A few photos of the van, Potsdam, Berlin

Yes, another internet cafe with Wifi - Prague is so civilised! Just had delicious Goulash Soup to justify my presence in the cafe and now trying to upload a few photos to show a tiny snapshot of where we have been.

There are a couple more of the van to satisfy the interest of those who wonder how we can possibly all fit in comfortably. This first one is Breanna doing her diary with the computer nerds in the background! Breanna is the most disciplined of all of us with the diary, and is putting the rest of us to shame!

The next is a rest day in Potsdam. Beautiful weather at a campsite by the river and after completing four loads of washing (hogging all the campsite washing machines), had a very pleasant day relaxing in the sun. Washing proving to be a challenge as there are virtually no laundromats and quite a few of the campsites don't have laundries either! Just spent quite some time today in Prague handwashing as much as possible and leaving it to dry in the amenities, since we are almost the only campers there, it is not too much of a problem!

This one is of a mini Potsdam conference of the Gatt kids outside the Cecilienhof where the real Potsdam conference took place at the end of WWII. Potsdam is just out of Berlin and has some beautiful palaces and parks. We spent nearly two days just walking around the parks and palaces and through the lovely cafe strip in the centre of the old part of town.

Breanna and Liam taking a rest outside one of the Berlin art galleries - didn't go inside, as we were a bit museumed/palaced out!

We did really enjoy walking around Berlin though. Such an interesting place with so much history. I found it particularly interesting to visit the old area of the Berlin Wall, having been through Checkpoint Charlie into the old East Berlin several years before the wall came down. What an enormous difference now.

Read a lot about the history of the wall and some of the excapes and tragedies of the wall. Really quite hard to believe such a thing could exist and I remember the whole atmosphere of the border crossing was very intimidating and the East Berlin streets depressingly empty and lifeless.


This picture is of James and Liam standing on the double cobbled line that shows where the Berlin Wall was. It is just near the Checkpoint Charlie crossing for foreigners, which is the one I went through on a bus with an exchange student tour in 1982.

We headed down towards Dresden after that, stopping at a lovely town called Meissen on the way, with a porcelain factory and even better, a wave pool which the kids loved (and so did we!)

After that, Dresden, which was attractive, but seemed a little strange knowing that all the apparently old buildings had been only so recently rebuilt after being flattened in the war.

Now in Prague, which is certainly a beautiful city and an entry in itself, which Rob promises to write soon!

Time to sign off before wearing out our welcome at this cafe, or having to buy more food to justify our presence here!