Germany

The rain in Germany falls mainly on my helmet.

| Mairead

That was a very tiring day yesterday. I think it was nine hours on the road….04 07a

(Leaving our little town of Gries Im Sellrain)

It started out slow… Nice roads in Austria. Then it began to rain and get cold. You may remember the cold weather layers we were so eager to get rid of on the first journey through Germany just two weeks ago? Well we were equally eager to get it back on yesterday. But the rain was nice, it makes a lovely pitter, patter on my helmet and when you’re all cosy and warm inside layers of fabric it’s magical. Drank more tea yesterday also, for one thing the coffee is not the same once you leave Italy… and for another holding a mug of hot tea is the nicest thing in the world when you’re cold.

04 07b

(This seems to be the way they stack hay in Austria)

We stayed near Frankfurt last night and we were lucky they had a restaurant and the food was good. The view of Frankfurt was also very good. We could see planes leaving the airport but not hear them – perfect for  a good night’s sleep!

04 07c

(On our way to the motorway)

We have been incredibly lucky with our phone service. Three cheers for Three. We have been using it in on our mobiles in Ireland for more than a year now and for a monthly fee we get free data access. That was all grand and handy but what was a lovely surprise was there’s a Three in the Uk, in Austria and in Italy, so we got free data in those places too! No problem with data roaming and the stories of bills for thousands of euros for downloading an email (unless there’s a bill waiting for us when we get home……) So, yesterday as soon as we left Austria our phones turned back into phones. We couldn’t even check the weather (well, of course we could just look up…) and we had no idea what was happening to Mr. Snowdon. Then when we arrived at our hotel the nice man had to apportion out little bits of paper to us for access to the wifi… “there’s one for your phone and one for your laptop and one for….. and I’ll have to write those in the book….”

04 07d

(Austria, so pretty)

We’ll continue through Germany today and into the Netherlands, so no internet until we hit McDonald’s! Well, to be precise McDonald’s the Netherlands because in my experience McDonald’s Germany don’t do free wi-fi (one participant in my survey…)

04 07f

(Last check of wi-fi before we leave the 3-Austrian borders)

Gratitude List today: Austria – the beauty. Cold weather bike gear – the cosiness. Rain – as it splashes on my helmet. My helmet – as it stops the rain from splashing on my head! Hot tea – just holding it. Frankfurt – the food here in our hotel, the view, the sound proof windows. Three – the free data on holidays.

Until the Netherlands, Mairead

We’re… still in Germany!

| Mairead

Germany is a very big country! We spent less time on the road yesterday – just eight hours. We did have a new high of 38 degrees (Celsius) which only made us all the more excited when it went down to 33! Also, we had a very happy experience at the hottest point in the day.

20 06c

(ooh some shade…)

There we were motoring along when we come to a complete stop – a traffic jam. Traffic jams don’t usually bother motorbikes so we tootled along between the lanes. All the German and Dutch drivers moved out of the way to let us through, which was very nice. But eventually we came to a foreign (!) camper van and it moved into our way instead. Anyway the truck on the other side moved further away and let us through, but we were still no nearer the front of the jam. Now we were sitting in the middle of a three lane motorway, sun beating down and hot air coming from every vehicle around us. Did I mention under appreciating the air-conditioning in our car?

20 06a

(Traffic stopped as far as the eye can see. That’s the camper van in front to our left)

That’s when we noticed the services area. So, a little more tootling around the front of the trucks (one of which was now leaking water onto the road) and we reached the petrol station. Denis had a little (illegal) plan to continue out of the services area and ride on the shoulder of the road. Fortunately, he didn’t have to, there was a man stopping all traffic leaving the service area and he stopped us.

20 06b

(See those great clouds and those mountains are the alps!)

Btw, I forgot to tell you that I had done a year of German classes when I was 18. If you’re a regular reader here you’ll remember that a year isn’t long enough for me to have any level of fluency but plenty of time to say “hello”. As “hello” in German is “Hello!” (or at least that’s what it sounds like…..) I had learned another phrase “Sprecken zie English?”

20 06d

(Nice German town we found on the back road… doesn’t it look like Clonmel?

So as the man is explaining in perfect German why we cannot go back on the motorway I interrupt with my phrase. And he understands me! And he speaks English! And he tells us that a truck had dropped its load so we will have to take this other route, pointing to a back road out of the service area.

20 06e

(Look! We found Amazon!)

Well, you could have knocked us over with a feather! Never before have we seen a back road out of a service area! In fact we have spent many riding miles wondering how the employees at the service areas get to work. Do they live at the service areas? Is there an underground tunnel to the nearest town? No, there’s a back road!

We’ll be crossing the border to Austria today and then late today we’ll arrive in Venice. We may take a day to acclimatise (sleep) but then…. what should we go see in Venice?

Until Italy, Mairead.

Taxi Tour Guide

| Mairead

(Lunch…. looking like a green moustached little man?)

We had a very interesting conversation with our taxi driver on the way to the airport. He’d lived in Berlin for sixteen years and loved it. As a teenager he’d been taken on a school trip to east Berlin, while it was still under Russian rule. He was fascinated by the place and wanted to come back. So after he left school he visited Berlin many times, but just the west part.

(Anyone for some Sachertorte?)

It was a difficult journey. It took twelve hours from his home, the same journey now takes five. Going back to our history lesson….. the free Berlin, the west part, was surrounded by a wall (well.. two walls with the no-mans land filled with mines and guard dogs in between all watched over by guard towers…. to be precise). The further complication was that Berlin was also situated in the Russian (not so free) part of Germany, to the east. Maybe a picture would help?

(Former West Germany in purple, former East Germany in yellow. City of Berlin in middle of yellow. Barbed-wire lined road corridor ran from purple west Germany across Sachsen-Anhalt to Berlin)

So…. to get to Berlin (while the wall was still up) our taxi driver had to drive along a road corridor through east Germany to west Berlin. Are you keeping up? He was questioned at the border checkpoint and if anything was amiss he would not be allowed through or could be held prisoner. If he did get through his journey was timed and if he arrived at the Berlin checkpoint later than expected then he was in trouble. If he arrived sooner than expected this was also a serious problem. And yet he continued to make the journey…..

(Checkpoint….. Charlie!)

Incidentally….. the first border crossing checkpoint at the start of the corridor was called Alpha (from the phonetic alphabet for A), the second one was called Bravo (B) and the one between the American sector and Russian Berlin was Charlie (C)…. thus Checkpoint Charlie.

Over and out, Mairead.