Day 55...A witch a witch!!! - 20th August

Tried to get up early and failed with the gry morning outside, and the snuggly doonah inside. Then eventually got up at our usual time and went downstairs for breakky. Nathan enjoys the German culture where everyone says good morning to each other in the B&B room. Ate well, then took a meandering route via car to Hexentazplatz. (say that fast!). The drive was lovely with pine trees and lakes. At one point, we were driving through a dark wet valley and came upon a tiny village that was reflected in the still water of the creek it sat on. So gorgeous.

Where we were heading to was two big hilltops called Rosstrappe and Hexentazplatz. This region of the Harz mountains was famed for witchcraft. Back int he day, there used to be Celtic fortresses on the two hills and there were celts who did rituals and sacrifices there. Germanic tribes pushed them out and held their own rituals and meetings there forma bout 500BC. After that, the Germans became good Christian volk and witches were a topic of fear. They became superstitious peasants and nailed herbs and hung crosses on their doors. I had heard the area is now touristy, but after seeing nary a tourist in the mountains, didn't think it would be too bad. Wrong!

We got to Rosstrappe where you caught a chairlift to the bottom of the mountain, then a cable car up to the hilltop of Hexentazplatz. The chairlift was cool and tall with great views, but at the bottom there were scours of cheap thrills. Putt putt and coin operated swings and boat drops abounded. The cable car made Nate nervous as it was hellishly high and took us up into these beautiful rugged cliffs pierced by a stream. But at the top - oh my god! It was a circle of stores - tacky souvenirs, hot dog and bratwurst stands, and other stuff. There wre busses (not sure where they came from!) and it was crawling with tourists. German ones mostly i think. In the centre of all the hoo hah was a kids playground (what I thought at first anyway) but it ended up being a circle of perfectly placed boulders with two crap statues sitting on it. That was supposed to be the sacrifice sight or something! There was nary a cliff drop in sight either, it was all in a rock clearing somewhere. Really shit. We ran away.

As we got a deal in the charlift thing, we got some weird toboggan roller ride which was a bit of a laugh. On the way back to the car we saw a deer from the chairlift, but in all, it was a pretty crap distraction for the day.

So from there, we punched our way up to Berlin. The landscape was quite flat and quite green. I could imagine it bleak in winter though! There were massive fields after fields of these big windfarms, so you could imagine the cold wind howling over the flat plains in winter. After a while, we entered Berlin and it looked so familiar! It surprised me as i though I didn't know what it looked like. Nathan was quite familiar with it and very happy with the sights he saw coming in.

We went to the TIC in the hauptbahnhoff. It was the most amazing central station - absolutely massive and covered in blue glass. It kicked ass all over Zurichs main train station, which I had thought really cool (then again, the hauptbahnhoff is much newer).

There were also more new buidings and highrises in Berlin than we had seen anywhere else in Germany or the UK. A bonus for getting the crap bombed out of you I guess. I understand now why New YOrk is so impressive. We have a few highrises in Oz, but Europe has nothing like it! Anyway, the TIC guy got us a good B&B near Potsdamer Platz. A storm had blown over as we were driving in and it was now raining slightly. We dumped our bags and walked around looking for a bite. by accident we found Potsdamer Platz which is now the Sony Centre and comvered with brand new buildings and restaurants. We found a really nice microbrewery an dnate had a stein of their local stuff. He also ate a weird German dish, where it looked like toast, but was actually meat, and had a fried egg sitting on top. I had a schnitzel. It was a really nice end to the day. Then we wandered home to bed.