After six full information packed days in Berlin and countless miles walked, we reluctantly packed things up and headed South towards Prague. On our way out we stopped at Potsdam, just south of Berlin to visit the famous “Park Sanssouci Palace” complex. Yes, I said complex… this massive park like area contains a number of very impressive Palaces, two of which were built by Frederick The Great. It’s hard to believe that people could actually live in such extreme decadence when so many unfortunate citizens suffered in poverty.  We did a quick drive-by of Dresden on our way South. Dresden was a major cultural centre and was once considered the Florence of the north. This city was virtually obliterated by a firebomb raid on the night of February 13, 1945 by thousands of allied bombers. Rebuilt yes, but I don’t think it’s the city it once was, another example of great loss of life and culture. As we moved on, a few other pop-up surprises along these secondary highways made this drive very interesting. We pulled into Prague later on in the afternoon and managed to find a nice campground inside the main city limits only a short metro ride from old town. We ventured in late this morning to check it out and literally spent the rest of the entire day walking around in a total state of “awe-ness” at it’s historical grand beauty and vibrant beehive atmosphere. This city with all it’s little shops and restaurants is truly a gem that has somehow weathered the stormy past and survived virtually intact. Ornate buildings that date back many hundreds of years, and twisty cobble stone streets that make you feel as if you should be riding through them in a horse drawn carriage. This place is truly worth seeing in person as photos just don’t do it justice. Tomorrow we plan on spending the entire day exploring the magnificent Royal Palace that overlooks the city and is considered the largest in Europe.

We want to take a moment and say “thank you” to everyone posting comments on our blog. We truly love receiving them and appreciate all the nice things that have been said (so far). It’s comforting to know we have so many wonderful friends and family showing such an interest in our own crazy adventure. Please keep your comments coming and know how much we enjoy them.  Following are a few more pick’s from around Berlin.

Turns out BrumaRV is parked virtually on top of what was once part of the “Berlin Wall”. We discovered this as we walked out of our surprisingly central Berlin campground this morning. We then followed a fragmented  pathway that was once a part of this notorious wall and it stretched all the way to the “new” Reichstag (German Parliament). Interestingly, sections of the old original wall still exist in many neighbourhoods but for the most part you’d be hard pressed to find concrete evidence of its existence in this rapidly changing city. This is not the same Berlin that Bert and I saw in 1972. No mean looking and threatening GDR military guards at “Checkpoint Charley” to contend with.  Instead, work cranes everywhere filling in the empty gaps of old East Berlin with massive building projects and creating impressive ultra modern structures all over the city. Todays Berlin is truly an amazing city with a friendly, safe, and vibrant feel to it. Walking through the Brandenburg Gate this afternoon was an exciting experience for me considering the last time I saw this Gate it was literally trapped in a strange and surreal “no-man’s-land” between the East and the West. Bert and I could only  look at this impressive historical Gate from atop a wooden tower on the Western side of the dividing wall, about a 100 yards back. Nearby we had an interesting conversation with a young East Berliner couple as we waited in a lineup to get reserved access tickets to walk through the new glass Dome of the Reichstag that covers the main legislative chambers. This very impressive structure built to replace the old “bombed-out” dome was only in the conceptual stages in 1972 but now it provides a wonderful panoramic view of central Berlin. Walking along some impressive boulevards we even found the Canadian Embassy and a great Mediterranean buffet.  Much more to see tomorrow.

We drove into the small city of Weimar late in the day with the intent of spending a night in the “Stellplatz” park-up near the town centre and then heading out in the morning for Berlin. A Stellplatz (German) or “Aires” (French) provide a great alternative for overnight parking when on the move. Most of them have limited services so you need to be somewhat self contained. Often the locations are near town centres or sports facilities where you can use the complex’s amenities for a reasonable charge. The free Stellplatz in Weimar turned out to be a good one and the electrical hook-up was a pleasant surprise but more importantly it’s proximity to the old town centre was fantastic. Weimar seemed to be a cool place so we decided to spend the day and check it out and we’re sure glad we did. Turns out that this has been a major arts centre for 500 years. It’s magnificent palace is now used as a cultural centre and art museum and we really enjoyed going through it. Famous painters, author’s, poets and composers including Bach himself have all called Weimar home. What a great day we had starting it off strolling through the cobble stone streets with our coffee and snack in hand and basking in the warm sunshine. We found a great little ‘Roma” hat and clothing store that we know you would love Kristen. We capped the day off with a wonderful traditional German dinner and beer in a popular tudor pub that I’m sure has served many interesting people over the years. This morning we got up, pointed ourselves in the direction of Berlin, and then drove through some magnificent countryside. Rolling green hills with scattered towns and villages that date back hundreds of years. Driving into Berlin on a Sunday evening turned out to be a very good decision considering the reasonable traffic we encountered. We are now staying at a “no-frill” campsite near the centre of Berlin which is just a short walk away from the Brandenburg Gate. Tomorrow we begin our Berlin experience in earnest.

The massively devastating impact of Hitler’s Third Reich regime become overwhelmingly real and emotionally painful when visiting the German National Memorials of Wewelsburg Castle and the concentration camps of Mittelbau-Dora and Buchenwald. We made our way across this beautiful countryside to the impressive Castle of Wewelsburg. Built in 1603-09 it’s the only triangular Medieval Castle in Europe and it’s very unique but it’s real diabolical claim to fame is that this is the location Himmler himself chose to establish a “Reich Leaders” SS School. His plans for the castle and village were nothing short of spectacular and to that end he established a concentration camp of workers nearby to help realize his dream. Recently the German Government has established a very impressive educational and interpretative centre in the old SS administrative building next to the Castle to provide the public with an opportunity to examine this notorious organization. Both the memorial and the castle are well worth a visit. A short distance away is the Mittelbau-Dora site. This is where V1 and V2 rockets were produced under-ground destined to ultimately rain down on London. The very large concentration camp at this site provided the labour force to build the mega tunnels and manufacture those terrorizing rockets. Hitler’s grand and devious plans of the nearby Jonas Valley facility (also built into  the side of a mountain and still a restricted area) was his last chance of using advanced technology to turn the tides of the war in his favour. This second massive underground facility was conceived and well underway by 1945 with the purpose of building many more rockets and jet fighter airplanes. This was also going to be the location of Hitlers command centre and last stand if he had to evacuate Berlin.  Furthermore, evidence exists that the development and testing of nuclear related devices took place here in 1945. Fortunately for everyone time ran out before this facility could become fully productive on all fronts.  Much of the large labour force required for this huge project was provided by two concentration camps, the largest one being Buchenwald not too far away. I won’t even try to describe this camp as the appropriate words fail me. The camp facility itself is now a massive historical display and adjoining the camp is a gigantic memorial built by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1958, dedicated to it’s internees.  Walking through this left us numb and in silence. Like the military casualties of war that we take time to remember every November 11th, countless other innocent and unfortunate souls also deserve to be remembered and their tragic and painful story should serve as a sobering lesson to humanity.
Tomorrow we start heading north for Berlin and we’re so looking forward to experiencing all that this incredible city has to offer.

Well… I think (fingers crossed and knocking wood) we have most of our WiFi Hotspot SIM card issues resolved which surprisingly only took us about three days worth of exciting I.T. time to accomplish. We hope the only remaining electrical complication we have now is finding signal strength strong enough for our WiFi to function properly and keeping all the batteries we have fully charged. Keeping the electrons flowing is no easy task considering how much of our time has been spent off the main power grid and all the various electronics that we need to keep powered-up and functioning. At some point, when I run out of really important things to talk about, I may do a blog on just the electronics that I have collected to make our travel communications, navigation, and photo management so easy and stress free… Not!
As we now head East right through the centre of Germany we find ourselves in the midst of some very sad and emotional, yet strangely fascinating WWII historical landmarks. Many of these truly sobering sites were at one time behind the iron curtain not easily accessible by the general public and not maintained. With the reunification of Germany  in 1990 there has been a determined effort here to honestly recognize, address, and take responsibility for darker periods of past generations. The German government has done an admirable job of maintaining sites and providing easy access with acute information about many of these dark places. The modern and impressive interpretation centres clearly promote the concept of  “We must face our past in order to move on, and we must learn from it so it will never happen again”.  In future blogs we’ll introduce you to a few infamous sites that we’ve visited, many being within close proximity of each other. Until then here are a few pictures of us on the road again.

Well, three nights of free camping has turned into four as we keep finding more castles and villages to explore in this under-publicized gem of an area. We visited 2 wonderful medieval castles and one amazing palace yesterday. It turns out that Burg Vischering Castle is one of the oldest and best preserved fortified medieval castles in northern Europe. It dates back to 1270. Like slipping into a time warp, you can just imagine the lifestyle of the day. In the photo of me holding open a round door in the floor of a castle tower; this is an “escape” hatch for women and children when the castle is under enemy siege and it leads down a circular stair to safety. The amazing thing is, you only have to walk about a kilometre away to visit another wonderfully preserved rival castle, Ludinghausen Castle.
Next, we moved on to our first official campsite and have spent the last two days here in the city of Munster. Some very interesting history here including a very famous Astrological clock in an amazing Gothic Cathedral. We also saw the impressive court room where the peace documents were signed to end the 30 year European war in 1648. We had a delicious bowl of sausage & pea soup in a cold but cool “open market” while enjoying the fantastic 1700’s old town centre of Munster.
On a more frustrating note, we’ve been having some WiFi SIM card issues over the last few days that we hope to sort out soon. Will keep you posted!

We have been very busy the last few days buzzing about shopping for things and setting up our new home on wheels. Thus far the RV is fun to drive, performs well, and despite the square footage that we’re accustom to living in, it’s been very comfortable and efficient.
We capped off our fantastic Valentines Day with super meat fondue at the restaurant in our hotel and the following morning, drove to Munster to return our rental car (It seems everyone in this part of Germany rides a bicycle) we said good-by to our new friends and moved into the RV. The manager/chef at our hotel took the time to escort us to this specially  designated motorhome area (Stellplatz) beside a great recreation centre in the village of Senden about 6 km away from Hiddingsel where we could “free-camp”. We planed on staying just one night but this is our third. Each morning we get up and go for a refreshing swim at the family pool centre about a 2 minute walk away. A 5 minute walk in the other direction leads us to a very cool 300+ year old castle in poorish repair that the town has put up for sale to circumvent the renovation costs.  All the old village centres that we have visited are really terrific and the people have been so wonderful. Today we went into a pharmacy in Dulmen to check out some flu meds to have with us and the doctor owner asked us about our plans… before we knew it we were in his office at the back of the shop scanning his computer and going over all kinds of great places to see and things to do. We spent an hour of fun with him and despite the language gap, we managed to gain a lot of knowledge, information and respect for friendly locals. Tomorrow we will be off to explore another castle not far from here that is more famous and in much better repair.

Today is February 14th, and we just took possession of our brand new 2014 German made Sunlight T-58 Motorhome. We think it will make a perfect home for romping about Europe in and we’re very excited about putting it to work. We chose our dealership well, Michael Thyssen, owner of the very large DUMO-Reisemobile Dealership, and his staff have been absolutely fantastic to work with and have helped us tremendously. Tomorrow we are driving to a vary big motorhome camping store called (Obelink) on the Dutch/German border, about 100km from here to purchase most of the things we’ll need to get this mobile operation underway.  We celebrated this extra special occasion by capping it off with a wonderful fondue dinner at our Hotel, this truly has been a most fantastic and memorable day!  Wishing  all of you a very “Happy Valentine’s Day!”

This is our 130+ year old hotel (across the street from the church) in the tiny  village of Hiddingsel Germany. Everything is very brick and beautiful here and the people are wonderful. Dumo Reisemobile is very handy, about one kilometre directly up the street from our hotel.  The weather has been comfortably cool and mostly dry with a nice mix of sun and cloud. We are making good progress on the motorhome front!