North West Germany 2016

We had originally planned to be in Turkey this week to celebrate our Silver Wedding Anniversary .... yes I know it's hard to believe but after a lot of thought decided to cancel - the reasons outlined  here..... So how did Turkey turn into North West Germany? I hear you ask... well, during our honeymoon, we found that many Turks had German as a second language and we thought it would be really useful to learn. So that Autumn we signed up for German classes at our local college and also followed the BBC Deutsch Direkt Television and radio course.  Deutsch Direkt was filmed and recorded  around Bremen and we decided back then that one day we'd like to go and visit the locations mentioned.  So this seemed like an ideal opportunity to combine a visit to Bremen and also visit some of the other states of Germany that we haven't yet visited and then work our way down to Essen and finish off with the Giga event a week later.  This is just a brief blog on the main highlights of our trip.

So, back to the trip... we headed to Manchester airport on Friday afternoon, which is now our 'local' airport and about a 45 minute drive or if necessary we can get the local train which will take us straight to the airport.  The flight was delayed for over and hour and we finally arrived in Hamburg at 22:30 CET. 

Day 1
Hamburg

We left our hire car at the hotel and got the U-bahn into Hamburg to do a bit of sightseeing and find a handful of caches.  The weather was gloriously hot and there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

Chile Haus

First stop was the webcam.  We were a little unsure at first how to reach the spot as there was a lot of construction work going on on the quay side but we soon found our way to where we needed to be and managed to get a screen grab.

Then we headed off to the Elbe Tunnel. The 426 m tunnel is a pedestrian, bike and motorized vehicle tunnel which opened in 1911.  There are four very large lifts that take vehicles to the bottom.

It's still in use today although other bridges and tunnels have been built to allow for the increase in traffic over the years.

Then back on the U-Bahn and a couple of stops before we reached the Speicherstadt.

The Speicherstadt is the warehouse district in Hamburg (built 1883 to 1927) and is the largest warehouse district in the world where the buildings stand on timber-pile foundations.  Which is quite amazing when you see the sheer size of the buildings and the location.

We found our way to a good vantage point to take a photo of the Wasserschloss before heading into Hamburg for some lunch.  The temperatures were up to the high 20s now and we were glad to find some shade to cool down.  I was really keen to see the Wasserschloss lit up at night so we made a mental note to head back later after dark.

Day 2 - Lübeck

Today's plan was to visit Lübeck.  It was about an hour's drive from Hamburg. The historic city of Lübeck is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is renowned for its Brick Gothic architecture.  We started off doing a town tour Wherigo hoping it would show us the main sites but it soon became apparent it was skipping a lot of the interesting buildings so we aborted that and returned to it in the evening and did the final few stages by car.

Salt warehouses

Lübeck is the birthplace of Marzipan, not really keen on eating the stuff but thought it would be fun to see where it was made and had a visit to the Niedregger Marzipan shop where there was marzipan moulded into just about everything you can imagine.

Really enjoyed our day spent in Lübeck.

Day 3 - Bremen

On the way to Bremen we made a detour to do the Voss Margarine Multi.  It had over 4000 favourites so we decided it had to be worth a look .... and it was!  We can't given any spoilers but safe to say, if you get the chance - DO IT!

Voss Margarine

We arrived in Bremen and headed straight for our apartment.  Then once we'd unpacked it was time to head out on the town for the evening.

Day 4 - Bremen

We have wanted to visit Bremen quite a while. In fact it was 25 years ago that we first learnt all about Bremen and Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten while doing a German language course set in the city.
So up bright and early ready to spend the day visiting all the main points of interest in the town.

We were not surprised to find das Rathaus (town hall) covered in scaffolding - it's a bit of a standing joke now, whenever we visit places with interesting buildings there's either a fun fair in front of it or it's undergoing renovations and is covered in scaffolding!

We spent the rest of the day generally admiring the architecture in  BottcherStrasse and the Schnoor.
The most favourited cache in the area was at the Hauptbahnhof. It had us confused for a bit  not knowing whether to be on the platform or in the road tunnel underneath... or in the tunnel or on the platform... or the next platform but eventually I spotted something and thought 'hmmm.. I wonder...' and yes, it was the cache.  Not sure it was worthy of a favourite as it was so tedious tying to find it.

Make a wish on the shiny bits

Kaffee und kuchen of course

One of the caches we'd planned to do was a puzzle cache which involved  starting at the Stadtmusikanten (or so we thought) and projecting a waypoint a given distance at a given bearing. Easy huh? Well yeah until we searched GZ for a while and then realised that the starting point was not the listed co-ordinates but a different statue of the musicians and something only a local would know of surely.

 

However, incredibly we spotted it by chance while walking back to our apartment, we'd just stopped for some Spaghetti Eis and Mark spotted just what we were looking for and life was good again!

Day 5 - Essen

Mark had booked an apartment  in Essen mainly because it was within easy reach of the Giga venue and because it looked good on Booking.com.  It soon became apparent that the website photos must have mainly been of a second, larger apartment because this one was tiny. Not only that, it had books everywhere! Mark counted 91.  The 'fully fitted kitchen' also had a washing machine but no cutlery drawer... odd. Oh yeah, and empty picture frames hanging on the walls....

The Invisible Man's family snapshots?

Bizarre selection of glasses!

This was just some of the books!

Day 6 - Münster

Years ago we bought a bicycle shaped geocoin with the words 'Munster - Germany's Cycling Capital City' so we'd decided back then, should the opportunity arise, we'd visit. This was just such an opportunity. 

In Münster, the bicycle is the most common means of transport.  More than 100,000 people travel the roads by bike every day here and there are twice as many bicycles as residents, namely 500,000!

We parked in a multi-story  car park near the Hauptbahnhof and made our way to the Rad Station - a massive underground bike park which also hired out bikes and repaired customers' bikes.

Radstation

 

Bratwurst anyone?

The flagship route of this 'cycling capital' is the Promenade - a cycle path around the outside of the old town  following the line of the original town walls. It has to be said that cycling on this path was great but much of the rest of the  area was pretty much the same as other German towns where everyone is cycling with purpose and it's just another form of transport - which is probably just as well really because if everyone was cycling around for pleasure it would be total chaos because there were bikes everywhere.

The Promenade

Der Dom

While exploring the old town we played a couple of Wherigos and one of them finished up in the botanical gardens.  Really loved walking around the botanical gardens, such a beautiful tranquil place.

Day 7 - Wuppertal
 
Today's plan was to visit Wuppertal. Well, more precisely the 120 year old Wuppertal Suspension Railway. We parked in a pay and display car park near the south west Vohwinkel terminus, and caught the train for a round trip to the other end just over eight miles away. One of the surprising things about this railway is that it just forms part of the area's public transport network and uses a standard area ticket to travel on it. The ticket also meant we could jump on the S-Bahn from the north eastern terminus to the next station to play a set of four Wherigos we'd noticed.

Anyway, the Suspended Railway straddles the river for most of the route but actually follows the street for a couple of miles at the south-western end. Fascinating stuff!

Watch out!!

We rounded the day off with the Welcome Meet and greet event for tomorrow's Giga event.

Day 8 - Giga

Up bright and early and made our way to the Giga event venue. This was an old coal mine/coking plant which, in its day, was the most advanced in the world. OK, I don't like to complain but this Giga was the least 'foreigner friendly' so far. The web page was in three languages but at the event everything was just in German including the lab caches. The lab caches themselves were a bit obscure and even  the Germans were baffled by a lot of them.

Anyway, there was a great atmosphere and we bumped into Stompy & Stampy, our caching friends from Cornwall and we joined forces to do the lab caches and it was good to have a chat and stuff.  Later on we bumped into Amaya Tom, Spooky Luke and Cornish Candy - always good to bump into friends at mega events.

'log book'

Many of the buildings on the site had been put to new use but maintaining the original workings inside. One such building was the Red Dot Design museum which we visited and spent a good couple of hours or so marvelling at the 'best of the best' design items on display.

180kg Aluminium Audi car body

Day 9 - Cologne
Checked out of our apartment, returned to the Giga venue for the goodbye event and the ten new lab caches and then headed to Cologne for a  bit of sight-seeing.  We'd visited Cologne on a previous visit to Germany but never been to the Cathedral before.  Then it was time to head to the airport for our flight back home - which was delayed by 1½ hours as they couldn't find the plane...........

Cologne Cathedral

We had such a fun week, making memories. It was lovely to spend time in some of the cities we hadn't been to before.  We now have just 2 German states left to visit out of the 16....











 

Berlin

We had been wanting to visit Berlin for as long as we can remember and late last year we were planning our trips for 2015 and we thought it would be fun to plan a short break in the city.  Our daughter was really keen to come with us as German is one of the languages she is studying at University, so we decided to book our trip for when she had broken up for the summer.

As this was primarily a sightseeing trip we decided to short-list just a handful of must-do caches, half a dozen max (quality not quantity) .... to which Mark mysteriously added some Wherigos for the last day

So this is a blog about some of the places we visited on our 4-night break and the very few caches that we found.

MONDAY

We got up at the ridiculous hour of 3am and left the house just over an hour later for our flight from East Midlands airport at 6.30am.

Arrived at 9am CET at Berlin Schönefeld airport.

Even though we would be using mainly public transport in the city we decided to hire a car just to make things a little easier and to give us a bit more freedom ... also we got a good deal from the hire company .  The funny thing was that we'd booked a polo-sized car (not the mint ) and the girl on the desk asked if we needed a larger car, we said it would be fine unless the upgrade was free-of-charge of course, to which she replied 'nein'.  She also asked if we needed GPS etc etc but we said we didn't, when she realised that we weren't going to be talked into an upgrade at extra cost she then handed over the keys to a shiny new Ford Focus Estate complete with built-in sat nav!  Not bad at all, a nice free upgrade.

Potsdam

First stop on our sightseeing itinerary was Sanssouci Park in Potsdam, this immense park is situated 25 miles south west from Central Berlin in the city of Potsdam and according to the Lonely Planet guide book is the most popular day trip from Berlin.  It's been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1990, along with all of its other buildings.

The New Palace

Here's just a little bit of the history - Sanssouci Palace was the idea of Frederick the Great (1712-86), it was his favourite summer retreat, a place he could be 'sans souci' (without cares) and is an example of what happens when a king has good taste, plenty of money and access to the best architects and artists of that time.

Chinese House

We spent the rest of the day in Potsdam wandering around and exploring the park - there was a good 2km walk between each palace so we clocked up a few kms by the end of the day.  We found just two caches as we happened to be walking near them in the park.

Tuesday

Woke up to torrential rain which was far from ideal for city sightseeing but I'd already pre-booked tickets for the Reichstag Building weeks ago and these couldn't be changed so we had no option but to head out in the rain and make the best of it.  Once we were out in it it wasn't too bad and we managed to avoid getting too wet by stopping for regular Kaffee and Kuchen breaks.

Reichstag

The Reichstag building is the seat of the German parliament and probably most well known to tourists for its elaborate hi-tech glass dome.

The security to get into the building itself was tighter than at an airport!  The large glass dome at the top of the Reichstag building has a 360 degree view of Berlin city - although it was hard to make out any landmarks due to the torrential rain but we got the general idea.  The glass dome serves more than just a decorative purpose and tourist attraction - it has 366 angled mirrors which deflect daylight down into the parliament chambers below.

The visit was really interesting and included a free audio guide to listen to as we walked up the spiral walkway to the top of the dome and back down again.

Brandenburg Gate (Brandenburger Tor)

Brandenburg Gate is probably the most famous landmark in Germany and is frequently used as a backdrop for news broadcasts and travel guides so we were really pleased to finally see it in real life.  There was an earthcache here too so we gathered the information as we looked around and took photos before moving on to the Holocaust Memorial.

Brandenburg Gate

The Holocaust Memorial is a memorial  to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.  The 2711 concrete slabs (stelae) are arranged in a grid pattern on the 19,000 m2 sloping site.

Holocaust Memorial

A quick look around the Sony Centre then onto the Lego Discovery Centre where there is a very well known cache outside - incidentally this was featured on geocaching.com's blog and FB page only the day before - this cache is a must-do as it is the most favourited traditional cache in the world with 5866 favourite points so far.  We'd been searching a couple of minutes when we were joined by Robriki from the US so we all searched together and luckily Mark made the find after 5 mins - brilliant and definitely worthy of another favourite point.

The Topography of Terrors is an outdoor and indoor museum on the site of buildings which during the Nazi regime, from 1933 to 1945, were the headquarters of the Gestapo and the SS.  A very interesting, informative and moving exhibition, we spent a couple of hours here before moving on to Checkpoint Charlie.

Topography of Terrors

Checkpoint Charlie was the name given by the Western Allies to the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War and has become one of Berlin's primary tourist attractions. Tourists can have their photographs taken for a fee with fake US soldiers dressed in military uniform standing in front of the guard house. The whole area was a little over-commercialised for my liking which is a shame but it's what we were expecting as the guide books had warned of this.

There is also the most favourited virtual in the world here so another must-do. 

Wednesday


We spent most of the day hopping on and off the U-Bahn:

Our first stop was The Berlin Wall Memorial - which is situated at the historic site on Bernauer Strasse, it extends along 1.4 kms of the former border strip. The memorial contains the last piece of Berlin Wall with the preserved grounds behind it.  You are able to see how the border fortifications were developed and maintained until the end of the 1980s.  The free to enter visitor centre screened two really interesting and informative 15-minute films which explained perfectly the origins and the eventual fall of the wall.

The area also has a memorial to the 138 people who were were killed or died at the Wall in connection with the East German border regime between 1961 and 1989.

Memorial to the Victims at the Wall

Very moving when you realised just how young some of the victims were.

We also completed a short multi here that has been on our to-do list ever since we first started caching, over the years we've been watching it, it has been disabled and re-enabled several times so we were glad it was in place for us to find today.

Stasi Museum Entrance

Continuing our tour of the more grim side of Berlin History and landmarks we visited the Stasi Museum.

The museum is housed in the original Haus 1 building of the Stasi Headquarters - the Stasi took over a vast number of buildings but only Haus 1 was open as a museum.  The fixtures and fittings are as it was when they abandoned it in 1990 although they wouldn't look out of place in a 1960s John le Carré film adaptation.

The museum was spread over several floors but a rather vast amount of space was given over to the history of the organisation and the leaders with only a small number of counter espionage devices on show but it was extremely interesting all the same.

Thursday

After a wet couple of days finally the sun came out today.  We took a trip out to the East Side Gallery.  The Gallery is 1316 metres long and consists of 105 paintings by artists from all over the world including the well known Brezhnev and Honecker painting.  It is the longest segment of the Berlin Wall still standing.  It was painted in 1990 on the east side of the Berlin Wall.  It is thought to be the largest and longest-lasting open air gallery in the world.  The paintings depict hopes for a better future for people all over the world.  Over the years many of the images became greatly weathered and in 2009 forty of the murals were restored. Here are a selection of photos:



So, having been on the U-Bahn, buses and trams, we now decided to give the S-Bahn a go. The S-Bahn is a rapid transit light railway dating from the 1930s and we reckon some of the rolling stock dated from then as well! To all intents and purposes it operates the same as the U-Bahn with sections running both above and below ground.

We took the S-Bahn back up to Alexanderplatz and then made our way to The Dom

and then the Radisson Blu hotel - not to check in , but just to check-out the enormous aquarium in the reception area

Radisson Blu Giant Aquarium

Next stop was a stroll around the Tiergarten which is a 520-acre urban public park located in the middle of the former West Berlin.

As we walked up the Unter den Linden towards Brandenburg Tor we became aware that there was a high Police presence and quite a few news crews and photographers in the area so we approached one of the photographers to ask what was going on and he said that they were waiting for the Queen to arrive but they didn't know when, we stood around and waited for a little while but as there was no sign of her we continued on our way.  We had just crossed over from Brandenburg Gate when all of a sudden the traffic stopped and all fell quiet so when a Police helicopter flew over we knew her arrival must be imminent so we stood around and within a few minutes she went past in her Bentley.

We spent the rest of the day just generally chilling out and enjoying this great city before heading back to our apartment ready to pack for an early start on Friday morning to get our flight back home.

All in all a brilliant few days away in a fantastic city.  We would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys sightseeing with one or two quality caches thrown in .

Now where to next?...........