Berlin Pt.1 - Tent Station

Our trip to Berlin was FUN. Fun and exhilarating actually. Why? Because it was the first time I could really open up on the road. At first I was a little worried our Peugot wouldn't be able to keep up with the locals but in the end it managed to hold it's own. Of course it pailed in comparison to the Porsches, Audis and Ferraris that flew past us but on the downhill, with my foot on the floor I managed to push our little diesel hatchback up to 201Km/h. I love the Autobahn!

We made our way through the centre of Berlin relatively unscathed although it was a bit confusing and I got beeped once or twice. Our GPS took us to the street our campsite was supposed to be on but I drove past it twice before finding it due to their lack of advertising. This was the sign from the main road…

 

Tent Station was awesome. It used to be a public school which they've since converted into a campsite. The toilets were old change rooms complete with lockers you'd find in a typical American movie, the front office was the original school reception office, the campsite itself was the old school oval and the swimming pools have been converted into a beach volleyball pit, and a stage / skatepark.

 

We couldn't park the car on the camping ground so they gave us wheelbarrows to ferry our things across.

Looking like a ninja turtle with our blue pop-up tent.

 

 

It was a little lacking in certain areas, like the showers which had no curtains and the slight rodent problem...

 

(a nosey ferrett decided to rummage through our tent on the last night), but the wi-fi was free and the vibe was really cool. Everyone was laid back and friendly and it was just a lot of fun to camp there. It was also pretty close to the main railways station in Berlin which really came in handy. I'd highly recommend it to anyone travelling to Berlin on a budget.

Koblenz

Adding to the list of 'German towns you've probably never heard of', our next stop was Koblenz. Considering it was our second preference, we were pretty happy with our campsite. It had a great view of the river and the fort across from it. 

And to our surprise, there was actually a lot of activity on the water with boats and cargo ships going past long into the night. They also had freight trains going past pretty regularly too. At first it was fine but as the night went on, the ships and trains got louder and louder to the point where it sounded like airplanes taking off (note: since then we have actually camped next door to an international airport in Italy but we'll get to that in another blog). So as you could imagine, we had a pretty lousy sleep that first night.

The next day we drove about 50Kms away to Berg Eltz, apparently the best preserved Gothic castle in Germany, which has been in the same family for over 800 years. Walking up through the forrest was pretty surreal. It was dense with greenery, very dark, eventually opening up to a magnificent view of the castle.

Unfortunately, we noticed something that had been plaguing us since the start of our trip and which has continued to do so right up until the writing of this blog… construction!!! Ah well, it doesn't ruin the photo that much does it?!

After our tour of the castle we made our way back to the campsite. Alice made yet another awesome dinner on the camping stove and I drank yet another delicious Belgium beer. It was a very pleasant afternoon on the river. 

Unfortunately at the same time our new neighbours (imagine shorter, podgier versions of Chris 'Finchy' Finch from THE OFFICE) decided to get a bit pissy and the more they drank, the louder they got. The louder they got, the more cr@p they talked. At about 10pm they started talking about how many women they'd slept with (including whilst married with kids), how their ex-wives didn't appreciate them (I have no idea why?!) and how much a lady of the night costs back home ("140 quid" in case you were wondering). They kept laughing and commenting that it was alright to talk about this stuff because no one in the campsite could speak english. So by 12pm when they finally decided it was time for bed Ali chimed in with a loud "Goodnight", unfortunately this just made them giggle like schoolgirls for another half hour. Ah, the joys of camping.

Aachen

Our first stop in Germany was the small university town of Aachen. We were going there specifically to visit Charlemagne's Cathedral because we had seen photos of it in our Lonely Planet guide and wanted to see the famous stained glass. It also has a pretty cool history with the Cathedral being the final resting place of Charlemagne (King of the Franks), and the site of coronation for 30 German Kings and 12 German Queens.

We arrived late on Sunday afternoon and found the town's only campground. There was no reception so we helped ourselves to a spot on their meadow and were pleased to find that we were the only ones camping there.

By this stage we were falling a bit behind schedule so we were hoping we could see the cathedral the same day we arrived. Unfortunately the guided tours aren't run on Sundays so we decided to stay an extra day and catch the english speaking tour at 2pm the following day. Well, would you believe it? We got to the Treasury building around 1:55pm only to be told that the Aachen tourist brochure was wrong. Not only are there no tours on Monday, but the Cathedral is actually CLOSED on Monday. Pooh!

We had the option of doing a tour of the Town Hall but were pretty fed up by this stage so we took some photos and just wandered around town but couldn't find much else to do.

We left Aachen disappointed but we did manage to find a campground guide book which has proved itself to be invaluable. The only problem is that it's written in German. Given that the only full sentence I can say in German is "I have a very good vacuum cleaner", you'd think this would be a problem. Fortunately for us the book shop also sold German to English dictionaries which we've been using in conjunction with the camping guide to work out where we need to be. Onto the next CAMPING PLATZ!