Berlin was awesome! It's definitely one of my favourite cities in Europe because the people are laid back and friendly, the beer is cheap, the alternative scene is cool, it's got one of the most interesting/unusual/unbelievable histories of any city I've been in and we just felt like home when we were there… even though we couldn't speak the language ;)
That being said, we felt we'd put in some hard yards touring the big cities and so decided to do something a bit different. What else but go Kayaking?! So that was that. We packed up the car and headed for what the Lonely Planet refers to as Berlin's Backyard, The Spreewald.
Going from Berlin where everyone at least has a grasp of the English language to Lubbenau was a little difficult. After a few minutes of pointing, signing and thumbing through our little pocket dictionary we managed to get a sweet camping spot at a campsite that was right on a lake. It was beautiful with lots of swans and ducks everywhere and we pretty much had the place to ourselves which was nice.
That being said, we felt we'd put in some hard yards touring the big cities and so decided to do something a bit different. What else but go Kayaking?! So that was that. We packed up the car and headed for what the Lonely Planet refers to as Berlin's Backyard, The Spreewald.
Going from Berlin where everyone at least has a grasp of the English language to Lubbenau was a little difficult. After a few minutes of pointing, signing and thumbing through our little pocket dictionary we managed to get a sweet camping spot at a campsite that was right on a lake. It was beautiful with lots of swans and ducks everywhere and we pretty much had the place to ourselves which was nice.
After a well earned rest we drove into Spreewald which is apparently home of the Gherkin (…and beautiful waterways). Yet again we struggled to communicate with the locals but in the end we managed to hire a two-person kayak for 3 hours. They put the boat in the water, gave us a map of the waterways and then, "auf Wiedersehen", we were on our way.
We paddled for ages and saw heaps of cool things from dragon flies getting it on mid flight, to cows rubbing their necks on trees beside the river, to groups of rowdy Germans drinking mid-paddle, amazing greenery and people on Punts going past (well actually they weren't so cool and they managed to get in our way more than once!).
Unfortunately we ran into a bit of trouble when one of the Punts forced us to change course. We ended up going down the wrong canal and ended up getting told off by the Polizei. Bugger. They eventually pointed us in the right direction and after a while we managed to work out where we were and where we needed to be. It was tough but we managed to get the boat back to the hire place only 10 minutes after we were supposed to.
After a few minutes the feeling had returned to our legs and we were able to go for a stroll around the main village. There were gherkins everywhere. And lots of OLD tourists. It was weird. But cool. We ate lunch alongside the river, watching the punts go past as well as the ducks taking off and landing which sounds lame but was actually pretty cool. I also saw a friend of mine from way back in my childhood... GRUG!
The Spreewald was definitely a great place to recharge the batteries and get us ready for our next stop. Oh and for the record, Alice was better at paddling than I was at steering so thanks for the help babe xoxo ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment