I’ve always been a fan of “buy one get one free” offers and maybe this is why Budapest is so appealing; you get two cities for the price of one (Buda and Pest united in 1873… somehow I can’t see this happening with Liverpool and Manchester!). Add to the fact that our campsite had an offer of four nights for the price of three and you’ve got a good deal on your hands (eight for three?). Anyway, we decided to check out Pest first.

I’ve been to Budapest once before; back in 2009 and it’s interesting to see how much it’s changed in just 5 years. Whilst managing to retain a good clout of its character it appears to now be slightly more westernised than it used to be and one of the saddest victims (in my view) is that the Paprika museum is now a hairdressing salon. On my last visit, this little room-sized museum held someone’s lifetime’s dedication to the national spice of Hungary; pictures of paprika, memorabilia in the shape of paprika, paprika recipes and the history of paprika, plus a free shot of paprika vodka. Just as you thought you could take no more paprika, as you left, there was a little shop selling… umm… paprika. Alas, no more.

Anyway, paprika aside, we spent a sunny morning wandering around the streets of Pest, taking in the atmosphere before buying a hat for Kiri and settling down to eat our packed lunch by the chain bridge across to Buda. The afternoon was to take a slightly more sombre note as we visited the “House of Terror”; a building occupied firstly by the Fascist Arrow Cross Party, then the Communist Hungarian secret police and now housing a museum dedicated to the memory of those people tortured and murdered there. The things that struck me the most were the parallels between the Soviet and Nazi missions. Both had a vision of a utopia that they tried to bring into being, but both disregarded human life in their quest for fulfilling the “bigger picture”. They aimed to get rid of those who didn’t fit their mould; destroying diversity. Surely there must be other ways of achieving a utopia? Maybe Jesus and the Beatles were onto something when they said “all you need is love”? I’d like to think so…

On our return to the campsite, Bertha had a neighbour; a motorbike with a British numberplate and a tent. The owner of them was a great guy called Matthew, who (with his friend, Steve) were touring Europe at a much faster pace than us on their bikes, whilst raising money for Alzheimer’s disease. After munching on a barbecue (our second within three days!) we were joined by Matthew + Steve for the rest of the evening, who obviously weren’t put off by us pulling fish bones out of our teeth! We exchanged stories of the road until way past our bedtimes, fascinated by the challenges they face on bikes and their experiences of countries that we’d been to (as well as those that we had to miss out; especially the Balkans coastline). Just hearing about the sheer pace of their travels (16 countries in 16 days) left us feeling a little exhausted and they expressed that they were a little tired too as they decided to stay a second night at the campsite.

The following morning it was the turn of Buda, so we crossed the Chain Bridge and walked up the hill just in time to see the changing of the guard. Unlike the British Bearskins, these guys get to wear sunglasses on duty, but they’re still incredibly good at keeping their cool when tourists want to pose with them! After a short wander around the castle area, we headed down the hill, then up another one; this time the citadel, which gave cracking views of how flat Pest is. As we returned to the flat lands in search of icecream (I ended up with a scoop of camembert and a scoop of dark chocolate and chilli), we saw a lot of English football “lads”… from their singing and merriness it remained questionable whether they’d last until the England match at midnight. We certainly didn’t… after another great evening hanging out with Matthew + Steve, we crashed into bed just before midnight.

Our final day in the city happened to be Sunday, so we ventured to the International Church of Budapest. We’d been attracted by a line on their website saying that they welcome all, and they certainly didn’t disappoint. There we met people from different countries and backgrounds, but they were united in their welcome and love for Jesus and each other. We appreciated visiting such a real, sincere and unassuming church and we also appreciated being taken out for a Chinese lunch by Daniel (one of the leaders) after the service. We were both really encouraged by the conversations we had over the meal.

Our plan was to go to the Szechenyi Baths in the afternoon – you can’t go to Hungary without visiting a spa – it’s a bit like going to Spain and not having tapas. Oh, wait, we didn’t have any tapas when we were in Spain… bad analogy! Anyway, we weren’t really feeling it, so instead we just enjoyed the afternoon sunshine in a park. The journey back to the campsite was our last one on the metro and I was excited to read that when on the metro you are permitted to carry (amongst other things):

“one bundle of wrapped tree saplings”

No prizes for guessing what I intend to do next time I come to Budapest!

Our last evening on the campsite was accompanied by a concert next door with all of the favourites from the musicals… in Hungarian. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard We go together totally in Hungarian, whilst watching some random other campers waving lightsabers around!

Monday morning came and with it, our cue to leave Budapest. At a speed that Matthew + Steve would have been embarrassed by, we left Budapest to wend our merry way towards Lake Balaton. Maybe we’ll find a spa there?

When we arrive into a new country, we don’t really expect a big welcome, but Hungary pulled out all of the stops. We had hardly settled down for our first night, when our host (the very welcoming Peter at the Zonnebloem Palais warned us that a storm was on its way and it would be a big one. The first clue was ominous black clouds, darkening the sky. The next clue was the wind that whipped up from nowhere, slamming one of our windows shut. And then the incredible fork lightning started across the whole sky, accompanied by almost simultaneous thunderclaps as sheets of rain battered every side of Bertha. The inferno continued for a good half hour as we nervously ate our tea and then… it was all over. Bertha was still in one piece with no leaks. Wowsers. What a welcome. Thanks Hungary!

After a good night’s sleep, Peter encouraged us to pilfer his raspberry and strawberry patches, which we did gladly, before heading off towards Miskolc Tapolca where we planned to visit the thermal baths. Now you can’t go to Hungary without visiting a spa – it’s a bit like going to Italy and not having an icecream. Oh, wait, we didn’t have any icecream when we were in Italy… bad analogy! Anyway, the baths in Miskolc Tapolca are unique in that you can bathe in natural caves within the baths; sounds kind of cool. Well, actually, not so cool really, because they’re thermal… apparently 30 degrees celsius. Now this was a hot day and once we arrived at the baths, the last thing we wanted to do was jump into hot water, so we vowed to go to some baths when we were in Budapest instead. Without further ado we headed to a campsite on the way to Budapest that turned out to be great on two counts; firstly it had beautiful flora and fauna and secondly it permitted barbecues… and we had meat!!! Happiness ensued and we even marinated some asparagus and threw that on the barbie too.

We didn’t really want to leave the campsite as it was so idyllic, but Budapest was calling us (we think… as we’ve really struggled with the language, it might have been telling us to keep away) so we hit the road. The road promptly hit us back. The motorway in Hungary has a really good quality surface, as do several minor roads which have recently been re-surfaced. The minor roads that we had to take hadn’t been recently re-surfaced, so it was a little bit of a bumpy and slow journey, but with the promise of free washing machines at our campsite in Budapest, we persevered. A momentous occasion happened en route; Bertha’s odometer passed 40000 miles (even though we’re driving in kilometres over here)… not bad for a 24 year old!

The temperature had constantly been above 30 degrees for the last few days and as it was showing no sign of letting up, drastic measures were called for. Scissors in one hand, razor in the other, I headed to the shower block. 20 minutes later, I emerged with a naked face and realised that being clean-shaven doesn’t really contribute to body temperature. Add to this that my flat cap looks silly when not paired with a beard plus it takes a lot of effort to shave each day, and you may be pleased to know (or, more realistically, you will be totally ambivalent) that the beard is on its way back.

Time to explore Budapest!

What’s the best way to get down a mountain? Some might say on skis, or snowboards. Others might choose a more sedate option of a cable car. Others might suggest that legs are made for walking. And me? It has to be a toboggan run. Ever since the first time I went on a summer toboggan run in Dürrnberg, Austria a few years ago, I have questioned why these are not compulsory on every mountain. I tried to contain my excitement when I read that there was a summer toboggan run in Tatranská Lomnica… and I was wise to do so, as it’s just a self-contained loop rather than something that takes advantage of the mountain’s topography. However, at 3 Euros a pop, it had to be sampled (without touching the brakes obviously). Happy after a pleasant ride, it was time to leave the mountains and head a little deeper into Slovakia.

I felt a bit bad dragging Kiri away from the mountains she loves so much, but we were heading for a beautiful campsite in the Slovensky Raj national park. At 7.50 Euros per day, it’s not breaking the bank and it’s a small price to pay for facilities and security (police vehicles appeared to patrol the campsite at least twice a day!). We even had a view of the Tatra mountains that we’d left behind and on the sunny evening we arrived, it was ideal weather for a barbecue. We headed to the campsite shop to buy meat. No meat. No barbecue.

Our first full day at the campsite was a Sunday, but as all of the nearby churches seemed a little intimidating, we decided to worship God in His creation by going on one of the gorge walks that Slovensky Raj is famous for. The day promised to be another scorcher and with an early start under our belts, we headed for the shade of what was described as the quietest gorge of the park; Piecky. The free leaflet also suggested that we

Make a stop at the places where you feel the presence of depth and flow of time

We’re not sure what that means, but we kept it at the back of our minds as we entered the the gorge, accompanied only by the call of birds and the burbling of the crystal clear stream. We really are in a beautiful part of the world… but I couldn’t help but get a little sentimental as I thought back to a family member’s recent tweet; “foston flower festival. In the tea tent in the rain. #veryenglish“. Anyway, back to the gorge – we were guided along the stream by yellow markers painted onto the trees. At first, these weren’t really needed as the path was pretty clear, however after a while things got a bit trickier and it wasn’t clear which side of the stream we should be on. Should we listen to Abba or Ghostbusters? (“I’ll cross the stream” vs “Don’t cross the streams”). Sometimes it was just easier to walk in the stream! We then reached our first waterfall. With a long metal ladder. The only way was up (baby?). Now this is more like it! What followed from then onwards was a network of wooden and metal bridges, ladders, handholds and footholes as we navigated ever upwards to the top of the gorge. So much more fun than a normal walk!

Once we got to the top, the path joined with that of another gorge walk (Sucha Bela), from which hordes of tourists were pouring suddenly; we were glad we’d chosen the quiet route! After a quick spot of lunch, we faced the realisation that there was no cable car to get back down to the campsite. Or a toboggan. Walking it was then! After descending for an hour and a half (and seeing a snake… or maybe it was a slow worm?), the lump on my knee was the size of a golf ball and my hayfever, which had been bad all day, reached new heights of annoyance. The medicinal effects of icecream worked wonders on both though, sustaining us until we collapsed in the shade of Bertha 15.4km after leaving her that morning. It was here we remained until dinner time… ideal weather for a barbecue. We headed to the campsite shop to buy meat. No meat. No barbecue.

That’s twice now that we’ve been denied a barbecue by lack of meat, so the following day we made it our quest to find meat (besides, our other food was running a little low). We therefore set out on a lovely stroll to the nearby village of Hrabušice, where we found a little food shop. Our choice of meat was frozen chicken or unidentifiable frozen meat (bear? otter? who knows!) and as we didn’t fancy de-frosting stuff, we gave it a miss, instead just buying vegetables using the age-old method of pointing and hoping that the Slovakian numbers I said were correct. Laden with our 40 carrots (only joking!), we returned to the campsite and evaluated the rest of the day. We both would have loved to tackle another gorge, but the prospect of having to do another downhill made my Ibuprofen-laden knee wince, so we decided to make it a day off.

Dinner time came… ideal weather for a barbecue. We headed to the campsite shop to buy meat. You know the rest. Barbecued carrot anyone?

Satnavs are never wrong. Ever. Points of interest that you’ve loaded into them are also never wrong. Ever. And routes chosen to get to said points of interest (in this case a campsite) are never wrong. Ever. And it is precisely for these reasons that we found ourselves on a narrow path which looked like it had been broken up by the result of some tectonic plate movements, whilst being brushed on all sides by trees. But we were definitely going the right way and there would definitely be a campsite at the end of it. There wasn’t. Hey, at least we didn’t have to go back the same way… oh, wait, yes we did!

What with both the campercontact POI and the TomTom POI for our planned campsite leading us to places which wouldn’t remotely look like campsites, even if you screwed up your eyes really tightly, we did what anyone in our position would do; retire to a Lidl car park to re-assess and get online. Alas, there was no internet signal, so we winged it and stopped at the first campsite we saw at the side of the road. The access to it was… ummm… a bit of a steep descent, but the price was right and after a conversation in a mix of Slovakian, German + English (conducted whilst stroking a lovely dog who gave us a very enthusiastic welcome), we realised that we had somehow landed ourselves on a beautiful terraced campsite next to a stunning reservoir. A great place to spend our first night in Slovakia. Spontaneity 1, planning 0!

The following morning, we soaked up the surroundings, topped up and emptied the necessaries and had a couple of slightly disappointing showers before trying to leave. Yes, I used the word “trying” there. Bertha doesn’t like going up hills. Especially when her engine’s not fully warmed up. On the first attempt, we got half way up the hill before stalling, so rolled back down to get a bit of a running start. The second time was better (with a little more choke), getting us up to the corner, where once again we stalled (this time, my bad clutch control after a bit of wheel spin). Back to the start (where the campsite team were watching this amusing spectator sport). This time, Kiri got out and ran ahead of Bertha, which seemed to be the motivation that Bertha was waiting for, as she made it all the way to the top, with no problems at all. We were on our way and boy, did we have some lovely views during the drive.

Our destination was the ski resort of Tatranska Lomnica, with the promise of a free car park. This time our trusty TomTom didn’t let us down and after a quiet night in the shadow of the mountain, it was time to explore. Now I’m not sure whether our previous blog posts, photos or videos of the trip so far have fully communicated how much Kiri loves mountains? It’s a lot and as we were so close to this one, there was no getting out of climbing it (not that I really wanted to get out of it). Ideally we wanted to get to the very top (Lomnický štít), but with no walking routes and at a cost of 26 Euros each to use the cable car from the 2nd station (Skalnaté Pleso) up to the peak, we decided instead that we could cope with just hiking up to the 2nd station.

It was a stunning walk and the weather was just right; a mix of sunshine and cloud (with the occasional spot of rain) ensured that we didn’t get too hot, but that it was nicely pleasant. Rather than taking the most direct route, we chose to walk across the mountain to Hrebienok, then up from there. This provided us with mainly forest walking throughout the 11km hike (it sounds more if you write it in kilometres rather than miles!) on a path reinforced with large boulders. There were some awesome, thundering waterfalls on the way and some cracking viewpoints from which we could (almost) spot Bertha hundreds of metres below us (898 to be precise once we were at the top). Actually, we didn’t make it to the “proper” top, but we did get to Skalnaté Pleso, which gave us some pretty good views up to the peak.

And here came our dilemma… we had to get back down. Now I’ve got a dodgy knee (after an accident with some Heelys 8 years ago… don’t ask!) and even with the use of walking poles, going downhill is quite painful. However, a single ticket on the cable cars down to the car park came to 13 Euros each. Should we walk, or be carried? Kiri (with her greater fitness level than me and lovely knees) was up for walking, whereas I was up for being carried. We toyed with the idea of a compromise of separate descents (I bet you thought the compromise was Kiri carrying me!), but I wasn’t happy about Kiri on her own on a mountainside. She had a point when she said she’d done the whole coast to coast on her own, therefore she would have been fine in this situation too, but in the end she saw sense (can I get away with saying that?!). 26 Euros later, we were sitting in Bertha, replenishing our salt levels with crisps and nuts and replenishing lost fluid with a lovely local beer (as well as water – don’t worry Mum!).

We really have missed the mountains – don’t get us wrong, the flatlands of northern Europe have been beautiful – but mountains are something else.

Parking appears to be big business in the south of Poland; at Auschwitz we (nay, I) blindly followed the directions of the first person in a hi-viz jacket to a car park before thinking “hang on, we want to be somewhere else”, then going there. Wise to this ploy though, in Wieliczka we passed the hoards of hi-viz-jacket-wearing touts and hung on for the official car park. I swear that this town’s main income (after the salt mine) is car/coach/motorhome parking!

Once tucked away in the corner of the official car park, we assessed our surroundings. We had a parking space, a 24 hour guard, free municipal wifi, and access to a toilet block for our 30 zloty, but nowhere to fill up with water (unless we tapped a fire hydrant… now there’s a thought!). We also needed to empty our toilet… but weren’t sure whether we’d be allowed to in the shiny-looking toilet block. Commence operation flush! After monitoring the guard’s movements (no, not like that) for about 15 minutes, we realised he occasionally left his post, which would give us time to heft our cassette across to the block without him noticing. Timing and subtlety would be everything. The guard moved… we stirred… but then he was back at his post. Too slow. He moved again, and we were off. Apparently my nonchalant swagger whilst carrying a Thetford toilet cassette across a car park coupled with whistling isn’t particularly subtle, but it was enough to fool the guard. Mission accomplished! Ah, the joys of motorhoming; doing stuff that you would never think about in normal life!

Anyway, enough about loos… we were at the salt mines; one of the greatest attractions near Krakow, with over 1 million visitors a year. Our guide for the day was Magdalena; without whom the tour would have been as boring as walking around a mine for 3 hours talking about salt. The injection of her dry wit and humour throughout really brought the tour to life though, and we found ourselves rather captivated by the tiny fraction of the 300km of underground tunnels, chambers and lakes we saw. We also learned that Magdalena is allowed to lose up to 5 tourists a month in the mines and that you shouldn’t talk to strangers underground. 2 hours into the tour, we were shown a map with 3 queues to join; 2 would take you to the surface and the third would take you on the remainder of the tour. As we joined the third one, we were warned by another guide that it would take another hour and be another 2km of walking. We said that was ok. Another guide then checked that we were sure that we wanted to continue, rather than return to the surface. These dissuasion tactics didn’t work on us (thanks Ju + Jay for the advice!), but they must have on some; our group now consisted of us and a Japanese lady, rather than the 40 who started with us. We’re definitely glad we stayed; the second part was just as engaging as the first.

As our eyes adjusted to the sunlight once we were above ground again, our quest was to find water (all of that salt makes you thirsty!). The local supermarket had 5 litre bottles for 1.55 zloty each (approximately 30p), so we grabbed a couple of those and topped up Bertha’s fresh water tank, before proceeding to consume Paluski… a very tasty, but salty snack!

The following morning, we paid a rather bemused guard for another night in the car park (it’s cheaper than a campsite for visiting Krakow) then headed for the 304 bus stop. We had an hour and a half to spare until the start of a church service we wanted to attend in Krakow, so plenty of time. We waited. No bus. Half an hour later, no bus. So we headed to the train station… next train in an hour and a half. We tried another 304 bus stop… this one had a red line through it, which is a pretty universal sign for “not in use” (maybe it should have said “404 – not found”?). Doh. As we arrived at the 204 bus stop, we saw a temporary “304” sign on it, so caught the 304 bus into town, arriving exactly 10 minutes too late for church. Maybe God didn’t want us to go? So, instead we watched some people defying physics with bikes.

We could have watched the flying magicians all day, but we realised that we would miss out on the rest of Krakow, so we ventured into the old town, where we found a procession of children, dragons and drums in the main square. As you do. All this surrealism works up an appetite and the street food we sought was the zapiekanka… a cross between a Subway and a pizza. The way to enjoy it is best described with a picture I think:

Having consumed our body weight in cheesy bready tastiness next to a purple Trabant, we returned once more to the centre of Krakow, where once again we encountered people in strange costumes. We also encountered a protest (not sure what it was about) and hoards of people trying to push city tours in our faces as we tried to find suitable postcards to send back to the UK. Having narrowed the choices down to two (which we named “trippy” and “creepy”… we’re all about the unique postcards!), we decided that we’d maybe had too much excitement for one day, so retreated to Bertha back by the salt mines.

As we woke on our 3rd morning at the mines, Bertha’s fresh water warning light was flashing ominously. We passed the guard on our way to get another few bottles of water from the supermarket, who kindly charged us only 20 PLN for our final night here (“maybe if I reduce the price, these crazy people will leave?”). With 20 more litres of water in Bertha (and plenty more than that falling from the skies), we set off for Krakow again; finding it rather more subdued and rather less surreal than the previous day. We dutifully wandered around Wawel Castle, but we weren’t really “feeling it” as we were both feeling a little under the weather (in more ways than one). So, we found shelter in the Milk Bar and had our first proper meal out of the trip (with real crockery and knives and forks!); 2 courses and drinks for under a tenner for us both. You can’t say fairer than that. At least not in Polish. Actually, we can’t say much in Polish…

Having selected “creepy” over “trippy”, we bought stamps, then returned to the salt mines on a very crowded bus. I’ll give you a clue where we’re off to next, with a story that one of my friends told me. He’d been looking for a cleaner for his flat for a while, and finally selected a very friendly Polish girl. On her first day, he headed out to work, leaving a note asking her to hoover his flat. He returned after work to find that she’d only managed half of one room. It turns out she wasn’t a Pole after all; she was a Slovak. Slow-vac. Get it? As in slow at vacuuming… play on words…? I’ll get my coat.

First impressions matter… or so they say. But maybe not in Poland. As we crossed over the border from Germany, the smooth tarmac motorway gave way to an “interesting” road surface, accompanied by a sign warning us that this would continue for 13.5km. 13.5km later there was a sign warning that this would continue for a further 17km. 17km later… you get the picture. The carriageway going in the opposite direction? As smooth as a lake on a still day. Add in a few other road-surface-related signs and we wondered whether all roads were like this in Poland.

It wasn’t to last though, and soon we were driving on wide, smooth roads. Bertha was just breathing a sigh of relief, when a storm of biblical proportions threw all sorts of things at us. With torrential rain, huge claps of thunder and stunning fork lightning, I’d picked a good time to swap out of the driving, so it was Kiri who had to cope with driving through flash-floods. An hour later, all was calm and the sun was shining once more as we stopped for the night at the home of a lovely German ex-pat couple who open their garden for use by motorhomes. Along with a Dutch motorhome, we were the only guests and we received a very warm and enthusiastic welcome… totally in German!

This is where the tone of the blog post changes I’m afraid, for our next stop on the route was the town of Oświęcim, better known by its German name of “Auschwitz”. Why were we going there? Well, there was no simple answer really. A few years ago I went to Dachau, near Munich and I found it an extremely grim experience, seemingly devoid of hope. Why would I put myself through something like that again? Was it some kind of masochistic tourism? I battled with these questions and the best conclusion I came to was that without being in that place and seeing the scale of it, genocide would just remain a concept in my mind. I had a need to see it first hand in order to connect with the concept. I can’t put it better than Jay did – to not go would be cowardice.

If you want to know the history of Auschwitz, or what there is to see at the two remaining sites I would recommend that you steel yourself and go there. Nothing that I write about my experience will be eloquent enough to communicate the feelings you get as you walk the paths that so many people have walked before. The 3 words that kept going around in my head throughout the visit were “people are people”. You may have a different job to me. You may have a different faith. You may be a different age, have a different culture, come from a different country. But you, like me, are a person. Somewhere, someone didn’t recognise this. Labels were applied. The rest is gruesome history. After a harrowing day, we had the privilege of being able to walk out of the gates.

Yet Auschwitz isn’t a place devoid of hope. Yes, there’s a “feeling” about the place, but birds do sing. Flowers are laid. And millions of people go there every year; there’s hope in that. I only took one photo at Auschwitz (not the best photo I’ve ever taken); my aim being to capture a moment of hope – here a group of Jews having an impromptu service in the courtyard of the notorious block 11 where so many had been shot.

And Kiri found hope in one of the printed information boards.

For once I’m at a loss to know how to end a blog post. Sorry.

What’s the first thing that most people do when they get to Berlin? Well, I’m sure it’s not hand-washing 78 socks and a selection of other undies! Despite teamwork, we both ended up with minor blisters, and all because the washing machine at the campsite was only open during office hours. But hey, we had a lot of walking to do in the next couple of days, so those clean socks would come in handy. The following morning, we caught the U-bahn to the centre of Berlin (48 hour pass for 16.90 Euros each which also gave us several touristy discounts) and 20 minutes later we stepped, blinking, into the city streets. The map suggested that we walked along the Berlin Wall (or part of it) as it was the 25th anniversary of its fall. 10 hours later we were glad we’d done it, but quite exhausted!

Both of us are too young to really remember the events of 1989, however we were keen to expand our knowledge and one of the best places to begin was at the Berlin Wall memorial near Nordbahnhof. This is an area of the “death strip” that has been preserved, with not only “The Wall” (the 12 foot high concrete blockade on the border), but also the patrol area on the East Berlin side with markings where the various other barriers were to stop people escaping to West Berlin. Yet in this solemn environment and against a soundscape of names being read out (of those people who had died at The Wall) people were posing for “selfies”. I’m not against selfies in general, but it didn’t seem an appropriate place.

After seeing several hundred motorbikes drive past as we tried to cross the road (not sure what that was about!) we followed a path alongside existing sections of the wall that took us through a memorial meadow. Where the original wall had been removed, in its place, throughout the city, a double row of paving bricks marked its presence; a subtle scar to remind people of a divided city and a different time. This physical line etched through Berlin took us past the Bundestag (the parliament buildings, which are now symbolically linked by a bridge across river) and down to the Brandenburg Gate where various demonstrations were taking place on the eve of the European elections.

Just past the Brandenburg gate, we took some time to take in the memorial to the murdered Jews; a square packed with what initially appear to be uniform blocks of concrete on a grid. You think you have the measure of it from the outside, where the stones are at waist height, but as you start to walk between them, soon they tower above you and you lose your bearings as the undulating ground between these monoliths stops any form of regular footstep. What got me the most though was that due to the density of the towering blocks, it’s impossible to know whether there’s one other person in this maze or several hundred. This seems to be a very fitting memorial to those who were murdered… and very moving too.

Potsdamer Platz thrust us back into the 21st century with a huge advert for the iPhone 5C on what would have been the East Berlin side of the square, dwarfing parts of The Wall which provided yet more historical information. There’s not really any need to visit a museum in Berlin, when information is so available and public on the city’s broken past. The next part of the tour took us via the “Topography of Terror” that read through from 1933(ish) to 1989, covering the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich, followed by the fall and the division of Berlin, through the rise of the Wall, followed by the fall. To go off on a slight tangent, Kiri and I are currently reading through the book of Romans in the bible and have just covered the first part of Romans 13; all about submission to authorities. Not sure how that sits against the backdrop of Berlin’s recent history…

With our wallets helping us to resist the temptation to go on a “Trabi Safari“, where you get to drive a Trabant through the streets of Berlin (well, we’re already driving a museum piece around the whole of Europe!), we moved on to Checkpoint Charlie, where you could pay to pose with someone dressed as an American soldier. I was a bit disappointed that such a key location in the Cold War conflict could be reduced to this for the sake of tourists… but then again the other tourists seemed to be loving it, so who am I to judge?

The final part of the suggested walk (you can see why it took us 10 hours to make it round!) was to the East Side Gallery; a part of The Wall where artists were invited to paint murals in 1990. As we were flagging a little by this stage, we caught the U-bahn to the nearest station and refueled with a doner kebab. We’d been told that in Germany, kebabs aren’t things only to be sampled at 2am, after a heavy night. Sam was right… a delicacy to almost rival Serbia’s pjeskavica… with probably similar Turkish origins. Replete, we viewed 5 years worth of grafitti on top of the murals which had been re-painted in 2009 whilst musing on whether the grafitti was disrespectful to the artists, or just the way things are when it comes to street art… which provides a nice segway to the next day (no, we didn’t go on a segway tour); a street art tour.

But, as it was a Sunday, church came first. This trip has really been an education for us in the different ways that people “do” church. The church we chose this week met in the large Cinemaxx building in Potsdamer Platz and it was really welcoming. The service was a slick multimedia production, full of energy and zeal, but not much depth and time for contemplation. The part of the service which grated a little for both Kiri and me was a song with the repeated words “Speak Lord”. If God had been wanting to speak during that song, I’m not sure He would have got a word in edgeways.

After church we grabbed a pretzel to accompany our cheese, meats and salad before setting off on the alternative walking tour of Berlin; a walk promising street art and visits to skate parks, artists’ squats and abandoned warehouses. The tour started with a clarification on the difference between grafitti and street art. The former is about getting your name “out there”, often through tagging. The latter is a protest against those with money getting to choose what people see on the streets; it’s about reclaiming city space for art. Sadly, there were no squats, skaters or warehouses, but there was plenty of street art and soon we got to recognise the different artists and “crews” around the city. We also passed an extremely cool “flea market” (although it was more like a festival) that happens every Sunday.

Matt, our guide, was very knowledgeable about the street art scene, but it was in chatting about politics that we really got value for money (in my opinion). It was fascinating to hear him talk about his parents’ life in East Berlin (Matt was only 1 when the wall fell) and his current interest in European politics (he’s doing a Masters in some form of European relations). Who would have thought that it would be a region of former West Berlin where there were riots recently when a McDonalds opened? The tour finished at the site of the Berlin air drop; Tempelhof airfield where that very day a referendum was being held about whether apartments would be built there. With the tour over, we planned to return to the flea market, but (rather uncharacteristically of me), we couldn’t remember which U-bahn stop it was near, so we headed to a shop dedicated to the former East Germany traffic lights, before having another kebab.

There is way too much in Berlin to see in just 2 days (and probably way too much to try to cram into a single blog post), so we’re glad that it’s only a couple of days drive away from the UK (in a vehicle other than Bertha!) so that we can explore more of it in another season of our lives. But for now, it’s “au revoir” (or something like that!)… heads we turn back towards the UK, tails we head further east. Well, actually, as it’s me, it’s slightly more scientific than that… but the outcome is the same as if it we’d flipped tails… Poland here we come!

Life is full of uncertainties, as is this trip. In fact, one of life’s certainties was crushed for us in the last few days. You may remember that the last blog post we wrote was from an IKEA car park? Once complete, we headed towards IKEA with 8 Euros in our pockets (we’re the last of the big spenders). An hour and a half later we wandered out of IKEA, scratching our heads as to why we still had 8 Euros in our pockets. How is it possible to visit IKEA and not buy anything at all? This trip really is life-changing!

We thought that we’d had the last of the rain by the time we hit Hamburg, but as we headed toward the island of Rügen in north-eastern Germany, the rain came pouring down once again. We spent a bit of an anxious night in a park and ride car park outside Rostock (there was nothing to say that we couldn’t stay there… but we made sure we were out of it by 8am just in case). We could have stuck to the motorway from there, but considering the speed limits on the normal roads are out of Bertha’s reach, there was nothing to lose by going the scenic route, with pretty views, cars overtaking us and wait… what was that flash? Please tell me that speed camera got the car in front of us rather than us. Bertha, speeding? Surely that’s not possible. We don’t think that it was us… but if by some miracle we do get a speeding ticket, we’re going to frame it and mount it inside Bertha (after paying our dues obviously).

By the time we arrived onto Rügen, along roads flanked by forests and glowing fields of yellow the rain was but a distant memory and the sun once more did shine. And another rainbow… this time in the form of Camp Regenbogen.

Have you ever been on a campsite which has its own woodland? Its own bakeries (yes, that is plural)? Its own supermarket? Its own bar? Its own sauna? Its own private beach? It’s no wonder that some people had booked to stay there in their caravans for the whole season. The white sandy beach lured us immediately and we spent a happy afternoon playing by the sea. Whilst I did a bit of wood carving, Kiri reproduced my face in the sand with pebbles and wood shavings, then we played “catch” with a tennis ball for a while. You know what, I even showed my legs by wearing shorts.

We retired to Bertha for dinner and a glass of wine (thanks Jeff), before once more venturing to the beach at dusk for a romantic wander. We can be forgiven (I hope) for being secretly happy that the washing machine rooms were locked… our main reason for staying on a campsite in the first place. This was well worth it though; a truly cracking campsite.

One of the key draws of Rügen was the opportunity to see a 1930s architectural wonder; a holiday camp at Prora. This was one of several seaside resorts planned by the Nazi party to be accessible and affordable for everyone. In typical German efficiency, the resort was planned and built so that every room had a sea view, resulting in a huge building stretching a kilometre along the seafront. A little different from Butlins. Due to WW2, it was never finished and, having had many uses over the last 80 years, several bits of it have now been sold off to private parties. It’s a fascinating structure; you could say that it was ahead of its time in its almost Brutalist style… or as Kiri says, you could say that it looks like a prison.

As there was nowhere free to stay on Rügen in Bertha, we decided to move on towards Berlin. A rather uninspiring location of a supermarket car park (in the shadow of a petrol station offering unleaded fuel at 1.519 Euros per litre) provided a backdrop for what can only be described as a marriage-strengthening heated discussion that evening. Everything was happily resolved and by morning the sun was bright in the sky, it was obviously going to be a scorcher of a day and all was well with the world… apart from the unleaded fuel having risen to 1.569 Euros per litre. So those rumours about petrol in Germany being cheaper on a Sunday, Monday and Tuesday may have some grounding after all!

With our plan being to arrive in Berlin for the weekend (sadly a little too early for the Kill It Kid concert there on the 29th) we’re having a couple of rest days on the way. The thermometer has stayed permanently above 30 degrees today inside Bertha, so there’s not really much else we can do but sit back and appreciate our surroundings. Oh, and remain bemused as to how a 24 year old, underpowered, chugging motorhome (sorry Bertha) might have a speed ticket waiting for her back in the UK.

The open road. A stretch of autobahn with no speed limit. No restrictions. You can almost feel the wind in your hair. Apart from the fact that you’re in a 24 year old motorhome who is already aerodynamically lacking without opening any windows. And thus, we found ourselves pootling along at 90kph, being overtaken by cars going literally twice as fast. We did manage to hit 100kph at one point, going slightly downhill with a back-wind, but that obviously scared Bertha as she started trembling. We eased off.

From Osnabrück, we didn’t want to go straight to Hamburg, so we meandered around a little, taking in the German way of life. In the rain. Let’s say the highlights on the way to Hamburg were:

• A strategic dinner of beans on toast (chosen because it would produce the least condensation of any hot meal; we couldn’t open the vents due to the rain)
• An awesome double rainbow in Oldenburg – I know that it’s just raindrops refracting light to split it into its component colours, but rainbows still really excite and amaze me.
• A request for an interview from a finance company (we politely declined, as we don’t want to be inadvertently endorsing a company or product we know nothing about)
• Browsing the web using Lynx and the “view-source:” in Chrome to use less bandwidth

As we were living through these thrilling events, we passed the 4 week mark of this second leg and chose to mark it by having a brief confab about progress and a rough route plan. Kiri’s conclusion was that we needed to “get a wriggle on”. I got excited, then realised that she meant we needed to travel longer distances each day.

So, Hamburg. Why did we choose to go to Hamburg? Our route through Germany has largely been dictated by the concept of umweltzones; low emission zones. As you can imagine, Bertha is not the most efficient vehicle and therefore her punishment is that she’s not allowed inside many of the cities in Germany, so Hannover was out of the question, as was Bremen… but Hamburg doesn’t have a low emission zone (we guess because it’s an industrial hub), so we headed there. Upon arrival, we parked up and wandered to the Miniatur Wunderland. Now we’re little people. We like other little people. Therefore, the prospect of seeing a little model world with lots of people excited us. Jason and Julie had raved about it, so we knew it would be worthwhile. And we weren’t disappointed.

We got there 2.5 hours before it shut for the day, thinking that this would be plenty of time to see everything; after all, it’s just a model railway with a few added extras, right? Wrong. It’s not possible to fully describe in words the level of detail that has gone into this model world. It’s impressive at both the micro and macro levels and it’s most definitely not just about the trains. There’s a fully functional airport with planes that take off and land, there’s a music festival with hundreds of miniature fans, all doing different things, there’s a petrol station with a price board that reflects the current price of fuel and there are hundreds of little cameo scenes; bank heists, inappropriate activities in bushes, murder scenes etc. Oh, and the whole thing cycles between day and night every 15 minutes, where the headlights, brake lights and indicators on every vehicle come into their own. The whole thing is controlled from a command room that wouldn’t look out of place as a city traffic control centre. We saw about half of it in 2.5 hours and definitely intend to return at some point.

Yesterday we decided the best way to view the full-sized city of Hamburg would be to do a free walking tour (like we’d done in Amsterdam). Our guide this time had a very different style to the passionate and charismatic Robbert, but he was extremely knowledgeable and informative in talking through the history of his city. He spoke particularly sensitively about the city and its place within World War 2, drawing special attention to stumbling stones and speaking highly of the anti-war memorial of St. Nikolai church; a church that’s part of Coventry Cathedral’s cross of nails network.

The merchants’ quarter formed part of the tour, as did a church with an organ played by Bach and the new harbour development, featuring the under-construction symphony hall. But most interestingly (maybe a slight exaggeration!), we found out that in the early days of the city, it was the brewers who basically ran Hamburg, due to their pioneering use of a “secret” ingredient in the brewing process. Hops. Well, the first brewing of beer with hops may have started in Germany, but so far on the “beer loop” of our tour (as this second leg has been named by Pig and Porter), Belgium is still winning in terms of taste.

With the Holsten Stark and Astra Urtyp sampled, we felt we’d had a good taste of Hamburg, so it was time to hit the road once again. Now this was the point in the second loop that we were going to head north into Scandinavia, but sadly we’ve realised that time and budget wouldn’t stretch to that. So, as a compromise, we set sail for Lübeck, to stay at the motorhome point in the IKEA car park! Ah, Sweden!

I like to try to live a purposeful life. Now this shouldn’t be mixed up with the concept of a porpoise-full life; that would be way wetter and more complicated. I don’t think I’m alone in this; for centuries people have been trying to fathom the meaning of life. It’s no wonder that throughout this travelling then, I’m pondering on the purpose of it all. In the first loop, it was possible to see the fruits of our travels as we helped out at different projects and put our skills to good use, but the purpose seems to be a little more subtle in this loop.

We’ve now crossed from the Netherlands into Germany where it has rained incessantly. It might be that it’s trying to be welcoming and remind us of the UK, but we don’t really feel like we need to be reminded too much. Aside from being mesmerised by a bread-slicing machine in Lidl (the best thing since… ummm… well… maybe it is just the original best thing!), we’ve mainly been sitting inside Bertha, sheltering from the rain. Due to the wonders of Sikaflex (which we picked up more of in a camping shop), the rain has remained outside. Get in! Or not.

In the midst of the rain, we had a lovely interlude from our sheltering in Bertha; we met up with Judith in Osnabrück; a girl that Kiri was on community with at Lee Abbey (Judith that is; Osnabrück is a city). After having a cup of coffee and a biscuit inside Bertha with her on Friday, she showed us round the city before we chilled at her flat, catching up with her. We then ventured out again into the city (in the rain) where it was the start of Mai Woche (or “May Week” to you and we… you and us…? Hmmm, not sure of that one). Basically, despite the rain, the Germans were having a bit of a knees-up in the town, with live music, street bars and good food. One of our shelters from the rain happened to be a bratwurst marquee, where we were treated (by Judith) to currywurst and chips. Sehr tasty!

Back in Bertha, the rain continued, providing us with a lot of time to read, ponder and have meta-conversations that end up confusing both of us. What do I mean by meta-conversation? Well, I guess a conversation that soon starts to be about itself; a self-examining conversation… a recursive conversation. You start having a conversation about one thing, then it turns into talking about the conversation itself, then talking about how we’re talking about the conversation, down to many layers. A bit like Inception, but even more complicated.

It’s a strange situation to be in; most of the time in “real life” (yes, I know that what we’re doing is real life, but it’s not exactly normal!) you start to have a deep conversation or a deep pondering, then you’re dragged away by the reality… you’ve got to get back to work, there’s someone at the door, the washing needs to be hung up… you get the picture. It’s not like that for us at the moment though. It feels a bit like we’re living in a temporary, privileged bubble where we have time. We have time to wrestle with challenging bits in the bible. We have time to grapple with aspects of our personalities that may be sub-optimal. We have time to examine the intricacies of our marriage; working out how to strengthen the bits that are weak and at the same time marvelling at the bits that just work, even though they may make no logical sense. I guess you could say we’re growing.

So in one respect, the purpose of this trip can be seen in this growth, but despite my Lenten endeavours to focus on fruitfulness, I still like to see tangible outcomes. All of this talking without any action points hurts my head. Abstract is good for a short while, but I like concrete implementations (an analogy for the techies maybe?). We have no concrete plan as we float around Europe… aside from returning to the UK before we run out of teabags (very complicated maths has been used to calculate when this may be). Can you be purposeful without a plan? I’m learning (slowly and reluctantly) that maybe you can.

What is the meaning of this trip? What is the meaning of life? I don’t know, but I do know that taking time to grapple with these questions (and other, deeper questions) is strangely rewarding. The more pertinent question though is whether we’ll be able to build time into our post-trip lives to continue the wrestling. Especially when kids (or porpoises?) might start arriving on the scene at some point after our return to the UK. But that’s something to think about at some other time.