and somewhat frustrated!

Firstly, my apologies for not doing a midweek post, the BC downtime was the main issue there and having a house guest meant little time for firing up the computer.

So lets catch up before we move on. The guest, a fellow traveller on the path to finding some sort of happiness, arrived on Sunday last and much of the week has been spent doing 'touristy' things, We've had a couple of 20-25 mile bike rides, a trip to Dorset, walks and a trip to the Helicopter museum! It's been pretty relaxed and its been nice to have them visit, they have now departed to return to GOC.

October has been a bit of a wash, not much riding and very little writing but that changes for the last week! The forecast looks like i'll be able to get some riding in and i'll be cracking on with the writing to try and catch up with where i hoped to be by Hallowe'en. I might even get out today, its sunny, dry but somewhat windy so it won't be far if i do go.

In the meantime, lets catch up with my Berlin trip. So its Friday and after grabbing some breakfast we caught the S9 to Spandau. We got a little sidetracked so didn't do all that we had 'planned' before returning to Berlin to take in Charlottenburg Palace. Then it was assorted public transport back to the Humboldt and time to find food, a fairly traditional meal in a fairly traditional bar/restaurant.

Spandau

Charlottenburg Palace

The following day, Saturday, was a bit of a disaster. It started with finding our chosen breakfast eatery closed so we ended up grabbing something at the station before catching a bus into the area south of the centre. We looked at some WW2 stuff before heading to the Ku'Damm for a bit of shopping - except all the shops were closed! What was going on? We eventually worked it out, it was Unification Day, a 'Bank' Holiday which the German's take quite seriously. We could do the shopping another day but what to do for the rest of Saturday?

Anhalter Bahnhof facade

Unification Day at the Brandenburg Tor!

Well we ended up revisiting some of the more touristy sites around the Brandenburg Gate, avoiding the albeit quite small, protest rally (no one thing but various groups combined to air their various political views) before heading along Unter den Linden to the Volkswagen centre. To be honest, we were disappointed, we were led to believe it was a sort of history of VW exhibition, but, whilst there were a selection of VW group vehicles, Audi, Porsche, Skoda, Seat and of course VW, it was mostly pushing the latest models and technology. Okay, it is free to go in but we weren't inside for very long.

A steady walk took us back to the TV tower where we settled down for an early dinner of Lasagne and beer, possibly the highlight of a disappointing day. I'll pick up the tale next time, four more days of travel and adventure to go!

All things being equal i'll post again on Wednesday but for now,
Ciao,
Madeline Anafrid