Dykes, Becks Beer and 1200km in 3 days

We took a 3 day weekend to go and see some of Germany in the last weekend. We left Aachen (where we have been staying) on Friday morning and drove up to Nordeich on the North West coast of Germany not too far from the Dutch border. There are dykes (seawalls) along the coast as far as the eye can see protecting Germany from getting washed away or becoming a swamp. The beaches werent really that nice at all (if you could call them a beach) but it was nice to see the ocean again. Not far off the coast are the Friesian Islands and apparently at low tide you can actually walk to some of them! It was fairly windy when we were there and the number of wind powered generators around the place seems to indicate that it is windy all the time.

Adam in relaxation mode in Nordeich after a hard days driving...

The next day we drove to Bremen, the home of Becks (the beer not the English footballer). After a few wrong turns and a terrifying 30 seconds going the wrong way down a one way street, (I have now realised that it is no coincidence that thousands of streets in Germany are called 'einbahnstrasse' which means one way street) we finally made it to a hotel. We didnt have time to do a tour of the Beck brewery though which is a shame.

Melinda in Bremen

The next day went went to the site of the infamous Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It is a large memorial site now as all the buildings were burnt down by the British when they liberated the camp to try and stop disease spreading.

After that it was a long drive back to Aachen via Hameln - where the pied piper comes from!