Driving Tour Through Central Germany

Today,  instead of heading out to explore Berlin (which we will do extensively over the next two days), we're renting a car and going to explore some of the small towns in Central Germany. 

We need to head back to the airport to pick up the rental.

One part of Berlin that has really impressed us is their public transportation system.   Their phone app allows me to input start and end points and completely maps out, in detail,  the route and times.  We're heading back to the airport to pickup the car and it couldn't be easier.

Got to the airport,  picked up the car and headed south.  

Juterbog

First stop,  Juterbog. A small town about an hour from Berlin.  It's a  very calm town that wasn't destroyed during WWII. We were able to spend a couple of hours walking around and include our first bakery stop on the trip.

Wittenburg

By the time we got here, we were pretty hungry.  Your appetite really gets worked up when you're driving on the autobahn.  I was holding my own doing about 150 kph (90+ mph) but every few minutes a car would come flying past me like I was standing still.  When they say there is no speed limit, they mean no speed limit.  If folks in the US were as courteous driving as the folks here, we'd be a much better place.  In Germany, one of the rules is you never pass on the right.  For that rule to work everyone stays in the right lanes and only go to the left when they are actively passing another.  And everybody follows those rules.  It's fantastic.

Wittenburg is an old town from the 14-15th century.  And there was a festival going on this weekend.  When we were there, on Friday, they were getting set up for the events.  And it was going to be one helluva party.

Quidlinburg

As things turned out, we didn't eat in Wittenburg but headed onto Quidlinburg.

In the town we stopped at an old restaurant/tavern from the 17th century.  This place was so cool.  

But if you asked Sonja, she would tell you the coolest part of this establishment was the walk from the ladies room back to our table.

After eating we spent a good couple of hours exploring the town until we realized we had no idea where we had parked the car.  Waves of deja vu from when Abby was born swept through us.  But this is where my brilliant wife came through.  She remembered that she had take a picture of the outside of the restaurant and once we found it, we were able to retrace our steps back to the car.

Enough excitement for one day, we began the 2 1/2 hour drive back to Berlin airport to return the car.  Taking the public transport back to the hotel, we crawled into bed about 11pm.

Next up...  walking tour of Berlin.