This morning we had a few hours to get breakfast and wander round Stuttgart before boarding our train to Munich. We had a look around Schloss Platz in the daytime. Our train to Munich was ridiculously hot. We stripped off as many clothes as possible but it was still stifling. Then we sat stationary for a while partway through the trip and arrived late. So not the best train trip we’ve had. We walked out of the station and it was snowing! We had thought to go to the beer hall for dinner but it was a bit too much for E as he wasn’t feeling great so we went…

Today was our final factory tour, this one at Porsche. We were a but rushed getting there because one of the trains out there was cancelled so we had a wait for the following one but we made it just after 10 am and had time to jump into the tour.phones and bags have to be left in lockers. This tour we had booked to see the 911 production line. We saw the upholstery and engine shops but couldn’t go into the assembly because they had new prototypes on the line that need to remain secret. Instead we visited the Taycan line which is their electric car. This may have…

I’m mainly skipping past Tuesday which was our travel day from Munich, which involved a long train trip. We did enjoy an excellent dinner at the Cube restaurant in the evening. This restaurant is on the top floor of the Kundtmuseum, with fabulous views and modern food. Our visit to Stuttgart was all about the cars. We had booked a tour of the AMG engine factory in Affelbach. This was about an hour from Stuttgart by train and bus,The AMG engines are all built by a single technician who takes on average about three and a half per engine. There is still a production line but one technician is doing…

Today I’d booked two tours with Experience Hamburg Tours. We started a 6:30am for the Sankt Pauli Fishmarket Tour. We walked down the banks of the river learning about Hamburg’s Maritime history stopping at various sights along the way until we got to the fish market. This runs from 7am-11am over the winter months. The wholesale market has now moved so this is now just retail sales. There is a variety of food available including fish rolls. I could not stomach that this early in the morning but we had a Franzbrötchen, a type of pastry, a bit like a failed croissant with cinnamon sugar. There are also the screamers…

Today we left Berlin in the mid-afternoon so we had some time in the morning to do some sightseeing. We went for brunch then we decided to go out to the Stasi museum. This is located in the old Stasi headquarters. We learnt all about the tactics and strategies the DDR used to suppress resistance. They had photos, documents and artefacts from the time including various hidden cameras and listening devices for surveillance. The rooms associated with the director were all open and had been kept as they had been before the fall of the wall. We watched a TV show on Netflix called Kleo, which was about a Stasi…

Today we had big day planned. In the morning we visited the DDR museum which is a fun museum exploring aspects of life in the DDR. Afterwards we visited the Typography of Terror which looks at how the Gestapo and SS operated. After getting some lunch we went to the Templehof Airport. This was a Nazi vanity project that didn’t actually get finished before the war began. The shell of the building was used as a weapons manufacturing site. After the war the Americans took it over, using one half as a military base and the other half became the passenger terminal. This airport played an important part in the…

Today we had a bike tour with Berlin by Bike. It was their highlights tour, so the idea was for us to get a good overview of the city history and sites. Berlin has very good bike infrastructure so this was a good way to see the city. We started out at Prenzlauer Berg. Our first stops were back in the area we’d been the night before, but this time it wasn’t raining and we even got some blue sky. We got to see a part of the wall memorial we’d missed the night before, where you could look through a mock-up of the inner wall to see what the…

Today was the first of several factory tours we have booked for this holiday at the Volkswagen Wolfsburg plant. Wolfsburg is about 269km from Berlin, an easy train ride of 1-1.5 hours. We started at the Volkswagen Autostadt. This is a complex of buildings, seperate from the factory with a museum, pavilions for each of the VW associated brands, restaurants, gardens and the car towers where cars are stored for the people who are picking up from Wolfsburg. We started at the museum which traced various important milestones in car design. Following up with the Skoda and Audi pavilions before going to the Tachometer for lunch. After lunch we had…

I’m skipping forwards to Tuesday because Sunday and Monday were travel days of trains and planes and a lot of rain in Munich on our way to Berlin. We did have an excellent Turkish dinner on Monday night at Osman’s Tochter in Berlin. Highly recommended. So Tuesday morning we headed out bright and early to meet our son, E, who flew in from Melbourne. We caught the S-Bahn out to the airport and he arrived very soon after us. Collecting him we headed back to our apartment where he had a shower. E said he felt alright so we headed out to the Eastside Gallery. This is the section of…