Germany by Car

Germany is beautiful, a cold and enchanting land; I had badly underestimated it, yet it thrilled me a great deal.

We set off by car at 11 pm on 30 December; we wanted to spend six days in Berlin, but because there was no accommodation for New Year's Eve we settled for a two-day stop in Nuremberg, a town in Upper Bavaria. We were due to arrive in Nuremberg at 5 in the morning, but a snowstorm that followed us for 300 km from the Brenner Pass to Munich made us a little late; we got there at 10 am after a total of 11 hours on the road......... I was exhausted, my partner less so, she had a nice long nap (bless her). I threw myself into bed and we went out at 2 pm. Nuremberg is a medium-sized town, but I have to say, to my surprise, that it's very beautiful and full of character; the houses are cosy, and the town has 7 churches, all in late Romanesque style but very lovely, because the districts competed over who had the prettiest church......

Nuremberg was the capital of the Prussian empire, and the fortress castle surrounding the town hosted all the rulers of the empire's provinces...... I was truly enchanted by this town and its little corners; you can breathe the air of fairy tales here. We left for Berlin on 2 January towards morning; luckily it wasn't snowing, and in 4 hours, thanks to the excellent, smooth and above all free German motorways, we reached Berlin, and within about half an hour my sense of direction led us to the hotel (not very nice and with no breakfast). Berlin was dressed for the party, full of lights; our street runs parallel to Kurfürstendamm Strasse, the most beautiful street in Berlin, in the western part of course........ full of shops and lights. The days passed among museums, squares, palaces and pubs.

I have to say that eating well in Germany is difficult; we adapted to hamburgers and French fries.. though I did eat a good pizza near the Pergamon Museum. The museums are the stars in Berlin: there's the Egyptian Museum, the Pergamon Museum, the Bode Museum and the Bauhaus Museum, very interesting for architecture and contemporary art, closed by the Nazis in 1943 for its overly avant-garde ideas; the Wall, the Reichstag, the Brandenburg Gate, the Red Town Hall where Kennedy gave his famous speech. A walk around Berlin is a walk through history........ the city has come back to life after 30 years of oppression and division, and you can see it: the eastern part has greyer, more run-down buildings than the western part......

but the vitality and the desire to live again pulse through the countless venues dotted around the city; even the smallest pub becomes a place to spend the evening..... as for history, the Berlin History Museum on Kurfürstendamm is absolutely worth seeing, rich in displays and reproductions from every historical era of the city.......... I'd go back to Berlin right away if I didn't have so many other things on my list to see. We reluctantly set off on 6 or 5 January, I don't remember....... the journey home took us 11 hours for 1,100 km, against 16 on the way there.