Unfortunately we had to leave Lübeck this morning, as we have a schedule to keep. We could have made it to Berlin (our destination) in three hours, but again we chose the slower route as often the journey is better than the destination. Today that was certainly the case, as the drive was full of pleasant surprises, beautiful landscapes and gorgeous towns.
Nearly every road we traveled today had “tree tunnels” where either the forests on both sides of the road reached up and over the road, or there were stretches of farmland where trees were planted on both sides. It was the perfect route because it was so hot and humid, but driving so much under the shade of the trees was downright blissful. There were the funniest pictorial warning signs all along the roads to caution people not to hit the trees, but in most places there were guardrails built around the trunks of them and I’m not sure if it was to save a life, or save the tree.
The weird thing about all the farmland we saw (and there was a LOT of it) was there were no houses or barns anywhere in sight. Kory was sure it was from the days of communism where everything is state owned, but I don’t think we were in previous communist territory the whole day. Whatever the reason, it was strange to have no houses whatsoever from city to city. The bulk of the fields were growing wheat but we saw plenty of corn and even several sunflower fields, which were spectacular. Some of the cities we went through looked a lot like a Hollywood back lot set because they were so European looking and seemed totally deserted, but they weren’t. Nearly every city had pea patches on the outskirts of town (it must be a German thing) so I guess rather than sit outside on a hot sidewalk after work, people go out to their little garden to take in the evening sun, as we saw plenty of people in their pea patches.
We encountered two walled cities today that surely seemed like they would be hot tourist attractions, but weren’t – they were just normal towns where people lived and everywhere we looked was picture perfect. We also drove through the city of Güstrow and were surprised to see a castle in the middle of town, complete with a garden fit for a king. The entire garden was surrounded by something that looked like a massive hedge, but turns out, it was thousands of deciduous trees planted tightly in two rows about twelve feet apart. Someone, many years ago, built a rounded metal frame structure next to the trees that went the entire length of the garden, across the back and up the other side. As the trees grew, they were trimmed and woven into the metal frame so that now it’s possible to walk inside the “hedge” all the way around (it had a very high “ceiling”). At regular intervals there were windows and doors cut into the hedge so it’s possible to leave that thick tunnel of trees and go out into the garden. I’ve never seen anything like it and it was figuratively and literally, very cool. (See photo of the castle taken from inside the hedge.)
Getting around Germany has been a real challenge since none of the directional signs say “east” or “west,” “north” or “south” – they just have the number of the road and some city in the distance down that road. It takes me by surprise every time and usually there isn’t enough time while we are driving to check the map to see which city is in which direction, so today had plenty of wrong turns and backtracking. The worst time we had was once we arrived in the city of Berlin. It took over an hour and half to find the hotel – even with GPS and precise directions I got from a website I checked this morning. The problem was, as we found out later, there are five places in this city with the exact same address. The only way to tell them apart is the zip code, but neither the computer nor the GPS asked about that. After we showed up at one of the addresses and realized it was wrong, it took quite a while to figure out where we were in order to find our way out. We were all so thankful to be done with driving for the day and to have a room to call home for the night. (I had previously request Kory NOT use the GPS on this trip because he tries to program it while driving and it causes me too much tension. We needed it for a few minutes tonight so I was thankful it was a good backup system, even though it couldn’t find our street either but it got us close enough. Berlin is bigger than Paris!)
Kaleb was a trooper today, not complaining about a thing, just reading and playing his Nintendo. Kory and I were talking about the history of East and West Germany and Berlin, and Kory said something that Kaleb piped up and corrected. We both were shocked. I asked how he knew that information and he said, “From reading the history of the world books.” And just when we were thinking he’s not paying attention….
Nearly every road we traveled today had “tree tunnels” where either the forests on both sides of the road reached up and over the road, or there were stretches of farmland where trees were planted on both sides. It was the perfect route because it was so hot and humid, but driving so much under the shade of the trees was downright blissful. There were the funniest pictorial warning signs all along the roads to caution people not to hit the trees, but in most places there were guardrails built around the trunks of them and I’m not sure if it was to save a life, or save the tree.
The weird thing about all the farmland we saw (and there was a LOT of it) was there were no houses or barns anywhere in sight. Kory was sure it was from the days of communism where everything is state owned, but I don’t think we were in previous communist territory the whole day. Whatever the reason, it was strange to have no houses whatsoever from city to city. The bulk of the fields were growing wheat but we saw plenty of corn and even several sunflower fields, which were spectacular. Some of the cities we went through looked a lot like a Hollywood back lot set because they were so European looking and seemed totally deserted, but they weren’t. Nearly every city had pea patches on the outskirts of town (it must be a German thing) so I guess rather than sit outside on a hot sidewalk after work, people go out to their little garden to take in the evening sun, as we saw plenty of people in their pea patches.
We encountered two walled cities today that surely seemed like they would be hot tourist attractions, but weren’t – they were just normal towns where people lived and everywhere we looked was picture perfect. We also drove through the city of Güstrow and were surprised to see a castle in the middle of town, complete with a garden fit for a king. The entire garden was surrounded by something that looked like a massive hedge, but turns out, it was thousands of deciduous trees planted tightly in two rows about twelve feet apart. Someone, many years ago, built a rounded metal frame structure next to the trees that went the entire length of the garden, across the back and up the other side. As the trees grew, they were trimmed and woven into the metal frame so that now it’s possible to walk inside the “hedge” all the way around (it had a very high “ceiling”). At regular intervals there were windows and doors cut into the hedge so it’s possible to leave that thick tunnel of trees and go out into the garden. I’ve never seen anything like it and it was figuratively and literally, very cool. (See photo of the castle taken from inside the hedge.)
Getting around Germany has been a real challenge since none of the directional signs say “east” or “west,” “north” or “south” – they just have the number of the road and some city in the distance down that road. It takes me by surprise every time and usually there isn’t enough time while we are driving to check the map to see which city is in which direction, so today had plenty of wrong turns and backtracking. The worst time we had was once we arrived in the city of Berlin. It took over an hour and half to find the hotel – even with GPS and precise directions I got from a website I checked this morning. The problem was, as we found out later, there are five places in this city with the exact same address. The only way to tell them apart is the zip code, but neither the computer nor the GPS asked about that. After we showed up at one of the addresses and realized it was wrong, it took quite a while to figure out where we were in order to find our way out. We were all so thankful to be done with driving for the day and to have a room to call home for the night. (I had previously request Kory NOT use the GPS on this trip because he tries to program it while driving and it causes me too much tension. We needed it for a few minutes tonight so I was thankful it was a good backup system, even though it couldn’t find our street either but it got us close enough. Berlin is bigger than Paris!)
Kaleb was a trooper today, not complaining about a thing, just reading and playing his Nintendo. Kory and I were talking about the history of East and West Germany and Berlin, and Kory said something that Kaleb piped up and corrected. We both were shocked. I asked how he knew that information and he said, “From reading the history of the world books.” And just when we were thinking he’s not paying attention….
