Date: 05/09
City: Berlin, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 558390
Street: N/A
Weather: sunny, warm

The flight from New York to Stockholm was nice but relatively short. We arrived around midnight, passed through Customs and organized some breakfast. After getting through the security check again, we had a bit of a rest. The weather didn’t look too good, we were afraid that the airport would be closed because of the dense fog.

But at boarding time, the fog had lifted and we arrived in Oslo on time. The connection flight to Berlin was without any problems, and we arrived around lunch time. Klaus was there to pick us up. We are back in Berlin, the last time here was 15 years ago!!!

On our way to the car park we saw the following sign, I thought it was a nice play on words J– use Google Translate J.

After fetching some supplies we arrived at Klaus’s house and there I saw the BeeMa ( BMW) first time. It is Hugo’s bike which has been sitting in the garage for nearly three years. Klaus already started to prepare it for us and we now had to register and insure it before we could start our Europe trip.

First things first, we organized the paperwork and the number plate for the bike.

Now it was time to visit Gabi, an old friend from Germany. Her son, Robert, turned thirty today and we said we would be there as a sort of surprise. So we volunteered Klaus… to drive us to Gabi’s house. Below are (left to right) Mattias, Gabi, Robert the birthday boy J and Sigrid. We had a wonderful evening and plenty of stories to share.

 

Date: 06/09
City: Berlin, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 558390
Street: N/A
Weather: sunny, warm

It was a sunny day and we slept very well after the party last night, so hardly any jet leg at all. After breakfast Klaus took me as a pillion to the TUV check close by (TUV is the german vehicle inspection agency). He mentioned that the bike handled badly since I was sitting on the back. I didn’t pay much attention to that comment and attributed the bad handling to my additional weight gained during our trip J

The TUV went well we got the necessary paperwork to get the bike registered. Within no time at all we got the registration done and on our way back we passed the shop where we purchased the numberplate yesterday. I thought I get a picture of the nice crew that had served us.

Back home Klaus fitted the new number plate and here it is, the number plate with all the stickers needed to drive on the road.

After Connie returned from work we met with Gabi and Carsten in Tempelhof and had a great meal in an Indian restaurant. When we walked around we found a sign for food that we should buy for our bike trip J

 

Date: 07/09
City: Berlin, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 558390
Street: N/A
Weather: sunny, warm

Today was Saturday and we borrowed Klaus’s Mazda to meet with Robert and family for a boat trip at the Berlin waterways. The weather was great and we went through the first self-serve lock before we continued towards the centre of the city. The landscape looked completely different from the water than it looks from the street.

Dreamily we looked over the water; it was really quiet ….then I noticed that the engine was off. I assumed that the captain switched if off so we could listen to the nature around us. When I looked back I saw the puzzled expression on the captain’s face, hmm, that seemed to indicate a problem…. To cut the story short, after a couple of attempts to get the boat going we realised that the exhaust fumes came out of the water cooler, not a good sign…

But the Capitain had a way out! He got the motor from the dingy and fit it to the boat. It worked, and with some manual tweaking we slowly made our way back.

After some time we made it back, sat a together a bit before we departed. It was a beautiful day, even with the surprise of a broken engine.

Date: 08/09
City: Berlin, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 558390
Street: N/A
Weather: sunny, warm

Today is the day; Sigrid and I would test run the BMW. Klaus, Connie and we hopped on the bikes and made our way to Paul, an old friend from Berlin. Klaus, Hugo, Paul and I did our apprenticeship together and stayed in contact since then.

We were treated to nice coffee and cake and sat together on the balcony.  Below are Suma, Connie and Klaus

I liked the sign in their toilet (please be seated when peeing)… 

 

In the evening we went out for a drink and something to eat before we went home.

 

On our way home the BMW started to play up, it was hard to convince it to keep going, it preferred to stall on the traffic light, a bit like a stubborn donkey. In the end, with plenty of gas a playing with the clutch, we made it home and decided that we would check out what the problem could be tomorrow.

Date: 09/09 – 14/09/2013
City: Berlin, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 558390
Street: N/A
Weather: rainy, cool

The next couple of days were dedicated to find the problem with the bike. Stephuhn, Klaus cousin, passed by and gave us his opinion on what could be wrong (below is a snap shot from a new game, team guessingJ)

Sigrid organized some Currywurst for us for lunch; we enjoyed that , had been a long while since it is difficult to get in Australia.

The next couple of days we tried to find a problem with the bike without too much success. We swapped the lambda sensor. That improved the CO2 value, but the bike still refused to run smoothly. In the end we gave the bike to the BMW workshop to have a look at it. The guy at the service desk seemed to know what he was talking about; he asked the right question to find the source of the problem. But even he gave up and submitted the bike to the mechanic.

We went home and in the afternoon we received a phone call; the bike is ready for pickup, diagnosis done. We were keen to find out what the problem could be. Talking to the mechanic, it seemed that a broken hose in the tank was to blame. We organized one of the two hoses involved; the second one had to be ordered and would arrive only Tuesday next week….. Darn would be too late for us! We will try to organize a hose elsewhere tomorrow.

It turned out that a workshop in Spandau would have the hose so we jumped in the car and drove there. At the end, he had only a hose that would nearly fit and we thought we could adapt it to fit propely. Below we are happy at the shop that had a hose as close to our needs as we could get it.

Since we now had everything required we took our time to walk along the old part of Spandau. Sigird and I remembered a coffee shop that sold ice cream, so we went there. To our amazement the shop was still there! After fifteen years, it hadn’t changed. So we all had some large ice cream before we went home.

On our way back we saw the bear ‘Fielius’. We took a picture of him as we have a small version of him in Adelaide. As well we re-acquainted ourselfs with a nice bakery – Thoben. They had too much choice for us, so we bought more then we really needed J

When we arrived at home Klaus and I started to fit the new hoses into the petrol pump and put the pump back into the tank. Then we nearly assembled the whole bike, but…the last screw jumped out of Klaus’s hand and was hiding somewhere in the engine, clutch or starter motor area. So we looked for a while before we called it a day. Bummer, we wouldn’t know if the bike now is running or not.

Date:15/09
City: Berlin, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 0
Cumulative kilometre: 558390
Street: N/A
Weather: sunny, warm

In the morning I got woken up by the sound of a running BMW, what a morning!! It turned out that Klaus had gotten up really early, fished the hiding screw out with a magnet, fitted it and made sure that the rest of the bike was correctly assembled. When I came down he went for a short test ride.

His smiling face when he returned told me that we finally fixed the problem!

So we had great breakfast and then Sigrid and I went on a test ride.

After nearly 100km driving around the outskirts of Berlin, we thought it is time to get back. Since we were close to Mahlow, we thought we pass by Ria and Frya, two very close friends. Ria was really surprised that we turned up. As it turned out, it was Rias birthday as well, what a nice coincidence- bummer that we forgot..:-).

Anyway, Ria didn’t mind and we talked a bit before we returned to our base station in Kleinbeeren. With the bike ready, we prepared for take-off tomorrow around lunch time.