Meeting with friends

Date: 24/10/2013
City: Berlin, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 32
Cumulative kilometre: 66047
Street: Highway
Weather: Sunny, cool

The title says it all, we were meeting with friends and school mates and so if you don’t belong to the Malessa clan, you can skip this blog 😉 .
Today we met with Vincent – Simon and Nikos playmate from Berlin times. We’ve know him for a long time and stayed in contact over the years. Vincent recently visited Australia, and we missed him when he was in San Francisco last year. So we made arrangements to catch up. He lives in a nice townhouse with plenty of outdoor space to have a BBQ.

He is big on fittness and healthy living and he’d just completed the “Though Mudder” event. While talking about our travel it turned out that he might be intersted of traveling from Berlin to Australia in a VW campervan. Hmm, that sounds interesting, maybe be we could get in on that? :P. Well not until we have earned some money I guess :/

 

Date: 25/10/2013
City: Berlin, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 55
Cumulative kilometre: 66070
Street: Road
Weather: Sunny, cool

The next day we met with some of my primary school class mates. First we visited Ilona at home catching up on her and our ventures in live. Time was flying and before we noticed it was time to drive to a restaurant where we met three more of my school mates. The picture on the right shows (from right bottom), Norbert, Mario, Ilona, Sigrid, Pia and me. It was an awesome evening, lot of stories, great food. I was happy that we were only a small group; that way we could hear from everyone

Date: 26/10/2013
City: Berlin, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 60
Cumulative kilometre: 66130
Street: Road
Weather: Sunny, cool

Today we earmarked for a trip back in time- my history. We had a look at my kindergarten at the Postfenn. To my surprise not too much had changed, the kindergarten still existed.

From here our next stop was Neukoelln, the suburb where I grew up. Below is the house and the playground.

The primary school was in walking distance, so we had a look at it as well. The entrance of the school had completely changed, but the rest of the school looked just like 35 years ago. There were some funny new sculptures , though :D.

Around the corner of the primary school there is still the park where we spent plenty of time. However they changed the sign… when I grew up the sign said ‘Keep off the grass’, whereas the new sign says ‘BBQ prohibited’.

Our next appointment was Nocti Vagus, a dark restaurant. Gaby and Robert joined us. First you order your meal and then you move to the dark restaurant, guided by your waiter or waitress who are mostly blind.

Below are two pictures from the restaurant, the left shows our table and the right our waitress 😛

To be honest, it was an amazing and humbling experience and I can definitely recommend it to anybody if you have the chance. Your body tries to compensate for the missing sense and the food tasted more intensive, mind you, it is hard to use knife and fork… 😉

Date: 27/10/2013
City: Berlin, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 40
Cumulative kilometre: 66170
Street: Road
Weather: Sunny, cool

Today we left Gabi’s house to head back to Klaus and Connie, but not before meeting with Carsten and Gabi for Brunch. Gabi and Mathias joined us there. We then rode to Klaus and Conni to drop off our luggage. On Sigrid’s side of the bed there was a box containing one metre of Schaumkuesse! These are special sweets we can’t get in Aussiland. Toffifees- another brand of hard to obtain sweets were on my side! What a welcome back!

At night we had a get-together with old friends at Carsten’s wine cellar. Steppi, Ela, Paule and Suma were there as well. Lots of stories were told and lots of laughs had. What a great night!

 

Date: 28/10/2013
City: Berlin, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 198
Cumulative kilometre: 66368
Street: Road
Weather: Sunny, cool

We borrowed Klaus’s little racer, a blue MXF because it was raining. We visited Onkel Wolfgang and Tante Giesela, Uncle and Auntie of Sigrid this morning and then drove to Marienwerder, outside of Berlin to see our old friend Micha and his family.

 

Date: 29/10/2013
City: Berlin, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 24
Cumulative kilometre: 66392
Street: Road
Weather: Rainy, cool

Today we caught up for dinner with other friends, Billi and Petra and their children Alex and Nadine

Date: 30/10/2013
City: Berlin, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 96
Cumulative kilometre: 66488
Street: Road
Weather: Sunny, cool

More site seeing and meeting people! Today it was Gaby with her friend Heidy Hetzer. Heidy is planning a round the world trip in a special car. We chatted about our experiences and her plans, and arranged for emails to be exchanged and information to be emailed; she might visit us in Aussiland in the next year or so!

After the meeting we went onto the French Dome with Gabi to check out the exhibition there. We even had the chance to play in a parliament hall and use the speaker system… which was connected to our surprise!

We topped off the day by catching up with Patrick and Jana, fellow motorcycle riders we’d met in Narcusp , Canada last year. They are now back home and settled in… sort off. We had dinner together and then moved over to the pub where we chatted a lot and had a good time

 

Date: 31/10/2013
City: Berlin, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 82
Cumulative kilometre: 66497
Street: Road
Weather: Sunny, cool

Today after a yummy breakfast we took time to explore the surrounding of Klaus and Connie’s home with Klaus leading us on a very pleasant walk.

Later that day we set off with two bikes. What great ride through the autumn coloured forest of Berlin.

Our destination was the BMW Motorcycle factory in Berlin Spandau. We originally lived right around the corner but never took the opportunity to check it out. But now was our chance, thanks to Matthias who organised a guided tour for us to attended..

The guided tour made us hungry, so we stopped for Curry-Wurst at the stand across the road before heading to Sigrid’s class reunion.

Quite a few people turned up and we had a great fun remenissing about old time

Date: 01/11/2013
City: Berlin, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 69
Cumulative kilometre: 66566
Street: Road
Weather: Sunny, cool

Our time in Berlin is drawing to a close. Today I removed the GPS and Spot of the bike, so I can take them back home. And we have our fare well party in the Lemke Brewery. We used the blue Racer again get there and promptly got stuck in a traffic jam. This time, however I took a detour through the back streets which I remembered.

We managed to be there on time for a change. Ria and Freya arrived first, then Carsten and Gaby.

One after the other more people arrived. Some took us by surprise as we had not seen them earlier, for example Niko from SEL, Olaf and Henry.

It was a great evening. We were back home around 2AM.

 

Date: 02/11/2013
City: Berlin, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 66566
Street: Road
Weather: Sunny, cool

Today is the day, the last day in Berlin and in Germany, oh and in Europe for that matter 😉
We had a nice leisurely breakfast with Connie and Klaus. As a far well gift, we’ve got a new member of our team, the BMW bear! He fits in nicely!
We got everything sorted, either packed it into our luggage or stuffed in a parcel which Klaus will send for us .

The last picture with Conni and Klaus in front of the house.

We arrived at the airport three hours early and the counter wasn’t open. Since we were the first ones to check in, we had enough time to resolve our seating issues. Bjoern managed that we sit side by side. The luggage however will have to be checked in again in Johannesburg, not too many surprises here.

Gaby and Matthias joined us for the last farewell and helped us to make the departure more pleasant by organising some Champagne for us all.

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