Thursday 24th & Friday 25th March
So it was time to be reunited with the Truck for this trip to Berlin. I drove over to Tunbridge Wells on Thursday afternoon and early evening 5 set off for Dover. Sadly we did not have Timmy the dog with us (I hope we have some famous 5 readers or you will all think I am nuts!), but we were too early to check in for the midnight ferry, so after sitting in a B&Q car park for 30 minutes, finally did get to check in!
It was raining when we arrived in Dunkirk, and basically it was raining for the next 560 miles from France to Belgium to Holland to Germany!
We arrived into our campsite near Spandau around about 2pm, after quickly plugging the truck in, filling it with water, erecting the awning, putting down the stability feet, it was time for beer. I am in training for a marathon and having recently done 3 half marathons had not had a beer for 84 days.
We were recommended a steak restaurant, and what a great place it was. We started with the compulsory beer and all soon had mountains of meat in front of us. After all that food we had to find another bar to re hydrate with another beer (yes I know beer dehydrates you but when you have not drunk for 84 days a beer at any time is essential!)
Saturday 26th March
Our campsite was very nice, surrounded by water and despite being close to Tegal airport pretty quiet. The map indicated that the U-Bahn station was about a 15 minute walk away so some idiot suggested we don't take the bus and walk, ooooops sorry for the 1 hour walk/hike! It was however through some lovely woods, not sure about the sign about Killer Owls, and we had to divert our eyes as we came across a group of cyclists who were on a mass wee stop!
We had soon collected our tickets and then met up with Man City Dave and Coventry Sara. The weather was glorious so we had a few beers soaking up the sun. We moved on and saw somebody drinking green beer ..........
We spotted somebody drinking GREEN beer, so it just had to be done. It was nice, well the first couple of sips were OK, then it sort of turned horrible, but we all bravely managed to polish them off.
After having a massive Pizza to soak up some beer, Scott met the future Mrs McCarthy who was a bit camera shy, we moved on up towards the ground to have another couple of fine German Beers. Despite being 2 hours to KO it was packed and a great atmosphere.
Scott and Ali join the Children's Penalty shoot out. Scott went first and amazingly did score with his 3rd penalty! As planned he hit the 4th as high and wide as he could to gasps of "Ohhhhhhhhhh", "Ahggggggg" and "Wat Ze Fuck". Ali was also very un-English and scored one as well.
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| 2 nil and they fucked it up? Another beer? Yes Please! |
Sunday 27th March
We spent the day seeing the sites of Berlin.
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| Man City Dave was tempted to put a deposit down for this beauty! |
Monday 28th March
So it was time to head home. The sun was out, England had won 3-2, just a nice sunny 560 mile drive to Dunkirk! We had heard about Storm Katrina and we soon came across the her remains. The sun soon disappeared and a rather nasty black sky approached. It was by now also pretty windy and being in quite a high sided vehicle made it quite tough driving conditions.
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| It may rain I helpfully pointed out to people |
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| Its raining, its lucky I was awake to point this out to everyone |
We crossed the Rhine, decided against pulling off for a stop in Wankum and arrived into Dunkirk early enough to get on the 10pm Ferry rather than the midnight one we were booked on. A right result after a long day of driving for Kevin. The ferry was half empty and it was a bit of a choppy crossing, I am not sure Lauren enjoyed it tooooo much.
