Budapest, day 9: Berlin on the way home

It was a shame to have to leave Prague so soon. We'll definitely have to go back some day.

Road construction had forced us unto a detour through a rather scenic canyon area in the Czech Republic, and I was looking forward to going through there again on the way home. However, the detour in this direction took us through a different mountainous region. It was also very scenic and a nice drive. I found it interesting that the landscape was mixed industrial and agricultural even quite far from any towns. On the German side of the border what we saw was either agricultural or urban.

We decided to go into Berlin for a late lunch since my husband had never been there. I'd been there with a friend last December, but we took a bus there and paid no attention to highway navigation. I had a map book which was excellent for navigating the highways between towns, but showed Berlin only as a yellow blob. Following the signs for "zentrum" didn't work too well. I thought I was aiming for the former west-Berlin as we exited the freeway, but we passed an airport with clearly Eastern European architecture, so I must have been wrong. The worst thing was that there was some sort of street fair going on there, and most of the streets were closed without any warning. The streets were lined with cafes, but there was no chance of parking. None of the other cars seemed to know how to get around this either, so we eventually went back to the freeway.

This time I decided to try for Charlottenburg. I didn't make it there in December, but I thought it might be a nice place to find lunch and be able to park the car. This time I was right. We found a lovely cafe on a quiet tree-lined street. We were also thrilled to discover that they even had a special asparagus menu. Based on what I'd eaten in the US, I thought I wasn't particularly fond of asparagus, but the Germans have wonderful white asparagus that they know how to prepare so that it isn't the least bit stringy. Yum!

After lunch we took a quick look around the outside of Charlottenburg palace, but we didn't stay long since we didn't want to risk missing the ferry which goes once every other hour from Rostock. As it turned out, we got to the ferry about an hour early, but especially considering that we didn't have reservations, it's good that we didn't take any chances. We finally got home in Sweden around midnight.