Berlin Berlin

Huhuu (not tjuhuuuu this time..),

So greetings from Berlin, the city is as nice as always. This time we have been staying in the western side in Schöneberg at Hanna-Maijas and Renes place, thank you a thousand for having us here for a few days ;o)

So, what have we been up to? Last Friday we parked to the camping site in Berlin Tegel, after getting lost and annoyed in the dark Potsdam and the outskirts of Berlin. We had planned to stay over night in Potsdam, but i didnt like the first camping we saw and the second camping was ridiculously over prized. It would have been nice to visit Potsdam by bikes during Saturday day, since theres suuuuper nice palaces and castles in one huge park. I went there once with Melanie, but it was winterish time with no leaves on the trees and so on. It would have been nice to see park in autumn colours, but maybe next time then :)

So instead of biking the Saturday in Potsdam we biked in Berlin. We found our way from the camping to the city centre, and by accident we got our portion of the castles annyhow. We were biking on the river bank of the Spree river (not a canal i learned..) and we bumped into Charlottenbourg palace. The guy in the palace shop was quite laughing when we went to him and asked to see a map to find out where we were actually, hehe! And after all we managed to find our way to Hansus place in the afternoon, since we stopped every now and then to see the maps on the bus stops =)

Sunday was a free day for Hansu, and we went in the morning to have a guided tour - Dark Worlds - in the world war II bunker in the Gesundsbrunnen U-bahn station. And it was quite something. The bunker was built in a part of a metro station that was never taken to its original use due to the economic crisis before the WWII. It was a 90min tour leaded by an excellent guide. Truly a recommendable place to go. Menkää äiti ja iskä ihmeesssä ens viikolla, kun ootte siellä. Englanninkielinen kierros on to-ma klo11. Have a look at the web pages:

http://berliner-unterwelten.de/home.1.1.html

Melanie and Björn came to the tunnels with us as well, and from there we headed for a Sunday brunc in my favorite cafe in  Anna Blume where we had the three layered tower (frühstücksetagere für 2/4 personen) with their nice breakfast stuff, yumyum =P And then we had a nice walk in the mauerpark flee market / weekly open air festival; loads of people and nice atmosphere.

And then yesterday Bruno left to Paris for some work stuffi (!?) and i stayed here in Berlin with Hansu and Rene. Bruno was supposed to come back today so that we can continue our ride tomorrow, but apparently there is a general strike in Paris atleast and his flight was cancelled =/ Well, maybe i will get then one extra day in the city - lets see.

And thats about that for now. Wext we will maybe head our way towards the Czech border and close to Dresden in sächsische schweiz national park. According to the pictures it seems to be truly a lovely place. But it depends on the weather how it looks like if we will stay there longer or just stop by for one night on our way to Prague. And then after having enough beer in Prague we will go to Vienna to meet Simppa and Lena. And thats about how far we have made any plans. But i truly realized that the autumn is coming, hui! Yesterday was already really chilly day, and i think we have to speed up a bit to make it over the alpes before the snow and slippery comes.. Well, lets see =)

And now here in the end i will put you some pictures from our past couple of weeks.

*halihali* for all of you, and have a nice week where ever you happen to be!

Riverbank from Amsterdam

Look at these innovative Asian tourists - this lady is having her chair with her =)

We had a really nice dinner in the Amsterdam - in a restaurant where they had carpets on the table

And another nice dinner in Düsseldorf in a Korean place - yummy!

On our biking trip from Düsseldorf to Köln next to the Rhein river - here waiting for a ferry to cross the river

The steam trains steam on the sky in Wernigerode - this vehicle definitely doesnt deserve the German green environment tag, so luckily theres no Umweltzone in Wernigerode!

It was tricky to look forward when the train was running since the smoke it blew out was filled with small pieces of ash and coal

The locomotive and the cars behind

In the castle hill of Wernigerode with view down to the city

We went to see the castle church of Wittenberg, and the nice guy behind the desk let us climb for free to the tower although he was just about to close. The tower had 289 steps and it was 61m high. Lovely view!

And LOOK at this lovely brunch we had in Berlin. Looks and tastes delicious - Björn, Melanie and Hanna-Maija enjoying the lazy sunday

And now till the very end i can add a small video clip from the steam train in Wernigerode - the is only if i now how to do it... Tschüss <3