07.08.2011 – 07.08.2011  25 °C

Early start this morning as I was off to discover Germany and the fun of the Autobahn! Picked up my car with limited issues and discovered that it had a sat nav! “Great” I thought… “I’ve gone to all of the effort of finding a German sat nav only to discover my car has one already in it…..” So deciding not to use my sat nav (and return it to the store where I bought it)… I took off with the in car sat nav with a plan of going to Dresden via Potsdam… Two hours later and heaps of swearing I was still somewhere in the suburbs of Berlin and had worked out the in car sat nav was not working! So out came the ‘paid for Tom Tom’… Unfortunately it doesn’t speak English (although the controls can be put into English) so after much swearing at the sat nav for “Beaken Zi Reicht and Beaken Zi something up” I finally got myself out of Berlin and out to Potsdam.. a thirty minute drive took me over three hours… By then I had worked out what the words for Right and Left are in German as well as Exit and Round-a-bout…

Potsdam is a city outside of Berlin where the Prussian Kings once lived. It is also the famous city for the Potsdam Conference at the end of the first world war. The city itself is quite small and is dominated by the Schloss. This palace and its surrounds is known as the German Versailles and didn’t disappoint… (not quite as spectacular as the Peterhof in St Petersberg but still pretty specky).

Spent a couple of hours wandering around the grounds and soaking up the sunshine (it had finally come out) before deciding to have a bite to eat before heading off for the couple of hour drive to Dresden. I had planned to spend more time in Potsdam (and see the site of the conference) but after it taking me hours to just get to Potsdam (and knowing I still had a few hours of driving ahead of me) I had to forgo the chance.

Back on the road and now on the Autobahn… Much of it is open speed limit but a surprising amount is speed limited! The best I got to was 160 and I do have to say that there is something pretty good about moving fast with some techno on the radio! It’s funny, but even at 160 I was still travelling slowly!

Made it to Dresden after 7pm so decided to go straight to bed and get up early the following day to have a look around the town.