Travel Day 804 – Berlin to Hamburg to Detmold, GERMANY
After spending over a week in Berlin, which despite all its greyness still was my favorite German city, it was about time again to move on. This time Hamburg was the goal and to see some more friends there…
Fast Drive on empty Autobahn in Germany
One thing that became my daily mission in Berlin was to meet people. If it was family members, old friends or new ones that I had met while travelling, I tried to meet at least one person each day. One benefit was that I had another reason the leave the house and see more areas of Berlin, but the real beauty lay in catching up with people who I had not seen in a long time and hearing what’s on their minds these days. While living abroad and travelling for such a long time, I felt somewhat disconnected and out of touch with what was happening in the lives of my friends at home…
So after some catching up in Berlin, I now had the chance to see a few more friends in Hamburg. It was obviously still difficult every time to compress two years of travelling into a single dinner conversation, but in the end I found that we actually talked less about travelling and more about what was going on locally. At some point it even seemed to me that the travel topic was avoided entirely, but luckily we also avoided any deeper conversation about kids… : )
Besides seeing old friends and having nice conversations, what became my second highlight of this little Side Trip was the drive on the Autobahn. Not only had it been a very long time since I had the chance to drive a car, but it was even longer ago that I had the chance to drive on the Autobahn. Luckily the weather was better by now and especially on the way back from Hamburg the Autobahn was completely empty, which left we with no other choice but enjoy the non-existing speed limit… : )
While growing up in Germany, driving fast and travelling quickly from one point to the other was always a given and normal to me. Only during my years of living abroad and especially while travelling around the world, I came to realize what a unique thing it was to have no speed limit on a road. After all those long hours on chicken busses and bumpy roads, it was truly something amazing to enjoy the smooth ride on the Autobahn. Additionally while Active Travel Days usually consist of very limited activity and hours of doing nothing but reading, it was actually really great for once to be quite actively involved in the process of travelling… : )
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