Heading North

Thursday morning we picked up the car.  We always try to guess the color on the way, Donna, silver, me, blue---happy to find out it's a black metal flake special production.  Full glass roof, color coordinated seats and seatbelts.  I love Peugeots.  We also took time to pick up our friend Emily, who doesn't talk much, unless asked, and then sparingly.  She's so small you barely know she's there, and she DOESN'T read every road sign on the side of the highway. :)  The first thing she does is take an hour to get out of Nice..........We drive to Menton, stop at the Intermarche and grab some snacks and fuel up for the drive.  Dark, bright, dark, bright, dark, bright.........the tunnels along the coast last for about 50 miles, seems like hundreds, but the views between them are spectacular.  The greenhouses,on the cliffs going down to the sea, just across the Italian border, number in the thousands, most of the worlds flowers are grown here, in perfect conditions.  We head northeast through the farmlands, where they're gathering the hay for the winter.  Thousands and thousands of huge round plastice covered bales are everywhere.  We're going out of our way an hour or two to go back to a place we stayed near Brenner Pass a number of years ago.  Finally find it and it's not what we remembered or expecting.   It's a bit longer in the tooth.  So we head up the road towards Brenner and Donna finds a place that is twice as nice for the same cost.  The restaraunt is incredible, and the breakfast buffet is large enough for us to skip lunch. 

Out the next morning in some pretty good rain.  As we gain elevation, the rain becomes snow, but thankfully the roads are fine.  Brenner Pass is the lowest pass from the south of Europe to the north, and consequently, has the most truck traffic anywhere in Europe, which slows things down quite a bit.  We come out of the rain and snow in Innsbruk, then drive back into thunderstorms and downpours through the rest of Austria.  When we hit the German border, things clear up and we're able to make up the time lost.  At one point, I'm cruising at 100, and a car passes me so fast-----on a straight road--like Kansas---that it's out of sight in less than 20 seconds.  You just try to stay out of their way.  About an hour south of Berlin we start passing the hops fields, which go forever in every direction.  Emily guides us directly ot the hotel, which is in the old east Berlin side.  To say there is a striking difference would not do justice.  The west side looks prosporus and well kept, the east side looks like it's just starting to develop.  Empty lots, communist era building that are barely standing, vacant fields, and abandoned playgrounds are everywhere.  (Donna's facebook page has many more of the pictures than I can post here---you should take a look.)

Meet up with one of Donnas ex-students, Julia Benzinger, who is an opera singer, with the Berlin Opera.  To say that doesn't do her justice though as she has sung in opera halls throughout Europe.  Today she had to go to Poland for a production there next Saturday.  She gives us a list of things to do and see thata we otherwise would have missed.  We're a bit off the beaten tourist route and see alot of what others might miss.  Make sure you check out the pics of the chocolate store---pretty incredible.

Berlin is flat---the only hills here are where they mounded the rubble after the war.  Big boulevards, and even bigger buildings.  I've never been in a city with so many massive building footprints.  They're not particularly tall-----but they take up a chunk of real estate.  Start the morning with a five minute walk to checkpoint charlie, visit the wall museum, the Holocaust monument, Brandenburg Gate, and we haven't even made it to lunch time......Spend the rest of today walking around, with nothing in particular in mind.....................................the weather is cooler here, which suits us fine.

Tomorrow we head to Poland, starting in Gdansk, with no preconcieved ideas of what we'll find.