Today was the sort of day that always seems to happen at least once a holiday, when best-laid plans go a bit wrong. The Swan Whisperer wanted to visit the museum at Peenemunde, which was not that far from where we were staying. But we knew we had a long drive today, so wouldn't have long at the museum, and, after a spectacular thunderstorm at dawn, it was wet on and off. We were held up leaving the Stellplatz as the retractable handle for the loo cassette broke, and wouldn't retract, so we had to take it off. Fixed at last - we will almost definitely be able to get a new handle - we were able to check out, which also took ages as there was some discrepancy between the start of our use of electricity and the end of the previous person's. I meanwhile was making friends with this rather fat, furry person.
However, we got away at last and headed off to Peenemunde. We had planned to call in at a bakery en route, but had trouble finding it, but finally got our lunch rolls and Sunday patisseries. Of which more later.
By the time we finally got to the museum, it was raining again, and really, we could only spare about 20 minutes, and you'd need a lot more than that to see it properly, so the Swan Whisperer had a quick look round the outside and we headed off again.
We had asked the Satnav to take us the length of Usedom Island, but it said there was a huge hold-up and offered an alternative, which would probably have worked if I hadn't decided to give it more freedom of choice by removing the waypoint, whereupon it promptly wanted us to retrace our steps.
So, just for fun, I asked it to take us via Sczeczin in Poland - and we discovered it would be quite do-able and still get us to Berlin at a reasonable time.
So off we went, but, alas, the main road was being rebuilt, and it was nothing but roadworks and speed limits. The Sat-nav would have taken us on a diversion to miss the worst of it, but we missed the turn-off and spent the next 20 or 30 kilometers crawling along, often at a standstill. I ended up moving to the lounge seat and making sandwiches for us both with the rolls I'd bought (I remember doing that in France once, many years ago!), which we ate on the move.
Eventually we came out of it and were able to stop at the nearest rest area to spend a penny, but didn't want to take to long as we gathered there were more holdups ahead. The main one was caused by the authorities deciding to funnel all traffic off the motorway and through the border control area. I thought we might have to show our passports, but no one was stopped, just looked at.
We then decided we would stop for the SW to have some coffee (why does it keep him awake in the afternoon, but not at night?) and we could both have our patisseries.whuch were very nice, but it turned out the woman in the shop had sold me a custard tart instead of what I could have sworn she said was rhubarb and custard... so we each had half of it and half of my plum crumble.
I had got out of the WoMo and done some qi gong exercises while the coffee was being ground, and was more comfortable after that. We then headed on to Berlin and found the Stellplatz here without too much difficulty. Fairly typical big-city place, but nothing wrong with it. The SW went for a much-needed leg-stretch while I got supper, and we are now full of pork chops in a fresh tomato sauce, asparagus, new potatoes and peas, followed by raspberries and cream. We are here for two nights, so will explore tomorrow.
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