Three Castles and the Autobahn (Day 2 of Germany)

I've been letting this go for too long so I figured I'd better get on here and update this before the details slip away. Pardon my spelling. I'll edit it later.

That first night of sleep was out-freakin-standing. Interesting note about the beds in Germany--at least the hotel beds. They all used these really small beds that were quite smaller than what we know as a twin bed. If you got a "double" room, two of these beds were crammed together side by side. Every hotel had the exact same type of white down comforter and they were warm as hell.

We got up fairly early and got our things together. Did our thing--you know...shit, shower, and shave. We didn't pay for breakfast with the room but we had the option to pay for it separately so we exercised that option this morning. Went into the restaurant and not being used to the customs yet, we didn't know if it was a buffet style or if we needed to order. Sure enough, it was buffet which always sounds good to me. The breakfast here in Frankfurt was well diverse but it sort of set the pace and kind of eased us into the breakfasts in days to come. There were some cereals and milk. Juice and coffee, of course. But the thing that struck us as different was the large selection of what I would call "deli-meats" and cheeses. Hams, turkey, cold sausages...then there was this one particular meat that sort of reminded me of bologna but not quite as pink. This "bologna" had pieces of mushrooms IN the meat. It was actually quite good. Neither one of us really knew what to eat so our meal was quite small.

After breakfast, we sat outside on the patio for the restaurant for a few minutes. There was a local men's soccer team who were coming back from a workout or a team run. The coaches passed by and smiled and said "morgen" to us. We replied in the native tongue of course but it was nice to appear that we just blended in.

Time to go, I guess. We loaded our car, took a few pictures and headed out. At this point, I had not QUITE figured out how to put in addresses accurately in Google Maps but I was starting to get the hang of it. So, I just typed in "Berlin" and got directions. Let's keep in mind that from this point, we had no itinerary and absolutely NO HOTEL accommodations reserved anywhere. We were foreigners in a car heading whichever direction the BlackBerry told us. And that was fine by us.

We decided to hit up the bank before we took off from Frankfurt. I had discovered the night before that the max my bank would let me take out at a time was 150 Euros. Seems like enough but you'd be amazed at how quickly you can go through that. BUT... I had to keep track of the days in the U.S. for the withdrawals because if I didn't time it right (and being 9 hours ahead of AZ), I was "screwed" out of an ATM withdrawal for the day.

There is a term--or rather a street sign I should say-- that everyone going to Germany should know and understand well. "Einbahnstraße." Pronounced: Ein'-bon-shtrass-a... Guess what that means? "One Way Street." They're on blue signs with a big white arrow. Problem I had with German street signs was that they seemed to be fairly low and typically further back from the intersection that I'm used to. German streets were crowded enough. Throw in a lost American going the wrong way down a one-way street and it's a "puckering" experience.

Pulled over and got my bearings. Looked around a figured out where we were and the ole lady started reading directions to me. We got lost a couple times (as we certainly would the remainder of the week) but we never let that slow us down. On this particular morning, we followed one road entirely too far and ended up on the bank of a river. We got out and took some pictures. Sure, it was like any river in any place but took pictures anyway. There was an older woman across the river on the opposite bank feeding ducks by herself. Just sort of neat.

Got back in the car and finally found the exit for the Autobahn. Here we were....still didn't know the courtesies of the Autobahn yet but I would learn that day. After about 20 minutes, I realized that again, we were heading the wrong way on the autobahn. :) Dear oh dear... This is going to be a long week. Finally got turned around the right direction and off we were. Heading toward Köln (Cologne). We weren't stopping there but that was the direction we were heading on the A5.

Once we got well out of town, I decided that the child-sized coffee I had at breakfast wasn't going to cut it. I found a little pull off with a gas station/convenience store. These little pull-offs are absolutely nothing like American ones. I'm talking slow down from 170km/h to stop in about 500 feet. Imagine the dinkiest little "rest area" on any given American Freeway, bring it right up against the freeway, and put a gas station in the middle of it. That's what we're talking about here. Went in to get coffee and was greeted by a young child--probably 6 years old--who was bulky as hell and wearing nothing but some tighty-whiteys. Ok...WTF? Not my culture...can't judge.

Got my coffee and the wife came back from the restroom. In Europe (fairly Universally), restrooms are denoted in public by the letters "WC." In German, that is pronounced "Vee-Tsee" (those are the letters in the German alphabet, after all). She told me about this little dish next to the WC that had change in it. People were putting change into the dish but she didn't because neither one of us understood what that was really all about. It's not like they had people in the WC giving out towels, etc. We later learned that these were to pay for the cleaning of the WC and there were usually people in vests outside of the WC who probably took care of that.

Off we go again. We don't really talk much in the car during this week. We both just sort of keep to ourselves and take it in. The countryside here is absolutely gorgeous. Most of actually reminded me of driving through TN and GA. We started noticing that every town, village, collection of houses had a very large and ornate steeple (attached to a church, of course) somewhere near the middle of the town. They were all black (the steeples) and most were pointed although some were rounded. I think--but never received confirmation--that the round ones were Jewish Synagogues.

On our way through some of the mountainous terrain early in today's voyage, we see this traffic jam on the Autobahn that looked like it went on for a while. I thought "damn...glad that ain't me." Why is this important? It's not but as we were driving, we noticed that this traffic jam just kept on going. And going. And going. Wow. I'm talking 20-25km of a traffic jam. STOPPED cars, not slowed cars. Everyone was out of their cars…smoking, talking to other drivers (or non-drivers at this point). It looked really bad and it appeared to have begun with one single broken down truck that blocked a single lane. Crazy.

We had all day to get to Berlin and by-gosh we took all day. We stopped a couple times for no reason at all. Once, we stopped in this little town just because it looked classic from the autobahn. We drove around for a minute or two, got out, walked around for a few minutes, and took some pictures of the church in the middle of town. Got back in the car and headed back to the autobahn again.

The historical markers on the freeways are similar to the ones on our roads. They are brown signs with white lettering. We kept seeing these signs for historical houses, mills, churches, etc., but we never actually saw any of the historical landmarks that they were supposed to represent. But then, we saw one. :) The marker said "Drei ......" I don't remember what the second word was but it was basically talking about "three castles." The word was not "Schloß" which would make sense. We saw three castles (or ruins of them, rather) spread out on top of three different hills (the three largest in the area). Of course, we took the exit to get to the most accessible one. It was called Die Mühlberg and was built sometime in the 700's. The tower still stood high and it was rather small but wide open. To get to the castle, you actually had to walk across a bridge that most obviously used to cover a moat. Yeah...a freaking moat! I loved it. You could tell time really took effect on this little castle. You could see remnants of the walls inside. We got some great pictures of the castle. We climbed to the top of the tower and took pictures of the surrounding area--the other castles and the town below). We also walked down into the dungeon. VERY cold down there and hardly any natural lighting at all. It was a neat little side-excursion because there was no guide for this thing. We could take it in at our leisure and by ourselves.

Back on our journey NE...

We left the state of Hessen where Frankfurt lies, and headed into the state of Thuringen. For those of you who don't know, Thuringen is the home of the Rostbratwurst (how we know bratwurst). We stopped at a little "truck stop" (they call it a truckstop but it was more like a rest stop without gas...restaurant, gift shop, etc). I ordered a Rostbratwurst mit senf (brat with mustard). They also had on tap... Köstritzer Schwarzbier (I'll try my best to pronounce this: Koo'-stritz-a Shvatz-bia). This is my absolute favorite beer. It's a Black Pilsener beer from the State of Thuringen from a little town called Bad Köstritz. On tap...at the truck stop. DAMN! Anyway, more on that in a few blogs.

Back to the Autobahn we go. Heading out on A4 this time. Hey, did I explain "The Autobahn" to you? Let's set the record straight here. There is no such thing as "THE Autobahn." That's like saying "THE Freeway" or "THE Highway" over here. "Bahn" basically means "way." "Autobahn" is just the name of their freeway SYSTEM. Not one road. And there are certainly speed-limits. Did anyone adhere to them? No way. The large Audi A6 and the Volkswagens were the car to have there. I'm talkin' fast, brotha. Yes, there were some short sections with no speed limit but the majority of the time, the limit was 120-130km/h. But there was a LOT of road construction so you couldn't really get going that fast for very long. So... I call bullshit on the autobahn myth. There was a courtesy though that I learned on this day. If you were slower, you DID move to the right. No question. And nobody passed on the right. Instead, they would come up on you and move in directly behind you so you could move over and let them pass to the left. Brilliant!

So, we head on up and through and get near the A14 (somehow, we were actually on the A9 from the A4). That was the section of freeway that took you to Leipzig. I REALLY wanted to see a little of Leipzig and more specifically Thomaskirche. Johann Sebastian Bach did most of his work from Leipzig and was the cantor for Thomaskirche before he died. His grave is supposedly in the church. That would have been cool. But, It didn't know where I was going and it was getting late in the afternoon. Instead, we saw a really filthy part of Leipzig and just wanted to get out of town.

On the way back to the A14, I decided that now would be a good time to stop for gas. The had 3 selections. Benzin, Super, and Super Plus. WTF was Benzin? It took us about 30 minutes to get gas because I wasn't sure which was just plain old unleaded gas. I asked the clerk in the store but no English and I didn't know enough German to navigate the gas pump question. We settled for Super and that seemed to be a good choice. Let's put price into perspective for a moment. Gas was about 1.80 (Euros) per liter. That's right...liter. And the car took about 30 liters to fill up. Small tank but it was damned expensive to fill up.

Back on the road. Confused as hell as we get near Berlin. The directions are starting to be more obscure because, if you remember, I simply put "Berlin" into the map. Who knows where we'll end up. So we stopped again and a roadside gas station to look up some hotels. Found one and input the address and headed out once again.

We get downtown and now it's about 6:30-7pm. I don't know where I am. I'm realizing now that if Berlin is anything like Frankfurt, I'm looking at not finding anything open very soon. I'm starting to stress a little but try my best not to let the wife see that. Once I realized where we were, I started fresh in the blackberry and got us to a hotel near Schloß Charlottenburg (you should look that up). Lucky for us, it was still open. Unlucky for us, they had no rooms available. Ok, I was really starting to worry that we would be sleeping in the car. Was I worried for my sake? No way! I've slept in a lot worse places in my adult life. I was worried that it would stress my wife out and I wanted her to be comfortable--more so than me, anyway. So, again to the blackberry. This time I did a search of the area for hotels. Found one just a km away and drove there. We walked into the lobby at 8:20. They closed at 8. But they had a bar that was attached to the lobby and a waiter greeted us. We told him our situation and he was so nice. Went out of his way for us really. He called the owner of the hotel to see if he would let him check us in anyway. The owner said no but the waiter called some more hotels until he found us one. It was nice of HIM to call because he could speak to the other hotel personnel in German and as a local. He secured us a spot at the Alfa Hotel--just a few blocks away-- for two nights. I breathed a sigh of relief as we thanked him for his kindness and drove away to our hotel.

We checked in to the Alfa Hotel. We had a room on the top floor. There were only about 4 rooms per floor sp it's not like these hotels were like ours at all. At the end of our very short hallway was a door to the roof of the hotel. What a good view! Sure, it was city, but a good view of it, regardless.

By this time, we're hungry and it's 9pm. I knew we weren't far from the Schloß Charlottenburg and I remembered seeing a restaurant/brewpub nearby. I plugged it into the BlackBerry and it only took us a minute to get down there. The place was called Brauhaus Lemke. We ordered food and of course I wanted to try their beers. They had 4 on tap that were brewed there at the pub. Lemke Original (which I got the recipe for from Mr. Lemke. Just brewed it 2 weeks ago), a Seasonal Maibock, a Pilsner, and a Hefeweizen. Of course I had a large one of all 4. :)

I don't remember our exact meals but the food in Germany was outstanding. Lots of meats, mushrooms, and brown gravies.

We asked for our bill ("die rechtnung, bitte"). I asked the waiter (fairly nice man) if it was common to offer gratuity in Germany. I told him this was our first meal at a restaurant so we didn't know the custom. He seemed embarrassed a little. He said yes it is. I tipped him 5 euros and he was the most thankful waiter I had ever seen because of a tip. Wow!

It was late, I had a buzz, time to go back to the hotel. We get back and I'm not ready to quit drinking German bier yet. I just happened to notice that right next to the hotel was this little hole in the wall bar. I HAD to go in there of course. I knew there would be no other tourists. Only locals. And I welcome that. My wife went with me of course. I drank more beers there and struck up conversations with the only other 3 people in there (one guy was an ass so we excluded him pretty quickly). The other 2 were very friendly. One of them was rolling his own cigarettes too (like I was) so I offered him some of my American tobacco (yes tobacco). The other guy was like a trip back to 80's American rock. He was probably mid-late 40's with a mullet and a denim jacket on. He told us the story about going to America for Woodstock '94. He talked about smokin' grass and speeding through Montana. He talked about cops, politics, and the health of jobs in Germany. It was really a good conversation and it was nice to feel welcome in that cozy little bar that served really shitty Pilsener (Berliner).

Back to the room and into bed. Since the hotel was technically "closed," the room key also opened the back door to the hotel. It was REALLY dark and I was REALLY drunk. But we made it up to our room. The room was sort of hot but the night air was cold. Not really an A/C to speak of in the Alfa Hotel but the window opened wide and cooled us off pretty well. The only problem I had was that the window had no screen and it opened up directly to the fire escape. Technically, anyone had access to our room from the fire escape.

It was a long day in Germany but it was fun. It was rewarding.