There is a team from Berlin called Hertha Berlin. There is a hot dog/frankfurter manufacturer called Herta. Are these things related? Concomitantly probably not. Thematically, yes.
Berlin is full of bears. Terrifying golden bears pulling chariots wherein another golden bear rides whilst making a "raise the roof" motion with his large golden paws. This happens in built-up areas and even multimedia complexes containing restaurants, cinemas, offices and cafes.
We stayed on Englische Strasse, near to the Tiergarten on the old "Western" side of the city. When we first arrived we went for a walk, found a laundrette (which would become relevant later) and generally saw what we could see. This perambulation included the Brandenburg gate, much of the Tiergarten, a long walk through Kurfurstendamm (or ku'damm as it's known), the Reichstag with it's big glass dome and comprehensively ugly anti-terrorism system, and an intense rain storm. After this big loop, we returned briefly to the hotel before going for two beers, one on a boat, one a short distance away in the park. I recommend the Schleusenkrug beer garden in the park although the Capt'n Schillow boat/resto/bar was by no means a bad choice.
The next day we rented bikes from the hotel and went a-riding. Yes, I know we had a motorbike already, but completely different. We saw lots of bits of Berlin wall and went to the Topography of Terror museum which is by no means fun but very worthwhile. We checked out some of the Eastern side, via Checkpoint Charlie, including the Museum islands. At Alexanderplatz we ate sausage from a street vendor (classic). Oh, there was a lot to see and do. We went to Wedding too. Riding around town is fun and effective. In the evening we put a wash on at the laundrette and, whilst it was running, managed to have an entire meal at a very nice Thai restaurant on the Ku'damm.
Overall we packed a load in. Things I had previously forgot: we went to the Bauhaus museum, which wasn't fantastic (it was a bit small) and saw/walked through the huge "monument" to the holocaust, which was impressive. The weather was not the best, but it was not too bad and we never got so wet it was uncomfortable. The B&B hotel was excellent. I really like B&B hotels. I even like their mint chocolate-chip colour scheme.
After two days and nights in Berlin (and one full day of not motorcycling, substituting bicycles as our methadone), the next day we were back on the road and off to one of the nicest places in the whole World...
Finally, another exciting instalment of the Germany trip, almost a year after it actually happened. After Hamburg we got back on the bike and thrust Eastwards in an attempt to escape built-up areas. I recall it being a fairly straightforward, if not fantastically exciting, ride to the capital of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern: Schwerin. We arrived too early to check-in to the Ibis Budget hotel on a commerical centre on the edge of town, so literally hung around for a while until it wasn't too early enough.
Once suitably installed, we got changed and decided to walk into town. This took the best part of an hour and, through luck rather than judgement, we ended up at the very picturesque Schloss (castle) with its extensively manicured gardens. There were lots of ducks...
An orangerie-type thing (probably an orangerie)...
And presumably Jesus (he's everywhere - no picture supplied).
We then wandered into town, which was very nice. The buildings were all well kept, there was extensive access to the surrounding lakes and a road named "Arsenalstrasse." We had a late lunch next to the Pfaffenteich (a smaller lake), which included (but was not limited to) Schnitzel. Ah schnitzel, the hammered, breadcrumbed, shallow-fried, meat-based meal of the (German) Gods. After that, we wandered a bit more. We considered taking the train the majority of the way back to the hotel, but didn't. Then we considered taking a bus, but didn't. So we ended up walking back. It was alright.
The next day we rode a fairly short distance (an hour or so) to Broock, where there was a cheap (30 euro) Guesthouse/Motel thing. It was a bit clangy and jammy, but perfectly adequate. Also, despite turning up fairly early, we checked in, dumped our gear and took a little, relatively-unencumbered trip to nearby Plau am See which is on the Plauer See (a big, presumably-entirely-coincidentally-named, lake). This appeared to be the place old people go to walk short distances and eat seafood and/or ice cream. There were a lot of cute buildings and a fair few boats. That was about it. Again we wandered. We found some cheap food (I think there may have been a Lidl, an Aldi and a Netto all literally next to one another, although that may have been somewhere/anywhere else in Germany) and went back to the "hotel." We didn't achieve too much. We probably watched Nickelodeon as that was the only channel on German TV where we could change the language to English. Honestly, I have never before, or since, watched "The Thundermans" or "Ricky, Nicky, Dicky and Dawn," but they featured heavily on the TVs of our German hotels. However, "The Loud House" was genuinely good, albeit too-rarely scheduled.
The next day it rained heavily. Very heavily. Also wind. So we ended up mainly taking the Autobahn to Berlin, where they had closed practically every lane of the #10 motorway to clear branches off the tarmac. Lots of German drivers don't really like motorcyclists filtering through the traffic, although lots seem willing to help. If you are filtering, expect German motorcyclists to follow you, because they suddenly realise it's a great idea, especially when it's raining and there's a shed-load of unnecessary traffic caused by people driving massive cars. Here's a picture of a boat at Plau am See, next Berlin...
So, back to the story. When we left Berne, the weather was actually pretty nice. The sky was clear, and it was like a lovely late-Summer/early-autumn day. We had planned to take a fairly direct route (albeit avoiding motorways until the very last section) to Hamburg where we had booked a hotel/pension/gasthaus for a night. After about 10 minutes, and having ridden across some vaguely terrifying gravel-and-pothole based roadworks, I realised that our route immediately involved taking a boat across the river. The map did not make this clear. However, I didn't really fancy driving the long way 'round (via Bremen) and boats can be fun, so we paid a few Euros and took the very short car ferry.
The rest of the trip took a surprisingly long time. We took the 74 north towards Stade and it was pleasant enough with plenty of trees lining the roads, but the geography isn't exactly exciting and there are a lot of small towns which slow you down. Also, a motorcyclist with a Harley-Davidson on the ferry had told us that there were a lot of speed cameras about, which made me a bit more cautious. What I didn't know at the time, but subsequently learned, is that speeding/traffic fines in Germany are some of the lowest in Europe. Also, the vast majority of speed cameras face towards you, so there's little to no chance of being caught on a bike (furthermore, I don't think there's any sort of agreement between Germany and the UK anyway, so you're probably largely immune from prosecution unless a police officer stops you). 
Anyhoo, after Stade, I joined an autobahn which was currently under construction, super fast, and came to an abrupt end somewhere near Buxtehude (which is the German for a low-cut women's hoody). When we eventually got to the junction of the 73 and #7 autobahn, roadworks were preventing me from taking the route I wanted. So I had to guess. Fortunately, despite also getting lost in the centre of Hamburg and setting off one prehistoric speed camera, we did find the hotel fairly easily and in good time (it must have been 2pm ish). And it was a-maz-ing. There was a shower in the room, for some reason, and it was otherwise just like a huge studio from the 1950s, or perhaps earlier. We had a bed, a desk, a table (with health-and-safety-friendly candlestick) and a huge ceramic heater thing (which seem fairly traditional and cool). It was an excellent place to stay.
Once we had got changed I had had firmly attached the bike to the railings at the front we took a good long walk around Hamburg. We saw Martin Luther, he was holding a book, and the redeveloped dock area that seemed to be hosting a big event for cruise-ship people (I call them people...). We wandered down to the Reeperbahn, which had also undergone quite a lot of general refurbishment. There was a massive outdoor street food market selling all kinds. We hung about in the town square (outside the Rathaus) where an official rock festival was happening. Except that it wasn't. Nothing was happening for ages. When a band finally stopped warming up, they proceeded to play really unconvincing reggae for the short while until we left. It was weird, and not rock. Imagine a German Maroon 5 playing the music of the Aggrovators.
On the way back to Hotel Fink, we inadvertantly discovered the Turm bar, which is the coolest cocktail bar I've ever been in. It is some sort of old tower (probably water, possibly grain) and you walk up a spiralling concrete ramp unitl you are all disorientated by the lack of windows, only to find a very cool bar with one window near the very top. It's super cool. So we had cocktails. Then we returned to Hotel Fink, via buying vegetarian burgers and chips at the train station. It was a lovely day. Lots of walking.
Hamburg's lovely. That's about it. There was a shop called "Acne." It's quite posh as well. The loop around the big lake is a nice walking/running area. I could live in Hamburg. Pourquoi pas?
Bonjour!
Taking a break from recollecting the Germany trip, primarily to do some much-needed DIY (take that my balcony, and by "that" I mean full-size doors designed to enclosed the ends making rudimentary cupboards for, amongst other things, DIY equipment...) but also to do the first dump alert of the season! That's right, it keeps snowing. There's loads of fluffy stuff up in Arc 1800. This is the link https://www.lesarcsnet.com/dump/les-arcs-dump-alert-13th-november-2017-les-arcs-region-712379 and here are a few extra photos that didn't make the official cut:
Our second full day on the continent started auspiciously enough, with a delicious breakfast at the Bed & Buddha B&B. The weather was just about holding, but we put on our surprisingly effective Mac in a Sac waterproofs and headed off towards Holland's largest Northern city and, by population, seventh biggest city overall: Groningen! We knew the weather was going to deteriorate and it did a bit. It wasn't awful. Nevertheless we headed directly to Groningen and, more by luck than judgement (ok perhaps there were equal parts luck and judgement) we found our way to a Mercure (I know, right) hotel in the excitingly-named Martiniplaza. It was nice.
The great thing about travelling light is having very few belongings or options in terms of clothes whenever you go out. Our waterproof kagouls also doubled as our only non-motorcycling jackets, which we donned to head out into the now mostly raining and grim city. It was a short walk to the inner part, which was surrounded by a big canal, a bit like a moat. Despite the inclement weather and persistent rain/drizzle (it's grim up North) Groningen was alright. We visited the free photography museum, which I think was having an exhibition on Venezualan conflict/demonstrations/riots/gangs, but it may have been another South American country. We ate soup in a soup restaurant which had no 
bathroom. Considering I had been saving going for a wee until I ate, that was a massive disappointment, especially since soup is really just elaborate liquid disguised/sold as a proper meal. Our decision to visit the soup place was mostly due to price and the fact it was called "Soup Dogg." With marketing like that, who needs a toilet? Apparently me and anyone with a bladder in Groningen. However, another good thing about the Netherlands, because you're not in France you can literally eat food in restaurants outside of specific lunch times. We therefore had a late lunch and bought fairly authentic Dutch apple pie and salads to have at the hotel.
The train station, which we simply visited to see the huge bike-parking facility and weird statue of a modernist man with a horse who seems ready to defecate, was gorgeous. Real character in that building, as well as one of those fast food places which sells burgers/falafel/chips/etc out of little semi-automated windows, like in the original Blade Runner. In cities, the best buildings are often the churches (although they can be a bit churchy) and the train stations (although they can be a bit trainy). There's a travellers' tip. Not a great travellers' tip, but a tip nonetheless. 
I think a trip to Groningen is vaguely worthwhile. It's a nice little/big town, with some cute back streets and some interesting shops and eateries. There is a huge Museum of Groningen, with a rainbow crossing, but it was prohibitively expensive. It also seemed to be quite a big student town, which is arguably good. I've definitely been to worse Northern places (I'm looking at you almost everywhere in Northern England... not really... just most of you).
The next day we went to actual Germany. It was not much of a day. The roads were pretty boring and it rained hard. This is a downside to riding a motorcycle; rain can make things pretty unpleasant/pointless.
We went straight to the accommodation in Berne (not a million miles from Bremen), which was a shepherd's-type hut next to a bridge. It seemed the bridge had been usurped by a slightly cooler, swinging bridge, so the old road was now pretty much defunct. Suffice to say we achieve very little. Watched some TV, hoped the rain would stop. I took the bike to a genuine German supermarket to get foodstuffs as our hut had basic food-cooking. Otherwise we spent most of the day with the heating on lazing about. Not that epic. Still, it was day three and we'd got into Germany and stayed in three different places. We may have achieved more if the weather had been nicer. We may have not.
The journey started in the UK. This is generally a disappointment as UK roads are far too busy and everyone is in a massive hurry. My overall experience is that, compared to other European countries (which have their own particularities), there is less understanding of the fragility of cyclists, pedestrians and motorcyclists in the UK than elsewhere. Fortunately, we only needed to travel a relatively short distance from Aylesbury to Harwich, albeit on some of the country's busier motorways. The weather stayed fine though, the bike felt pretty good and we arrived at our port-side generic hotel without too much incident. There I checked the tyres (because of earlier slow-puncture issues which had been fixed in Brighton) and filled the petrol tank before eating delicious Domino's pizza. If you don't like pizza, you don't like life. Also, shortly after we arrive a dark green old-new-style dark green Suzuki Ignis almost exactly like ours (except without the bling chrome door handles) appeared in the car park, which is always a good omen.
I think it's important to explain, at this stage, that the Suzuki Ignis is probably the greatest car ever designed. In the Haute Tarentaise, where we live during the winter, they are absolutely everywhere. They are tiny yet capacious, simple yet bulletproof and thoroughly awesome for all driving tasks. If international communism had succeeded for (rather than being spoilt by) humanity, everyone would have an Ignis and that would go some way to ensuring universal happiness. We've got two, which we are currently using in rotation. Seeing an Ignis is therefore considered good luck in many cultures and should be accompanied by shouting the word "IGNIS" by all those fortunate enough to observe it.
Anyway. Harwich was a port. It still is a port. It's a very old-school port, with more-than-hints of brutalist car park about its boarding-ramps. We got on the ferry headed for the Hook of Holland at about 9am on Wednesday 9th September. The ship itself was really quite fun. There was even a cinema showing three films during the crossing, so we booked in to see Despicable Me 3, which was always going to be a good decision. Otherwise we got changed out of our leathers and left them in the barely-used locked left-luggage space, had a picnic lunch on the sun deck (which was actually quite sunny and warm) and lazed about a bit.
Our first business arriving in the Netherlands at around 5pm was to drive toward, then into, Rotterdam and find our first hotel. That was fairly unpleasant, but actually didn't go as badly as it might have done. Holland has some seriously confusing roads. There is clearly some correlation between vaguely overpopulating land that you've literally claimed from the sea, the necessity for lots of cars and roads and the almost haphazard design of major traffic junctions. Seriously, I approached a number of roundabouts, pseudo-roundabouts and convoluted junctions where I had no idea where I was supposed to be positioned, where the lane/road subsequently went, or where I should be heading. The fact it was approximately rush hour probably didn't help. But screw doing any of that in a car, at least with a motorbike you can make it up as you go along a bit more. The other good thing about a motorbike, which came up time and again on the whole journey, was essentially ignoring queued traffic on motorways. Long live the god of filtering.
Anywho. We got into Rotterdam, parked up in a huge cycle park outside the Art Hotel (that's ok right? Apparently yes) and went to our room. The Art Hotel was big and a bit like a 1980s university hall of residence, but with big glass lifts and "art" everywhere. It was cool and borderline rubbish, but mostly cool.
That evening we took a wander around and found a fairly local brewery situated in an old warehouse which now housed a big, artisanal, food mall called the Fenix Food Factory. Well worth a visit, although by the time we got there the majority of shops (including the cider bar!) had shut leaving only the brewery open. That was alright though. They had a LOT of beers on tap. Also, the Irish barmaid was very helpful and let us try various beverages before we decided on which pints/500mls/whatever to have. There was an adjacent/related Thai food stall which provided us with dinner whilst we supped lovely real ale. That constitutes a good start to the trip. On the way back to the hotel it rained, although we were mostly protected by the large overpass. 
As became customary, the following day we had quite a lot of riding to do. The weather was due to stay fair, so we decided to break the journey up with lunch in Leiden. This was a good choice. It was sunny when we got there and there were lots of little restaurants with boats/platforms on the canal. Really cute little town (I say little, it was probably huge and
arguably part of the wider urban conurbation that is Holland. Canals, bikes and poor road signposting made it very Dutch though. After lunch and a wander, we rode practically all the way up to Den Helder, next to the Waddensee and over the big road/E22/Afsluitdijk to the Northern Netherlands proper. By that time we had probably ridden too far. Still, we got a bit lost, then stopped at a town called Sexbierum. But rather than finding people having sex and drinking beer and rum, we found people wearing clogs. I thought it was a historical thing; Dutch people used to wear wooden footwear for some reason and the national dress amusingly reflected that. Nope, real, live, fully-Dutch people in smaller towns wear clogs in public. That's how they roll. All power to them.
We then stayed in Oude Bildtzijl (I won't patronise you by explaining how to pronounce it, because I have no idea myself) in a nice little homestay/guest house with holistic overtones. Great TV though. The Dutch really know how to have English-speaking programmes on lots of channels. Germany take note....
Right I'm going to pause there. I will, however, grace you with a couple of other observations. Once you get higher than Amsterdam, the roads become slightly less complicated, although some of the motorways are massive and just seem to run parallel to other motorways. The houses are all quite low with big triangular roofs. Sometimes they have a view of a raised road/dyke and that's it. The landscape is predictably flat and a bit boring. There was not a lot of fun motorcycling to do on the first day, but it was alright.
Well it's been almost a month since we returned from our month-long motorcycle trip around Germany, but I still have a pretty good memory of what happened. Therefore, I am going to write a blog-style retrospective of our trip, complete with thousands of miles of motorcycling, weather of all kinds, incredible scenery, lovely people and loads of relevant cultural stuff. As usual with (my particular brand of) blogging, expect points of interest interspersed by tracts of rambling nonesense. I will try to approach the trip in short-ish sections, but that will be entirely contingent upon the depth and quality of my memories.
Hello
Welcome to the brand new Team Snow website, designed to be future-proof and ready for the exciting events ahead. There is much plan-formulating occurring (possibly as you read this) and we're desperately trying to get ahead so our next adventure is truly epic.
At the moment there won't be much going on here. But soon!
We stayed on Englische Strasse, near to the Tiergarten on the old "Western" side of the city. When we first arrived we went for a walk, found a laundrette (which would become relevant later) and generally saw what we could see. This perambulation included the Brandenburg gate, much of the Tiergarten, a long walk through Kurfurstendamm (or ku'damm as it's known), the Reichstag with it's big glass dome and comprehensively ugly anti-terrorism system, and an intense rain storm. After this big loop, we returned briefly to the hotel before going for two beers, one on a boat, one a short distance away in the park. I recommend the Schleusenkrug beer garden in the park although the Capt'n Schillow boat/resto/bar was by no means a bad choice.
The next day we rented bikes from the hotel and went a-riding. Yes, I know we had a motorbike already, but completely different. We saw lots of bits of Berlin wall and went to the Topography of Terror museum which is by no means fun but very worthwhile. We checked out some of the Eastern side, via Checkpoint Charlie, including the Museum islands. At Alexanderplatz we ate sausage from a street vendor (classic). Oh, there was a lot to see and do. We went to Wedding too. Riding around town is fun and effective. In the evening we put a wash on at the laundrette and, whilst it was running, managed to have an entire meal at a very nice Thai restaurant on the Ku'damm.
