The Campingplatz shuffle

Rebel with time to pause for a picture

August 18, 19 2012 Saturday and Sunday

After having our bellies filled, we awoke the next day to even more delicious food! Manfred and Doris, some of the nicest folks on earth, had breakfast waiting for us. There was fresh bread, cheese, jams, hard boiled eggs, and an assortment of foreign meats. We also had orange juice, coffee, and sparkling water. It was awesome. We decided to pack most of our stuff away before heading to the huge pool next to the camping area. When we came back to the camping area, we met Doris and Manfred's family who had just arrived. Before we headed off, we noticed that Hanako's steer tube was hella loose, and Manfred came to save the day with some sort of tool that helped us tighten it back up. And with that we were finally off!

We love Doris and Manfred!

And their grandaughter too!

We headed east, and passed some futbol action. Hanako asked me if I wanted to stay and watch but I said "Nein" because I wanted to watch a game where I could understand all the shit talking.

Church in Havelberg

We biked about 10 km to Havelberg to go scope out this church that we could see from our bike route. It was a cold, dank, dark church- kind of nice. We headed out about 15-20 km more and stopped in Warnau for a drink. It was pretty hot out, so taking a short break in the shade for a drink was very necessary. We met this wonderful woman named Silvie who asked us where we were from. She thought we were from England but we said "Nein" we are from California. Her face lit up completely and said "California is my dream!" and we told her she should make it a reality. She then proceeded to tell us about her 3 kids and her "man" (we learned that the german translation for man and husband is the same). Two of her sons and her man were away in Switzerland working, while she lived there with her youngest son. She gave us a good lesson in German numbers, and she spoke some English based on her studies in school and the studies of her son. It was so nice in refreshing to meet her, her spirit seemed lovely. She even offered to let us stay in her garden, but we respectfully declined, as we wanted to get in more kilometers before the day was through. She gave us the good advice of staying off the last bit of the scenic route, as it would be faster and the scenic part was less developed (read: harder for us to navigate).
We headed off again, trying to make good time since we stayed talking with Silvie for so long. We got to the campsite and it was mosquito central because it was by a lake. I made the nights meal- 3  courses- of mushroom gravy, gnocci, and mediterranean rice. Hanako wasn't feeling so great due to cramps, so she took it easy and went to sleep early. I heard music, so I went to investigate, but it was just in the town next door. There was no "Wo ist die party" for me. Met my least favorite German (some teenager who scoffed at  me for not knowing German) then headed off to bed.

Sunday
We woke up to probably our hottest day of travel. We took our time getting out things together to make sure that Hanako was well enough to travel that day. We left the campsite and headed into Rathenow, forgetting that it was Sunday and hardly anything would be open. We found some sort of casino place with internet, but the one computer was in use, so the woman working there let Hanako use internet on her phone to let our host in Berlin know that we were running late. We found one of few food places open that day and had pizza that was part of a daytime special.
We headed off that day and decided to stray away from the more scenic routes to head to Berlin more directly. When we got to the town of Senzke, we took a pathway that was only represented as a line on our map which led us to the main road. Being on it, you could tell that some cars, but im sure mostly tractors headed that way, but we felt that we had chosen a good option for adventure (thanks Sara Bond). Connecting to the main highway wasn't too bad, though we biked with traffic for a bit, most cars moved a safe distance away while passing us. Not too long after, there was a bike path along side the highway which we were lucky to take because of traffic. All the main highways lead into some of the smaller towns and cities, and it seems that construction of new traffic lights kept the line of traffic going for several km.
We headed into Zeestow to camp that night, leaving us with 20 km to go until we reached the edge of Berlin.
A lovely older gentleman gave us the lowdown on the campingplatz, a key to the restrooms, and was also the bartender and cook. The camping platz seemed like a place where Germans went to vacation for a good while, as most of the Wohnwagen set-ups seemed pretty legit. Our neighbors even had a fence around their little property. We had a most excellent meal of chicken and schnitzel with fries, and several beers to match. Hanako often got distracted by the TV playing German commercials as well as American shows dubbed in English. We headed back to the tent, but after a while decided to just go back to the bar, as it was much cooler, had much less spiders, and had beer. We slept well knowing that we could take our time the next day before arriving in Berlin.