Hello everyone.

We left Leipzig about mid-morning and headed for Berlin. Got there without a problem. There was a little trouble finding the campground but we were in front of the campground gate at about 1:30, only to be faced with a sign proclaiming that the reception office was closed from 1300 to 1500 (1-3pm), a new one on us. Since Berlin we have noticed that there are some other campgrounds that have this midday habit of closing. And they mean closed. The gate kept us in the driveway until 3 pm. We might have gone into the city then, but this camp had another annoying feature that delayed us further. Electric outlets were enclosed in a locked box and the warden has to come to connect you—and he does this only when he can leave the reception office. This was difficult because there were several people wanting to check in after us and others kept arriving. In addition, the space he gave us was too close to another camping family. They arrived back at the camp from a trip to Berlin center to see that we were parked where they needed to pitch their tent. Indeed we had to move our rig twice, and that meant that the man in reception had to come and disconnect us from the old electric box and reconnect anew, twice. As a result we weren’t settled in until way after 4 pm. It was too late to go to central Berlin.

Most of the campers in this campground were "statics" (people who stay all summer) and we got quite a different feeling from them than we usually do. We find that we cannot speak at length to many of our fellow campers since we do not share a common language, but we always feel welcome. That wasn’t true in Berlin. The statics felt they owned the place. The transients were nuisances who always were interrupting their card games.

Next morning we took the bus from only a few feet past the front gate. We got out at the last stop – the Zoo. Neither of us felt we could handle a walking tour. Since Berlin is a really big city, we opted for a sightseeing bus. Good choice. We saw the outside of a lot of things we had heard of, and knew what we were seeing because of the tour guide’s talk which was both in German and then in English. Among the world famous sights was Checkpoint Charlie, or what was built to represent it, the Gedichtniskirche, a large brownstone Church bombed out in WWII and left as it was after the raid as a monument (a picture of this church is attached). We saw the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag Building, most of which is new, some remnants of the original Wall and the newly finished Holocaust monument. Of course we also visited the tourist office and walked along the Kurfurstendam, Berlin’s main shopping street (modeled after the Champs Elysee in Paris). We went to an internet café, ate lunch at a Turkish fast food joint (it was delicious), went to a bookstore, and even had a cup of coffee at a café. I don’t want anyone to think that we just sat all day! After the bus tour, we walked a long way along another main street to the store that the tour guide had pointed out. I can’t remember it’s name, but it is very fancy, very huge (think Bloomingdales writ large), and has been around since 1905. We went to the famous – and enormous – "deli" on the sixth floor to buy stuff for dinner. Then another round at the internet café to clear up some communication problems and a quick stop at the book store for another map. It was time to leave since there were only two more buses on that line that night.

A word about Berlin. We found a huge modern city, nothing like the dark city shown in old movies. There were a tremendous number of construction sites. A great deal of the city is modern, and not very interesting to us. The traffic was lighter than any other big city we have been in. We saw motorhomes and caravans parked on the streets and in carparks all over the city, including right on the Kerfurstendam. There was a noticeable absence of "Bakerei" on the streets we were on. The beautiful boulevard named "Unter der Linden" was indeed lined with linden trees and had very fancy shops all along it, but shopping (except for food) is not what we like to do.

After consideration, we decided that to really "do" Berlin, we’d need to spend a week there, going to the museums and the zoo. Neither of us wanted to spend so long here – especially since doing so would mean that we’d have to cut time short in other places. Italy & France exert a strong pull on us, so we decided that we would rather spend the time there than in Berlin. We left in the morning. There was another place to go. Dresden is both interesting in itself and has an added attraction. It is close to the Czech Republic.

We had always hoped that on this trip we would be able to visit Prague. Most people who have been there, including our son, say it is one of the prettiest cities anywhere.

We found a good internet shop with good telephone service, walked for miles, became experts on the tram system. We ate a special kind of ice cream from a street kiosk – a soft ice cream that was apparently whipped and then served in a clam-shell shaped cone with a small hard waffle as a scoop. Who says that travel isn’t broadening? The campground was great – friendly, helpful and clean. The bus was convenient, the public transit service excellent, the city interesting, what more could one ask?

Well, we did ask one more thing. About getting to Prague in the Czech Republic. We considered driving and camping, but decided against it for a variety of reasons. Not the least of these was my (Adelle’s) worry about the roads, how well they are marked, how I could follow Czech road signs, and a general malaise about the people and a country only recently opened again to the world. We need not have worried. Although we did opt to take a train trip – and stay overnight at a hotel - it was quite clear to us that we, along with hordes of other tourists, were quite welcome. We left Dresden on Thursday morning, were in Praha (as the natives say) by noon. We left on Friday at 5:30pm.

We agree that Prague is both a great city and a beautiful one. It is large but crowded beyond belief by its million plus inhabitants and the thousands upon thousands of tourists. It was the only place since we got to Europe three weeks ago where we consistently heard lots of American tourists talking. Most things were inexpensive – although the hotel was not cheap. It has a very modern public transportation system that includes one of the deepest subways anywhere, and many tram lines. (Take a look at the escalator that takes you to the subway!)

The city is absolutely beautiful, with all kinds of buildings some built in the 11th century and some recently. Prague Castle is across the river from the old town, and its complex of palaces is just stunning. (We’ve included a picture of it taken from a café where we ate.) It isn’t just the buildings, though. People are very nice, eager to help. When they say the equivalent of good morning, they mean it.We took a bus tour again. This time it was a mistake. We could have taken a similar tour from a man in a vintage Czech sports car for not too much more than what we paid for two seats on a tour bus. Problem is that it takes a while to re-orient your head to Czech Crowns. The bus tour for two cost about $20 euros, but the 950 Czech Crowns charged by the sports car man is only a little more than $30. And the man in the car can stop to let you take pictures. So remember that if you go to Prague. Those cute cars are not that expensive! (And they are cute, aren’t they? Take a look at the picture.)

The beautiful buildings aside, the other thing that struck us about Prague was that music occupied a very large place in the life of the city. Many different kinds of music but especially classical. After all, Mozart wrote Don Giovanni in Prague and this is where it had its world premier. And the composer Smetena had lived and worked here. Of course, Dvorak was a Czech. The number and scope of concerts that are available every day here seems to be huge. One can easily attend multiple concerts a day in all kinds of venues—churches, halls, museums, bars and cafes. It seemed that every church or hall offered a daily concert. With all that competition there is an intense marketing effort to attract people to the concerts. People stand on street corners and hawk their performance. Some have sandwich boards advertising their concerts. They stand in the streets, giving out flyers to walkers-by and even offer to guide you straight to the concert venue. Talk about a vibrant art scene! We did not have time to attend a concert but we did go to the Smetena Museum.

Just in case you’re worried, we ate a dinner in a basement restaurant that had rounded high ceilings held up by arches. We ate crisp roasted duck with dumplings, red cabbage and sauerkraut, always a staple of Czech cuisine, and drank a glass of Czech beer. The next day at lunch, we had Bohemian dumplings in cheese sauce followed by an apfel strudel, this time in an outdoor café right on the river next to a beautiful stone bridge going over to a castle and cathedral on the far shore. What more could anyone want?Again we walked for miles, but we found it very hard, especially since all the streets and sidewalks were made of small, irregular pieces of stone. Your feet were never quite straight – and we felt it. So although we had an hour or more to kill on Friday before our train back to Dresden, we just sat. In front of a beautiful building, of course. The train ride was easy, quiet and not expensive, and left us back at a familiar site – the Haupbanhof – the main train station. We had dinner in a Chinese restaurant at the station and were surprised to find it good. Then, being the Dresden experts we are, we promptly bought our tickets from a machine, climbed aboard a tram which got to our stop about five minutes before the bus came to take us right back to our campground. We were "home" by 9:30.

Just to keep everything in perspective, as of our return from Prague we have been in Europe for 18 days, have driven 982 miles and have visited, however briefly, 11 different major cities in the Netherlands, Germany and the Czech Republic, driving an average of 65 miles a day. Europe is small. We can do this and not spend all of our time driving. But we will not keep up this pace for the rest of the trip. Both of us need to slow it down a little. So now it is on to the South of Germany to visit some small towns in the romantic road area from Wurzburg to Munich and then go on to Italy.

Bye for now. Adelle & Ron

Adelle and Ron Milavsky, Authors
Take Your RV to Europe, The Low-Cost Route to Long-Term Touring