In May 1989, with a fortnight to kill before joining a new employer, I decided to drive from West London to Berlin in my 1966 Alfa Romeo Sprint GT. I used to work for a now-defunct airline, Dan Air, and knew the city quite well.
I had only used the Cross Channel ferries up to then, a byword for gruesome travel, and was very pleasantly surprised by the immaculate state of the DFDS ferry from Harwich to Hamburg. On the crossing I joined the table of a British Army officer based in Berlin who passed a very pleasant evening with his experiences of the divided city - and recommended a great cheap hotel to stay. The entry down the estuary was as described above, and left an enormous impression of welcome.
On arrival, I had no map, pre satnav, and just pointed the car East, turned right at the first huge flak tower in Hamburg and set off on one of the most staggeringly boring journeys along the East German autobahn, sticking to the speed limit all the way as the E.German traffic cops were said to be extremely keen on fines. On a 4-lane blacktop, no central reservation or barrier, I think I saw 4 cars on the road in the next 300+ kms. I did see two Mil-Hind attack helicopters which surged out of the tree-line at zero feet and woke me up a bit.
Berlin, as always, was extraordinary place to go and I spent a couple of days fossicking around in East Berlin which, when you got off the Unter den Linden and walked a few streets back, was pretty much as it had been in 1948/49. Only 6 months later, the Wall was breached, something I thought I would never see in my lifetime.
I was a great enthusiast for DFDS and mourned the day they stopped the Hamburg ferry service.
Nick
We could have been on the same boat Nick, and our destination was the same, but in those days travelling by road to Berlin was a bit of an adventure. When we crossed the east/west border near Helmstedt, a Kalashnikov-armed border guard had my wife removing and putting back her glasses repeatedly as he minutely studied her passport photo, while sniffer dogs prowled, and another guard poked a mirror under our Audi, we had to wait for half an hour after that until eventually we were waved through. It was my first trip to the East, I had preconceptions of a flat barren monochrome landscape, turgid polluted rivers, smoke-belching chimneys, steam trains, and headscarfed peasant women bending over in muddy fields lifting root crops, and that's exactly what it seemed to be like, arriving in a vibrant West Berlin was almost like having your colour vision restored. My memory of the Transit Autobahn is slightly different though, it was all bumpy concrete sections and quite narrow, the tyres went ber-dum, ber-dum noisily over the joints for the entire journey, and of course there were no exit points at all. No central barrier as you say, but quite wide grass in places with just lengths of tall hedge in the middle. The traffic cops used to hide behind these hedges in their Polski Fiat 125s, facing oncoming traffic, and shooting out without warning into the left-hand lane to stop anyone they suspected of exceeding the limit, they were visibly armed as well of course, so no-one argued with them. We've re-visited the former East several times since then, and spent much of last September there in the south around Dresden, it's one of our favourite parts of Europe, and one of the least-visited, we didn't see any UK-registered cars all the time we were there. Some aspects of the experience have changed a lot, others very little, but it's a fascinating place, relative prosperity has arrived at last after years of dreary communist control. To get back to somewhere near the thread, not exactly a ferry, but one highlight of our most recent trip was a two hour journey on the Elbe from Dresden to Meißen in the beautifully restored and maintained paddle-steamer Pillnitz, that dates from 1896, it's worth it just to see the expert way the crew handle and manoeuver these lovely craft in the fast-flowing river.
There's a whole fleet of similar vessels, about ten in all, and the Sächsische Dampfschiffahrts GmbH operate daily services along the river throughout most of the year.
When we tell friends & neighbours where we went on holiday, their response, sometimes voiced but sometimes not, is "What on earth made you go there?" True, there are no sunny beaches and Sangria but we love it, great scenery, wonderful architecture, and some of the friendliest most welcoming people in Europe. The food & drink are pretty good as well, more UK people should try it, but not too many please.
Edited by kayemod, 26 November 2014 - 18:23.
