Who knew that WIFI could be so elusive. Four days without now and the cell data is as slow as it can go as well. Whatever will I do? Guess I'm not quite ready to go off the grid :)
Yesterday, I entered back into into the old West-Germany, having left it shortly after I departed Lichtenfels. There are signs on the Autobahn when you cross a former intra German border. Much has been restored, repaired, improved over the last 20+ years, but much remains to be done. There's still an enormous amount of lengthy and annoying Autobahn construction going on, but the rest is in very good shape. The cities are mostly very clean and I never had a feeling of being in the east, in fact I forgot that I was likely still in old East-Germany and had to look up an old map.
After I left Dresden, I drove into Berlin. Berlin traffic sucks. I spent over 2h that and the next day getting in and out. On top of that there's construction in the center and no parking anywhere. Nonetheless, I managed to walk around a couple of hours around the Brandenbug Gate and Checkpoint Charlie, before heading off to see Nina and Glen, a mere hour from the center. Luckily, Glen had the Prosecco ready and all was well with the world. After a few hours, friends from Kiel arrived, more bottles were opened, "Obstler" barrels were tapped, beasts were grilled on the barbie and there was much rejoicing.
It's mindblowing to realize that this year will be the 25th anniversary of the wall coming down. The first time I was in Berlin, it had just been down a couple of years and the difference between east and west was marked. All that has been erased, but of course there's much to commemorate that chapter of history.
From Berlin I drove northeast toward Szczecin (pronounced Stecheen I think) in Poland. I drove across 4km of the worst pice of highway imaginable. Dirt roads would have been embarrassed. The pavement wasn't broken up, but it was so incredibly bumpy, I think I started getting seasick towards the end. Poland is EU, but not Euro zone. That dawned on me when I walked towards the parking meter. DOH! By the time I had tracked down a bank to exchange 5 Euro and made it back, I had a ticket. Double DOH! It's in Polish - no clue what to do with it. Szczecin doesn't really have a cohesive old town. There are however a few cool old buildings sprinkled among Soviet ugliness. I saw the first of some massive red brick buildings, which I was to learn was a mark of the Hanseatic League, of which Szczecin was a part. I had a tasty bowl of Bigos and moved on.
On my way to Usedom, which is an island that is part Poland, part Germany I learned the ways of Polish back road passing. The shoulder is very wide, 3/4 of a car width. If you see someone wants to pass you, you move to the right. The passing car goes and the oncoming traffic - remember, we're on a two lane road here - moves a bit to the right and voila, room for three. Takes a bit of getting used to. In order to get to the island one needs to pass a waterway - maybe a 1/4 mile accross. Someone didn't want to put in a bridge, so there's a ferry. It's free, but it simply sits there until it's full, then goes accross. It seems to me that one could sit there for a long time. I got lucky and maybe 6 cars behind me the boat was full and off we went.
I crossed the border and stopped by some Baltic sea spa towns to stop for the night. It turned out to be nontrivial to find a room, since the modus operandi seems to be to rent vacation apartments. I wandered accross the beach and the promenade, passing Villa this and Villa that and got more and more uncomfortable with the vibe and decided I really didn't want to be there. It was getting late, but I decided to move on and see what I could find. After a few more failed attempts I wound up in the town of Usedom where I found a nice hotel & restaurant. Perfect. Usedom is a cool old fishery village - that whole town thing seemed vastly optimistic. I love the colorful houses and cobblestone streets.
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