Deutschland Road Trip!!

We spent our Easter break on a 9 day road trip of Germany.

Certainly not enough time to cover it all but we made a good start. We were Berlin bound and decided to break up the trip and see a couple of other towns on the way to and from Berlin. Our first stop was a small town called Marburg about halfway between Munich and Berlin. After about 4.5hrs on the crazy fast autobahn (no speed limits at all!!) we arrived in the picturesque town of Marburg.

After checking into our hotel we set out on foot, under gorgeous blue skies and warm sunshine, to explore the cobblestone streets and alleyways of this University town. Marburg is located on the Lahn River and is well known for its medieval churches and for Heinrich IIs castle, set high up on the hill. We climbed the 150+ stairs up to the castle ... we did stop at a beer garden to quench our thirst, but we made it all the way!! Marburg is a fascinating, Gothic town and we enjoyed sitting by the river, exploring the local farmers market, visiting the churches, eating outside on the cobblestones and wandering the streets while sampling ice cream from one of the many cafes :-) We spent two days in Marburg and as we were packing our bags to get back in the car and head up to Berlin, Polly threw up. Uh oh ... this was not part of the plan. She was a real trooper and suffered through the car ride and only threw up a couple of times before she was feeling better. My poor girl ....

On the way to Berlin, we took a little side trip to visit the small World Heritage town of Quedlinburg. Polly carried a plastic puke bag with her as we explored this quaint town which has been known since at least the early 9th century.

On a hill above the old town stands the architectural masterpiece of the collegiate church of St. Servatius. It's old crypt features a famous collection of church treasures, as well as tombs of the Emperor Henry and his wife Mathilde. After our picnic in the park under endless blue sky and the hot sun we visited St. Servatius, the wonderful treasures and the tombs. In the innermost parts of the town there are a wide selection of half-timbered buildings including the oldest surviving timber-frame building in Germany from the 14th century.

It is one of the best-preserved medieval and renaissance towns in Europe, having escaped major damage in World War II. We would have liked to spend more time in Quedlinburg but Berlin awaits!!

View from the car on the way to Berlin ... reminds me of gorgeous Livermore, CA!!

Brandenburg Gate

Wow!! Where do I start with the fascinating capital and largest city of Germany ... Berlin - a city of 3.4 million people on the Spree River - wow!!!

Checkpoint Charlie

Our hotel was in a central location, right near Checkpoint Charlie. We spent the first day exploring this enormous city with Fat Tire Bike Tours. The bike ride was slow and flat, a perfect family friendly way to see this huge city. 

The bike tour took us to the Berlin Wall, Brandenburg Gate, Marienkirche (Berlin's oldest functioning church), Humboldt University,  Red Town Hall, Checkpoint Charlie, the site of Hitler's bunker, Berlin Zoo, Reichstag, Bebelplatz (the site of Nazi book-burning), State Opera House, Museum Island, the Holocaust Memorial, through the stunning gardens, to a fabulous beer garden .... all in only 4.5hrs and 10kms of riding!! It was definitely a highlight of our trip and a wonderful way to see this historical city.

Holocaust Memorial

The Berlin Wall

One of the interesting things we noticed about Berlin was Ampelmann (the traffic light walking symbol). Feel free to google Ampelmann for the whole history but basically when East and West Germany reunified after the wall came down, everything was standardized to one system... but the east couldn't live without Ampelmann, and so Ampelmann was brought back, oh and Ampelfrau too! Yay! There are now Ampelmann stores in Berlin selling everything from Ampelmann tattoos to clocks to Christmas decorations - basically anything you can whack a logo on - Ampelmann has a huge fan club!! He even has a facebook fan page!!

Did someone say 'cake'? ;-)

Amongst all the history and wonderful sights in Berlin - our visit there was also made enjoyable by a few other aspects. Polly and Henry learned how to eat with chopsticks - a huge feat....in fact, after mastering chopsticks, Henry insisted on eating every meal and snack with them ... and I'm being serious...now that was a challenge!! This also means too that our kids actually ate something that was not pizza or pasta - another miracle right there. This, in turn, allowed us to enjoy a variety of restaurants rather than looking for Italian ... again!! Another fun activity for the kids was the pool at the hotel. We are slow learners when it comes to booking hotels but we realise now that regardless of how tired the kids are from a day full of sightseeing, visiting churches and museums that they are never too tired for some fun downtime playing in the pool or at the park...but we've got it figured out now!! The kids loved the pool and there was a park across the road from the hotel so there was something for everybody ;-) Each afternoon, we followed the German culture and enjoyed coffee and cake (or Kaffee und Kuchen) ... who am I kidding? It was ME enjoying Kaffee und Kuchen and Nick and the kids enjoyed sampling various flavors of ice cream as a special afternoon treat ;-) Another thing we noticed about our time in Berlin is that they have a slightly different pronunciation of some words - as if German hasn't been hard enough for us to learn, now we have a slightly different sound to make as we spit and stutter our way through Berlin. 

My gorgeous Aunt told me about a building in Berlin that was owned by my grandmother's family many, many, many generations ago called  Kaufhaus Des Westens (KaDeWe). It is Europe’s largest department store. It wasn't too difficult to find this building as it is one of Berlin's most gorgeous shopping stores - seven floors of high end items ranging from clothes to saucepans to 1800 varieties of cheese - it offers more than 3million products.  It was fun for me to have that link there in our countries capital. I was disappointed to learn they would not offer me a family discount :(

After four days in Berlin, we were all walked out and were quite happy to sit in the car for a few hours on our way to one of Germany's most beautiful cities - the World Heritage town of Dresden. Our hotel was directly in the city center and with all the wonderful historical sights close by we were grateful that our legs would get a rest for a couple of days.

Fürstenzug

Eleven square kilometres of the city centre were completely destroyed by bombing towards the end of World War II. Over time the city was rebuilt and then in 2002, torrential rains caused the River Elbe to flood 9 metres (30 ft) above its normal height. Due to the speed of reconstruction, the destruction from this flood is no longer visible.

We had a wonderful time exploring this gorgeous city. We saw the elegant Fürstenzug (German for "Procession of Princes") mural which is one of the largest porcelain artworks in the world.

We also visited the most famous building in Dresden, a beautiful Baroque structured palace called The Zwinger.

The Zwinger

We walked to the Dresden Gardens and spent half a day there. We caught the miniature railway (run solely by kids) to the palace in the gardens, had lunch at the beer garden, climbed trees, made daisy chains then caught the train back past the zoo, to the main station again ... and all under heavenly blue skies and sunshine!! Yay!! Wonderful memories were made in the Dresden Gardens.

Dresden is a spectacular city and amongst the churches, palaces and gardens, Dresden is a huge shopping city too!! Definitely a must see if you're ever in the area. 

Our Easter Road Trip was sensational!! Henry spent the whole week being Batman and made many friends while wearing his Batman cape. We all tried to speak German as much as possible and we did ... okay. Nick only speaks German now when we are out and I am so envious of his understanding of the language. He is doing awesome!!

The speeds at which these German drive on the autobahn absolutely blows my mind. We were driving at the speedlimit and made it home in about 4hours ... home sweet home ....  it was a wonderful trip full of fabulous memories ... but it's always lovely to come home.

Now ... where to next??