We’re on the road again, this time starting our adventure in Hamburg in northern Germany. We spend 3 days staying at Hotel Friesenhof (highly recommended!!) in the suburb of Norderstedt, north of the airport and just up the road from the hire company where we have booked a campervan for our overland journey across Eastern Europe. Access to our room, in a second building, is reminiscent of Maxwell Smart going to work…leave the lobby, down 1 level in the elevator, along an underground passage, up 2 levels by elevator, and there we are! A train station is 15 mins walk from the hotel and usually there is a train…there is work on the line and so we catch a bus for 2 stations and then go to the city These 3 days included Elaine’s 70th birthday celebration, featuring a hamburger with candles; a tour of the city on the 'traditional' double-decker bus which took us from Alstersee, a large lake which hosts rowing, sailing, canoeing, fishing and swimming, as well as ferry trips, to the amazing harbour. Hamburg is the 2nd largest container port in Europe, moving 10’s of thousands a day…containers waiting to be loaded or collected stretch as far as you can see. The rest of the time we self-guide around the city landmarks.
While searching for glucosamine and turmeric product we meet a charming pharmacist, Cornelia, who, with her partner Paul, has been to Australia and in fact stayed at a camping park on the Barwon River not far from where we live in Geelong! Not only did she source our product, but invited us to their home for a drink and a chat about travel, which turned into a light meal and a late night! We also find that we can collect our campervan 3 hrs ahead of the advertised time.
Our first 3 days on the road go something like this…
The plan on leaving Hamburg is to have a short journey to familiarise John, the driver, and Elaine, the navigator, with the vehicle and the road signs, etc. Our first destination is the small town of Bad Segeberg, about 60 kms away. Our camping guide is written in German as no English version is available. The only part we can really understand is the name of the place, so the ‘how to get there’ part is good luck!
All roads seem to take us to Lubeck, no matter how we try to go around the city. We avoid a massive traffic jam on the motorway which stretches for kilometres and jams up the motorway access ramp, but the detour takes us into uncharted territory, being thwarted every-which-way by not being able to actually go in the direction we know is the correct one. We manage to find our way to the Muritz National Park where there are many lakes, not many signs to the apparent myriad of camping grounds, and being school holidays, heaps of people milling along country roads. Our navigation finds a rather rustic lakeside camp on Wiessen See where the manager makes John put a bottle of Pilsener beer back in the frig because "IT'S MINE!!!!...for stress!"
Moving into
Poland provides more interest…today we go to Germany and Poland twice!
Leaving our lakeside camp, the drive east towards Poland is lovely...obviously
one of the amazing food bowls of Germany with grain crops being harvested
and huge tractors towing several even bigger trailers full to the brim with
grain on all the roads heading towards the local silos. Veggies, berries,
mostly strawberries, broadacre corn and sunflower crops, with occasional dairy
herds. All goes swimmingly until we cross the border into Poland when the
world as we know it changes…the Polish language is quite different to the
Germanic and I'm not quick enough to read a signpost and a map at the same
time, in Polish, and come up with the correct direction! Suffice to
say, after arriving in Poland, doing one 'around the block' of about
45 kms, including a return to Germany and re-entry to Poland by the same route
(!), we find that there IS a road to the north-east, Dorothy, and we are on
it!! To the Baltic Sea and a great
camping place at Dziwnowek with a white, sandy beach to walk along.
Currently it's about 23C after 3 days of mid 30s, and we are feeling much more
comfortable.
Already we
have found how friendly and helpful the local people are, whether they speak
English or not, and how a simple ‘dzieauje’ (jyen-koo-ye)
(thank you) is greatly appreciated..
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