DAY 9 TO BERLIN AND BEYOND….

Not much to report today as it was a full travel day.  We had about a 10 hour trip from Oosterbeek to Berlin.  You can see how far we traveled today, but overall the travel time really isn’t that long(about 7 hours or so...cmon we are from Canada), but because of significant restrictions on bus drivers, Peter our driver needs to have an hour break at lunch and two 25 minute break throughout the day.  Add on to a traffic jam on the fast moving autobahn and we got delayed by almost an hour.  The kids handled the long day very well.

I love the autobahn!!!  Enough said!!!  Probably what I love the most, either than the speed, is the funny name for each exit.  Well when you travel completely across the country and when you approach large cities you start to see the ramp exit signs more often...immature yes, but it gave us bus cabin crazy people a laugh each time.  Let's see what you think...

......by the way its pronounced AURS-FART....

I must say that Germany is a beautiful country and vastly different than the Netherlands.  The landscape alone is very different with large but gently rolling hills.  The greenery is everywhere.  As we start to hit more of the inhabited areas there is still no lack of green space, in fact in this country of 90 million people, and somewhat packed into only about 350,000 Square Km..  As we begin our approach to the city of Berlin, we are driving down this gorgeous two-lane highway that is completely tree lined and you hardly believe you are coming into a major city.  Once into the city you certainly see the influence of a communist state and a city that was bombed to the ground.  In the old eastern side we see a lot of plain square or rectangle buildings that would have been built during that era of the Cold War.  We have yet to really make our way to the heart of West Berlin and will do that tomorrow so hopefully that will spruce up the blog tomorrow evening.

Today on one of our breaks, Jessica and I were on CBC Radio with Mitch Cormier.  She did a wonderful job and thanks to Island Morning for helping us spread the word on these great opportunities for students.  Also this evening we got to the hotel and had a special friend waiting for us.  A former exchange student Anna Buergluen, came all the way from Franfurt to spend the evening and tomorrow with us.  She came on her own and is staying with her Opa in Berlin and will rejoin us tomorrow.  We must also say goodbye to our bus driver Peter, a fine man and driver who has guided us across 4 countries over the past 9 days.  Good night to everyone from Berlin.

PS....Had some video of drive today and for some reason they won't upload...I will work on it tomorrow!!!