Autobahns and moles

We stayed at Siine's uncles house in Eberswalde, just outside Berlin from Wed - Fri. We took the train each day to Berlin - only 30 mins. On Thursday we visited Reichstag, Brandenburg Gate, the German History Museum ( absolutely fantastic!), GDR museum (museum about the soviet occupation in Berlin). It is such a strange thing that Berlin is a city just like Melbourne but was divided in two by a wall with such different rules and living standards. You can tell the difference even today straight away as soon as you cross from west to east Berlin. The buildings in the east are like concrete blocks, while the west has more style. We saw portions of the wall that are still standing. We also went to Checkpoint Charlie - old border crossing point between west and east Berlin. Potsdamer platz was great, because I bought some shoes! Lol. On Saturday we drove to Potsdam, south of Berlin, to see the castles. Huge castles, the most famous called Sansouci. I had been here 10 years earlier in the summer and it is interesting to see it in the winter. All the statues are covered in little wooden houses (which look like backyard dunnies lol), to protect them from the weather. The huge gardens are also very plain at the moment, but you could tell how beautiful it would be in summer. there is even no water in the fountains! We headed down to Leipzig after, via Wittenberg. We visited the church where martin luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door to change the course of church history...although the door itself was covered in scaffolding for repairs over the winter lol!

The food here is so cheap!!! So let's just say we are making the most of it! The accommodation is also cheap. Tim is fascinated by the moles here - anywhere there is grass there are mole mounds all over. Tim has taken a lot of photos of these lol!

The weather here is rainy everyday, and sooperdooper cold. I did bring my sunglasses, but I think I can honestly say I have seen the sun for only 10 minutes total over the past 2 weeks! But it is still awesome to be here!

Oh yeah...we hired a car until next Friday because we got sick of the poor weather and it gets dark at 4pm! So we are hooning around in a Renault for the next few days! Autobahns are great fun - no speed limits! But I won't tell you how fast we have been driving until we get home!

We are going to Cologne tomorrow and will then go to Trier on Tuesday in the southwest. Apparently there is super old stuff in Trier. Not sure if we will have Internet in cologne, but we will in Trier, so will blog again then.

With love
Kate and Tim