Good bye Berlin

I'm waiting on the side of a street in Berlin at the moment for a car pooling ride that is going to pick me up at 10am They'll take me back to Mathias and Annett's in Bad Dürrenberg where I will stay for one night as they asked me to come back for a group photo.
For the last two nights  I stayed with an older guy called Simon, he's enjoying learning English!  We went for a 2 hour bike ride on a tandem yesterday afternoon and evening!  What a crack up! ! To try and get the hang of it I just laughed so much to start with!  .... An his peddling pace was quite fast the whole way an barely ever paused the peddles to cruise ... ow my bum muscles! ! I chose not to mention it ... knowing it is doing me good ... An thankfully didn't give me cramp nor was it an issue when we returned home ...nor today either ... so :-) must be getting fitter!  Choice!  We rode to a nearby..... (am in the car now ... initial conversation over now and they've gone back to speaking German. They're nice and humorous people.  Gonna be an easy trip :-)..) ...... village with a lake and went for a swim. ..the water was so warm! Then we went to a restaurant in the village for coffee and a nice (I chose vegetarian) dinner.  Then cycled home again past fields of oats and a stone wall from the 1500's still in really good condition. And such beautiful old houses and cottages enveloped in the woods!  So Beautiful!  Sadly its too difficult to take photos from the back of a tandem ... so you only get these ones. 

Bad Dürrenberg

Sorry about this one being out of order of happening ... but actually ... I'll be back in Bad Dürrenberg next week anyway :-) So kind of not out of order.
It used to be called Dürrenberg but back in the 1600's. But Johann  Gottfried Borlach  discovered a salt water spring here, and decided to create a huge  outdoor pseudo "sea air" breathing place for medicinal purposes. Lucky thing that this guy also had a lot of dosh! :) Nowadays it is considerably smaller - but still in my reckoning it is huge.
Bad = bath and Dürrenberg = Drought -hill.

Erfahren Sie mehr über Bad Dürrenberg.

Saltwater from the Bad Dürrenberg spring delivers gentle cleaning power ... so they say.

With a salt content of between six and eight percent, the Bad Dürrenberg water comes directly from a spring located next to Germany’s Saale River. To concentrate the saltwater, Johann Gottfried Borlach (1687–1768) commissioned the building of a graduation tower, a type of salt works. The graduation tower utilises an amazingly simple and energy-saving method to increase the salt content of the spring water. Pumps powered by wind energy convey the saltwater to the top of a giant, twelve-metre-high wooden frame that supports blackthorn branches. The saltwater trickles through openings in the sides and flows down over the extensive surface area of the branches, through which the wind can blow freely. The water evaporates, and concentrated and purified brine with a salt content of 22 to 24 percent emerges at the bottom.The saltwater from Dürrenberg is pure and of very high quality. It has a similar composition to water from the Dead Sea and its beneficial properties have gained worldwide recognition. Today medical authorities have recognised the healthy effects of inhaling the saline mist that is generated by the graduation process. It moistens the respiratory passages; minute salt crystals settle on the walls of the airways and dissolve secretions; the entire respiratory tract is cleansed of bacteria. Bad Dürrenberg in Germany is home to the longest salt works in the world, extending more than 636 metres.
Looking closely at the blackthorn sticks now they look like coral ;-)

Okidoki :-)

I had chosen and written down 3 hostels with good ratings and good prices in the centre of Warsaw ... all with 24 hour reception!  And Okidoki was at the top of my list :) I loved it!  It made me very pleased to have had the need to stay at a backpackers ... just so that I could experience it. Colour.  Vibrancy.  Humour.  Outgoing people both staff and guests.  24 hour hot showers at no extra cost. Same with the Internet ... if you were within a certain area.  Imaginative.  Informative.  Free hot cuppas in the 24 hour kitchen too ...
I was allocated to the Bike Room ... I you know how I like the Dutch Traditional Grandma bikes? ?!! Well there was one hanging on the wall above my bed :-)

Now in Polska :-)

I car pooled for about 700 kms from Bad Dürrenberg,  Germany to Warsaw Poland in a Ford Fiesta hatchback with a Russian couple who now live in Italy.  I really enjoyed the ride with them ... perfect combination of conversation and silence so I could sleep too.  €35 vs €92 by train ... An no hassles with un notified changes to my ticket!! No lack of communication between me and the driver ... we were very compatible :-)
There was a protest at the German/Polish boarder ... written in Polish ... I still don't know what it was about yet ... but Pawel says it might be to do with ....the Germans recent movie in which it is depicted that a Polish soldier kills a Jew ... There's a bit of a reaction about that.
We drove through some lovely and varied scenery ... that was another great thing about travelling with Aleksey and Irina .... they chose scenic routes with the aid of the brilliant digital navigation gadget attached to their screen. 
We arrived at the centre of Warsaw at bang on midnight. ... they dropped me off very near the Okidoki hostel.  :-) And that's another thing the train wouldn't do for me :-)