We are now in Nuremburg, in southern Germany. We’re staying at a Best Western. This is my favorite hotel so far. I’m using the free wifi in the lobby, I have a balcony, and there’s a clock in my room. Best. Hotel. Yet.
Of course we’ve done a ton of things since the last time I blogged and I’ll catch up on what I can as quickly as I can.
I’ll start with Sunday. For the 4th of July, we spent the day on a cycling tour of Potsdam. We took the train all the way out to Potsdam and the bike rental place was only a few minutes walk from there. I was on a ridiculously large bike and even with the seat all the way down I could barely touch with the tips of my toes. When we were about to leave, I almost fell over so the guys mentioned to the guides that I needed a bike that I would be more comfortable on. I got it switched out and was fine after that.
Potsdam is very pretty, although I had some difficulty watching where I was going and looking at all the fancy villas. (Some with Porsches and security cameras.) We saw the villa where Truman stayed during the Potsdam Conference, and we actually cycled out to the house where the meetings took place. It’s very pretty and belonged to some princess. You only get to tour the bottom floor, but you do get to go into the room where the conferences took place. We grabbed lunch here and the guys went off in search of the bench where the picture of the big three were taken, but they couldn’t find it.
Before the visit to the Potsdam House though, we stopped by a lake to swim if we wanted or just rest for about a half an hour. There were many people here, and many of them elected not to wear a bathing suit. Jinny had been keeping a count of all the naked people we’ve seen on the trip, but there were too many here. Women, men, children, young, old, it doesn’t matter. Even our guides stripped down and went swimming. Most of us did not-one woman got in wearing her clothes, another guy stripped down but went elsewhere around the lake, and one guy got down to his underwear. I stood by the bank. I did have my running shorts on under my skirt, I kind of wish I had thought to take my skirt off and go in with my shorts and tank top, but at the time I didn’t want to bother with the sand and I certainly don’t want to lug that around in my suitcase.
So after our somewhat shocking visit to the lake and the Potsdam House, we rode around to a few more palaces and looked around in the various gardens. It was a long cycling tour, about 6 hours total, although we stopped often to look at various landmarks. I unfortunately don’t have any notes from this trip, since I can barely ride a bike, let alone take pictures or notes while riding a bike, although some in our group were very adept at snapping photos while riding. Much of the way was on shady streets or in a park, and it was luckily a little cooler than it has been, so all in all it was a nice day. We ended by taking the train back to Berlin and having dinner in a Biergarten. We had pizza though, not traditional German food, but our guides told us this particular Biergarten had excellent pizza, and they did.
A great part of the cycling trip was stopping to buy fresh cherries along the side of the road. They were delicious. Scott (our group leader) challenged me to a spitting contest with the cherry pits. I’d say it was a draw, I told him I got a lot of practice while running. One of our guides, Monika, wore cherries in her ears for the rest of the day. I’m not sure if this is something that she just likes to do, or something that Germans in general like to do. I can say that I have seen no other Germans with fruit hanging from their ears in my 10 or so days here, so I’m thinking it’s a Monika thing.
It was nice to be outside all day and to get some exercise, and I think most of the group thorougly enjoyed the cycling tour.
After dinner Kevin and I ran to the Hard Rock Cafe. Kevin is a huge fan
of ice cream, and since I love their hot fudge brownie sundaes, this field trip worked perfectly. There is an awesome Trabant in the restaurant, and since it was the 4th of July they had streamers and balloons and flags up to celebrate. After dessert we hopped on the train and headed back to the hotel.
So the 4th was one of my favorite days so far. I was very European cycling in my skirt and flip flops. (Although I’m sure my camera gave me away.) I wish we were more bike friendly back home. Everyone here rides a bike. I wouldn’t mind another cycling tour, but we don’t have time.
We’re in Nuremburg for two nights, then off to Munich for one night and then I head to Croatia for a few days before coming home. Hard to belive the trip is almost done!
