Romantic Road

This is Germany’s most famous driving route. So it’s no wonder that we are doing the drive too. It’s around 360 km of road that starts in Wurzburg and finishes in Fussen, a town located just 4km away from Ludwig’s castles. Every town on this route has many things in common. They are small, old, medieval, and have been relatively untouched over the centuries. Wurzburg is in a valley surrounded by vineyards. The market areas are mostly linked together which made it a pleasant walk through town. They had many odd statues and some pretty impressive churches. The most impressive site though, was the fortress on top of the hill, Marienburg. We crossed the Main River walking over the 15th century old Alte Mainbrucke (old bridge). The walk up to the fortress seemed unending, especially when you think you’ve reached the main area, only to realize you’re just within one of its many walls. Once on top the view was once again, amazing. We wandered around this huge fortress for some time taking many pictures before heading back down. Unfortunately, Julie hasn’t been feeling well lately so this walk took a bit out of her, that being said, we ended our tour of Wurzburg and made our way back to the van for the night. On the way down from the fortress we passed a bagpiper and I convinced Julie that it was OK to throw in some coin since she did stop to enjoy it. Oh, and earlier that day we checked ourselves into the campsite and purchased propane – it was so cheap that we decided to buy an extra tank so we can avoid running out in the future.

Bamburg

Our intention was to be in this city for lunch, but seeing as we tend to sleep in lately, mostly due to the cold weather, we were here around dinner time. The market we saw seemed lively and fun. I would love to go back to this city for a full day and spend the night in one of the breweries rooms. Yes that’s right, the breweries in town offer up rooms for a small fee. So the reason we came here: To sample the beer. Bamburg has a unique style of beer; it has a smoky bacon taste to it. Julie and I sampled the beer with an order of Schnitzel, a green salad and potato salad. Schlenkerla, the pub we went to, was jammed packed with people, so at first we were unsure of where to go sit. We ended up walking through 3 sets of doors before finding an almost empty room. We sat down and another couple joined us a bit later. We realized that almost the entire room had been reserved and we were sitting on the one table that wasn’t. We made our way back to the van and continued our drive to Wurzburg, the town that is at the start of the Romantic Road and the location of our camp site. We had hoped to park outside the campgrounds that night for free, but because the owners live on the premises, they heard us pull up and invited us in.

Eisenach - Wartburg Castle

We ran out of propane that night, so I decided to drive us to a nearby McDonalds. Erfurt is about the size of Milton, and from what we saw at night, we decided to check out a nearby Castle instead of visiting the town. Wartburg castle is another Unesco world heritage site. That being said, they charged for pretty much everything, even a climb up a tower. Julie is starting to hate Unesco sites, they seem restricted and expensive. We made the hike up the long road to the castle only to learn that they had parking further up the road (it had a barrier when we arrived, but was gone when we left). Even though the hike took a bit out of us, it was extremely worth it. We had a great view of the castle from below and a nice hike through the forest. It’s still a bit cold and there are so many leaves on the ground now. Once we got to the castle we found that it wasn’t all that exciting. Our next stop for the day was Bamburg.

Leipzig/Erfurt

We made our way to Leipzig and I decided to check into the engine light issue as it was getting Julie nervous. My assumptions were right, the coolant was low. It turns out the outdoor store carried everything but engine coolant, so when we left for Leipzig our first stop was a gas station along the highway. While I gassed up, Julie went off to search for the bathrooms and a young lady approached me. Turns out she was from Poland and she and her friend were looking for a ride to Frankfurt. Unfortunately we couldn’t help them but we did end up giving a lift to 3 guys around our age to other gas stations along the way. We should have asked for money, but didn’t. The guys were from Poland too. Finding a decent parking spot in Leipzig proved to be difficult and while driving around the city, we determined it wasn’t worth a stop for us. It was late in the afternoon, so we decided to drive to our free camping spot for the night, in Erfurt.

Berlin

This was an extremely long drive and once we arrived in Berlin it was pretty hectic to drive in due to all the construction. It was a 314 km drive, mostly uneventful but we have two lights “blinking” on the dash now and are unsure of what they could mean. Our free camp area was located on the northern part of Berlin in the Tegel area. It was in the parking lot of an outdoor store and they really had an impressive amount of goodies. It’s a good thing we were broke. The following morning after we explored the camping store we made our way into Berlin via the subway and managed to find the free tour done by New Europe. The group was so large that they split 4 groups off based on language and then split up the Eglish group in 2 until there were about 20 of us left per group. Too bad I didn’t speak French as it was a small group of 2 people. My guess is that they usually have more English speaking people as there were 2 other guides that tagged along with our guide Nick. Like the Munich tour, it brought us along many important sites and gave a great history on everything. We started with the Brandenburg Tor, Berlin’s most famous gate. On top of the gate is a woman riding a chariot (she represents victory), apparently when Napoleon came through these gates he liked the statue so much that he brought it back to France. When Napoleon was defeated it was returned back to Berlin and now it faces in the opposite direction facing the French Embassy, it was altered a bit and the market was renamed after Paris. In a way, it’s kind of like running salt into an open wound for France. There was also an extremely famous and expensive hotel in this plaza, and sounded pretty boring until the guide mentioned that it was the very hotel that Michael Jackson dangled his baby out of. We then made our way over to the memorial to the murdered Jews. It was pretty odd, but you couldn’t help but be moved walking through it. After that we stood over the site where Hitler’s bunker was, the bunker he killed himself in and got married in. No bunker is there now and no signs saying it ever was. We then walked past a huge Nazi built building that is now being used for government things and is supposed to be in an upcoming Tom Cruise movie. Apparently it was pretty eerie seeing the Nazi flags on the flag poles when they were shooting the film. The next stop was a section of the Berlin wall. Julie was expecting something remarkable, but it was a pretty simple yet very effective. It was here that we heard some interesting stories of escape attempts, failures etc. The best was about two guys going across the death strip in a cow costume and succeeding. Check Point Charlie was next on our list of stops, and was rather “touristy”. The history of what happened here is more interesting than the area itself. We then had lunch at a famous American restaurant that we can’t remember the name of at the moment. We then saw chocolate houses and monuments in a very expensive chocolatier. After this, we made our way to Babelplatz where the first Nazi book burning took place, we also saw the monument of empty bookshelves for the book burning. In the square there was also a very odd giant garbage bag hanging over the edge of a building containing manikins, computer stuff, CD’s etc. We weren’t too sure what it was supposed to symbolize. We then went to Alexanderplatz where we got to see two identical churches, one for French speaking and the other for German speaking people. It was then off to Museum Island, where the famous TV tower stood in the back ground. The tour was extremely informative, fun and all in around 5 hours. Julie and I wandered around a bit more on the island (wouldn’t know it was one though) and made our way over to the TV tower. On the way we saw an impressive fountain for Poseidon, Julie reminded me that all of his fountains to date have been impressive. The only things left for us to see were some museums on the island, the government building and the Teirgarten Park. We decided to skip the park due to the cold weather and it being a park. We made our way to the government building just on the other side of the Brandenburg Tor to have our free tour. The building is fairly interesting, as the roof is a dome ceiling made of glass. The line up was long and we ended up talking to a few people in line. A young lady named Lesil from Colorado tagged along with us during our walk through the building. It was pretty cool, apparently the artist designed it so that whenever the politicians want to know who is in charge they just have to look up and see the people, it also allows a clear view of the proceedings for the people above. The view at the top was great. After we finished the tour Lisel asked if she could join us to the museum we decided on and off we went. All the museums are free on Thursday nights after 6pm, so we chose the one that had the Gates of Babylon (one of the wonders of the world). The museum isn’t quite what Julie and I had envisioned but was still worth seeing. We did run out of time near the end and had to cut the tour short. Both of us think that a guided tour would have been better than the audio guides as they didn’t cover everything in the museum. We said our goodbyes to Lisel and made our way back to the van. Tomorrow it’s off to Leipzig.

Dresden

We stayed in Hainichen the night before we went into Dresden. We then completed the drive around noon to Dresden’s town center. For once we were able to find parking without any problems, the parking was even a pull in. The tourist information center was only about 3 blocks away so it was fairly easy to find. Once there we received a map of the centre. Julie had a look at the map while I took some photos and off we went to explore. There was quite a bit to see in Dresden for free, all buildings and statues though. We thought about entering one museum but in the end we skipped it. The museum was about ceremonial weapons. The sights we saw were the Semperoper, Frauenkirche, Zwinger, Allertinum and the Rustkammer, all very impressive. That being done we wandered into the market area and had a look around. This is where Julie and I had a fairly good laugh. There was a restaurant called “Ontario”. It had a “typical” Canadian dish of Caribou and was extremely expensive and very packed. The sites we saw in Dresden were well worth the visit and it would be nice to see what the new city centre across the river has for night life, as that’s where the main strip of bars are. Off to Berlin!

Day 3, 4 and 5

It would seem that we were still recovering from Oktoberfest as we are both still very drained. We still ended up heading into town to get internet access and found ourselves in an internet café as we were unable to get a free connection with the laptop. I also picked up a new wallet at the mall as mine has already broken. We did some grocery shopping and then called it a day.

While Anna is away for the weekend we hung out in Regensburg planning our adventures through Europe. We have realized that we need to have some idea otherwise we waste time and money driving back on our tracks. That being said, we went to Anna’s place tonight (Sunday) and hung out with her and stayed at her place, the nights are now around zero. We ended up doing our laundry and hanging out for another day before we took off towards Dresden. Yes we are going north even though it is getting colder. Sounds crazy doesn’t it?