for consumers.  By the time Gordon returns to England he will not be welcome in London without payment of a hefty environmental tax. Maybe a journey like this will be a historical quirk in a few decades. If bikes are the way of the future, in this, as in so much else, Germany is well ahead and already at home there. 

Camping Aumsee's reception is manned by a hirsute lady who says that they do have pitches but suggests a motel room instead.  When they insist on a camping place, she then suggests a cheaper room.  Again they ask for a pitch and this time she suggests a wooden cabin at only a few more Euros per night than a pitch - it is cold she says.  She clearly doesn't want them camping and the cabin sounds nice so they agree to a cosy heated A-frame wooden cabin and cook up squash risotto outside.  They settle down with stöllen to watch Marnie on DVD with a bright Leipzig moon shining through the rooftop windows.

Day 17
Thursday 13th November
Leipzig, Germany - Berlin, Germany

THE TV TOWER FROM UNTER LINDEN, BERLIN

Only a short hop along the motorway from Leipzip is Berlin, and the focus of the most northern loop in this circuitous journey through Europe.  In hazy winter sun, the motorway is lined with wind farms and a 33-vehicle long army convoy.

In the Gents at a service station, German technology is streets ahead again with a state-of-the-art urinal.  On detecting movement in the urinal the Unimat 400 comes into play and a display screen automatically emerges and begins to display adverts.  The Unimat 400 is surely the way of the future, the current peak of the marketing industry's achievements.  GP wonders what models 500 or 600 are capable of.

Fed up with stabbing desperately at the dashboard compass in the twilight, and the ill humour that can fill Gordon's cab when a town has been circumnavigated three times, the CB has prepared assiduously for entry into Berlin and has a clear route in mind.  This is scuppered by a key road blocked by the police for no apparent reason.  GP refuses to drive through it so another lengthy route is made into Berlin, and east to Prenzlauer Berg and the Akselhaus apartment hotel. 

As the war of attrition between the CB and the estate agents managing the rental of her flat reaches its peak, the pair need a contact address to stay in while the agents fail to courier documents relating to the flat.  Akselhaus is the place and while booking, the hotel management have made it clear that any problem the pair have will be their honour to own and sort out.  So, fax machines are made available, a permit for Gordon is sorted, wifi is trouble-shot.  It's not just 'my house is your house' but 'your problem is my problem' as any difficulties are customer service managed out of existence - usually with an apology for the speaker's poor (invariably excellent) English. 

The apartment is small and beautiful, in an 18th C mansion house block with French windows looking out onto a leafy street and a school.  The area is residential and the apartment balcony affords a view of middle class couples and young families going about a comfortable life.  Downstairs in a shocking pink atrium is a conservatory with bar and fish pool and Moroccan cushions for lounging.  

Once settled, GP and the CB wander through the local area to find supper, enjoy a curry and, through the darkened alleys of the KulturBrewery, an old brewery now an arts and commercial space.  They stroll past inviting trendy knick-knack shops, second hand clothes shops, a despondent gallery owner putting up saucy Beryl Cooke-style paintings in his chic space, shops selling expensive face creams and home accessories, following the fashions of interiors magazines worldwide.  

The night is rounded off with a few beers in Scotch 'n Soda, a cosy bar themed in the style of a 1970's living room, an enduring theme across Berlin that now harks back to the pre-reunification times in its trends.

Day 18
Friday 14th November
Berlin, Germany

GRANDPA PETE CONSIDERS THEM GERMAN FOLKS

Straight to the tourist sites on their first visit to Berlin, Grandpa Pete and the Child Bride take the U-bahn to then walk up Unter den Linden, wondering as they pass why the British embassy is cordoned off.  They gaze at the Quadriga at the top of the Brandenberg Gate, the statue of a horse drawn chariot snatched by Napoleon in 1806 but returned later.  They wander round to the River Spree where the CB is very taken with the modern cityscape around Maria-Elisabeth-Lüders Haus, and come to the Reichstag.  As they stand in an hour's queue in the freezing cold, rain falls.  With an eye on the performance artists, they try and plot the city against the guidebook, orientate themselves and fit all the different styles and eras before them into the history and some kind of a story.  A memorial of slate slabs, driven into the concrete with names engraved is lost on them as again the language on the slates eludes them.  With no clue of German they cannot unlock the secrets of this piece of the past.

A comprehensive view of the city is presented to them neatly once they have climbed the ramps of the Reichstag cupola, Norman Foster's glass dome with a mirrored central column.  On the rooftop the whole Berlin skyline lies before them.  They descend the ramps, curving round the mirrors and at the bottom, seek lunch. 

The funereal tone that hovers over the café attached to the concert hall sets the tone for the rest of the day.  Dark and empty it is staffed by three underemployed waiters, competing tight lipped for customers.  They escape the uncomfortable silence and take to the streets making for the Holocaust memorial designed by Peter Eisenman.

An ordered maze of dark concrete blocks lies before them, picking any entry point between two blocks takes you down a path into the maze that rises and falls, so at points you are below the levels of the blocks, hemmed in on each side in isolation, at others you rise above, seeing the sea of 2711 blocks around you. 
 
Down underneath the field a museum remembers the Holocaust.  A masterpiece of curation, the mind boggles at the choices involved in the process of telling this story so simply and clearly.  The early section tells a historical narrative of the Nazi extermination policy.  A room of personal accounts, of letters from those in camps watching and anticipating their fate most affects the CB.  Stories of the individual families across Europe are told showing the tiniest structures of society pulled apart and scattered.  The horrors are expressed very baldly with such economy, it feels very compact yet the scale of the subject is not diminished. Time, geography and individuals are all contained in this scope.  The geographical approach tells the story by site, looking at ghettos, extermination camps, and deportation routes.  Never more did the European continent look so appallingly unified as when shown encompassed by, and trampled over, this so very organised by this system of murder.

After this, a night in at the apartment, and much food for thought.

Day 19
Saturday 15th November
Berlin, Germany

THE MIRRORED HALL OF THE REICHSTAG

Grandpa Pete has dedicated his 38-year career to public transport and firmly believes in the provision of a safe, efficient and affordable railway network for the people of Britain.  Today he will be fined for fare evasion on the U-bahn.

The estate agents, given a three-day window of opportunity to get the Child Bride's paperwork delivered, have, as anticipated, quietly baulked at the challenge, so she spends the morning trying enticing them to fax it to her.  Page by single page.

Both are coming to the end of their 19-day supply of underwear so the CB sets up camp in Holly's Washhouse . GP takes his fateful railway trip to the southern suburbs of Berlin, heading to the biggest camping superstore in the world to find a petrol camping cooker.   Holly's Washouse is a deluxe laundrette and the CB spends a pleasant few hours supping cappuccino, reading the paper and surfing the net.  That she doesn't know German laundrette etiquette and procedure is not a problem; in Germany there is always someone to tell you what to do.

Meanwhile GP is falling foul of the transport police having not bought the right ticket, dizzied perhaps by the Aladdin's cave of Gortex and crampons.  He arrives at the Washroom with a penalty notice, but nonetheless with a cooker.

The evening starts at the unpromising Tacheles.  Supposed to be the alternative arty centre, it has the tawdry air of Camden Lock.  Creativity exhausted by tourism, it feels like its time has gone.  They retreat for dinner and head to a more enduring landmark, the TV tower.  A city motif they will see in all the ex-communist capitals they will travel to, this one towers to 368m over Berlin. Its 70's design is enjoying new popularity and they travel to the top to look over Berlin's night sky.  They consider a Berlin cabaret (very expensive, if it is bad it will be rubbish), an Art Deco music venue (no acts that night) and have a drink in a tapas bar.  

Heading home they try to get into two music venues, both are closed so they happen on a guerrilla bar to end Saturday night in Berlin.  A bar opened for as long as the authorities will allow the squatters, it is very civilised all the same.  It is also an art space and has been 'done' in the typical 70s front room style set into an industrial space.  A fitting end to a few days in a very modern city, happily reconciled to its past, dedicated to remembering, and then moving on.

Day 20
Sunday 16th November
Berlin, Germany - Prague, Czech Republic

DEMOLISHING HOTEL UNITAS

Grandpa Pete goes to pay his fine while the Child Bride packs the car.  They head for the border.  Here they buy Czech road tax and secure some Czech Krone before heading into a forbidding gloom.  Two peaks in the distance shrouded in dirty grey clouds are their entry point to the country.  On the way, the country is like the bleakest of Yorkshire moors and the towns look run down. 

The traffic thickens and another entry into city traffic at twilight begins as a vista of red tail lights draws them into the scrum.  They streak past the railway station, an imposing building, extraordinary because of the fine line it straddles between greatness and ugliness. They then begin the concentric circles that will lead them to the Unitas hotel.  Once the prison where Vaclav Havel was detained it has either been handsomely modernised or the Czech political prisoner enjoyed the benefits of off-white luxury decor and wifi internet access.

The structure of the prison remains, you enter through the arched passageway into a central courtyard.  Now the car park, though once maybe the exercise yard, it is this that all the rooms overlook. This is a tight squeeze for Gordon, entering the tunnel from a narrow street with a working police station and tons of parked cars.  Thankfully it is the gateposts of the hotel and not the police cars that Gordon kisses on the way in.  The porter doesn't react, the indiscretion is not mentioned.  The CB dusts the hotel's plaster off the running board and by the next day the chunk from the hotel wall has been seamlessly replaced.

Check-in lets them know they have crossed borders and entered a new realm of welcomes.  On interrupting the receptionist's spiel to ask a question, the CB is gently but firmly admonished: "I will come to that in a minute".  In a cavernous beer hall around the corner, a more pleasant introduction is made, to Czech beer and potato pancakes. 

Day 21
Monday 17th November
Prague, Czech Republic

PRAGUE STATION TICKET OFFICE

Today is a public holiday, the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution.  Again, as first time visitors Grandpa Pete and the Child Bride hit the tourist trail, over Charles bridge and up the hill to the castle.  Tourism is established here and they blanche at the admission prices and the hidden extras.  But they enjoy the gothic St Vitus cathedral and its silver baroque tomb of St John of Nepomuk.  The CB's favourite is Vladislav Hall in the old Royal palace where horsemen would ride up the ramps into the hall for a first-floor joust.  Next door is the Chancellery where the defenestration of Catholic councillors in 1618 kicked off the Thirty Years' War.

They stop for some revolting coffee and a walk down the alley where Franz Kafka lived, before popping into the prison.  They move down to the Jewish quarter for lunch where a waiter chivvies them along and kindly deducts his own tip from the change from the bill, saving them the bother.  All this adds to the feeling of gloom they take from the place.  Pretty Prague is washed with a dirty, cold rain and sustained by a dour populace. 

They turn now to the ugliness that first caught their eye and look for Prague railway station.  Opened in 1871, it is an Art Nouveau behemoth with stunning stained glass and an untouched ticket hall, with paint the dull blues and gold of the faded original.  Modernisation of the infrastructure is underway to support Pendolino trains and GP grimaces at the workmanship, tools are lying about in the path of pedestrians, wires hang with work half finished.  Hopefully the ticket hall will survive modernisation.

Leaping forward a century to the 1970s they go to Tescos, which is almost a replica of the shop on Camden High St that the CB remembers from her youth.  They stock up on camping essentials, WD40 and spare bulbs for the car.  They resist the temptation to buy Tesco own-brand bullet-hole stickers for Gordon - "better than branded alternatives".

A night at the theatre is a surprise.  Black Light Theatre is particular to Prague and combines mime, movement and dance with optical illusion and lighting effects.  A pedestrian story of the production of a horror film is told with interludes for fantasias of movement and light.  The crowd and performers are relaxed and friendly.  A sense of humour peeps through. 

On the way back to the hotel, a small huddle of protesters has taken to the streets in a nod to the revolution of 20 years before that non-violently overthrew the Communist government.  Today they are protesting about an American arms base.

They take dinner in an Art Deco restaurant complete with wonderful wood panelled and mirrored toilet atrium.  This is the Child Bride's favourite toilet so far. The walls of the restaurant are lined with pictures of the rich and famous but, unrecognisable to Brits, they must be Czech stars of the stage and screen from the past.