Canal on the old East-West germany border

relaxing in the afternoon

view of our (blue) tent and car from across the canal

sneaking through the woods we came across this cut out in an old sentry box

looking down from the bridge it looks peaceful, but it wasn't a couple of decades ago

on the bridge - ex-border

now a camp laundry but once a watch tower

To Berlin

We woke to the sound of church bells (and a cock crowing)at 7.00 in our tent in the field under the apple and pear trees.  We drove for around 4 hrs on the motorways, circling Berlin from the northeast to the southwest.  We then spent well over an hour around Potsdam trying to find the camp site!  Between the gps trying to send us down roads that are no entry or 1 way, and road works etc we ended up in a maze of cobbled narrow roads full of cyclists.  Then we saw people camping so drove into a sort of compound which we discovered was for gypsies!  A friendly gypsy told us to look for McDonalds and there were signs there.  More by luck than anything else we finally did that and camped beside a river, had lunch, then sat on a covered deck over the water reading up on Berlin.

In the evening we went for a walk along the canal.  There was a bridge that we wanted to cross which seemed overgrown and all blocked off.  We did a detour through the woods and came to the bridge area which we realised was an old border patrol area, it still had old flagpoles etc.  Then we found a memorial board to a couple who had been shot in 1961 when their launch accidentally got too close to the East German side.  It was all a bit freaky.  We also realised that our camp site was an old border security place, it still had the viewing tower - now a place for campers to do laundry.  The people at the camp site were not very friendly, lots of people gave us bad looks.  But hey, who won the war?