Date: 21/10 – 23/10/2013
City: Berlin, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 111
Cumulative kilometre: 65377
Street: Streets
Weather: Sunny, cool

Today we re-visited Sigrid’s childhood neighbourhood. We met Gabi for lunch in the street where she and Sigrid grew up. And even better, in the shop that Gabis dad had previously occupied! He used to have a grocery shop there; today it is a Vietnamese Restaurant which made a nice lunch stop for us.

So after a nice meal we followed Gaby for a tour of her workplace. She and her team work with stocks and make money somehow. Gabi tried to explain it to me, and we decided that would be a topic for another long evening 😛

Our next stop was at Peter and Gerlind’s house. They are friends from Germany which trusted us with their kids in Australia for a while.  One of them even stayed and got married in Adelaide, but they still talk to us anyway.
They live on the outskirts of Berlin and this was one of the times we noticed the frantic traffic during rush hour. We got into some serious traffic congestion and it took us far longer than expected to get there. We were happy to see the house which we heard about but had never seen before. We had some nice conversations about our journey and Peter and Gerlind’s future plans.  For dinner we went to a Restaurant in Friedrichshagen – Sigrid knew this place from the GDR times still – and had a fantastic meal. This was the first time I discovered very nice tasting alcohol free beer.

We arrived late at Gabi’s house. Tomorrow Gabi and Mathias have organized some accommodation for all of us in Miedzyzdroje (I hope I spelt that right), this is a small town at the Baltic Sea in Poland.

Date: 22/10/2013
City: Berlin, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 319
Cumulative kilometre: 65696
Street: Highway
Weather: Sunny, cool

After a relaxing breakfast we started with no hurry. Our first stop was at the hunting lodge Schorfheide which also had an exhibition of Max Schmeling, a famous German world champion boxer.
The next building over housed another interesting exhibition about the use of the hunting lodge in context to German history.

At our next stop there was some lunch waiting in a nice lake resort. Who would have thought that they’d reserve a table just for us?! You can see, riding a BMW has its advantages 😛.
Unfortunately it turned out that the table was reserved for some racetrack guys, bummer.

So we got a nice table outside and enjoyed our lunch there.  A short walk to the lake there were some sun chairs where Sigrid caught me in working position….

After a power nap we continued towards Usedom on a gorgeous day. Sigrid was taking advantage of being pillion and took some pictures during our ride.

Just after sunset we arrived in Seebad Ahlbeck and had a short stroll along the Seebruecke. It started to get a bit fresh, so we had a coffee before continuing.

Not long after we crossed the border to Poland for the first time in our lives. No formalities, just a post marking the entrance. How nice!

Not far from the border was our destination for the night, a 5 star hotel! Each room had a view onto the Baltic Sea and the hotel had an indoor pool as well. We will check that tomorrow morning. After a great day we finished with a nice dinner, happy and content.

Date: 23/10/2013
City: Berlin, Germany
Kilometres ridden: 319
Cumulative kilometre: 66015
Street: Highway
Weather: Sunny, cool

First task of the morning was to have a swim in the pool before enjoying the all you can eat breakfast with a view over the ocean.

To walk off some of the food Sigrid and I decided to have a walk along the beach.

When we came back we packed up and started our trip back to Berlin.

Along the way we had lunch in Kamminke at the Fischraeucherei Kloensnack. Their specialty? Smoked fish, so yummy!

By that time is was a bit late in the day so we traveled straight back. Upon arrival at Gabi’s house we were greeted with a surprise!
Martina, Uve and Sabine – some of Sigird’s old classmates from school were waiting there for us.
Sigrid was over the moon, we sat together and talked about the good old times for the rest of the night.