Last weekend was a long one (seeing as Tuesday the 3rd of October was the day of German Unity, Jack took Monday off), we hired a car from Budget 
and decided to drive around this country for a bit seeing as we haven't really done that before... and our 'lets get tickets to somewhere warm last minute' idea didn't work out, 'cos ... well it was too last minute. Anyhow, we had a great time and you can follow our four days travel on a map I prepared earlier.
Our first stop was Dessau, a city famous for it's interesting architecture (now protected by UNESCO) - the Bauhausgebäude. Perhaps we were expecting something more/else, but the only picture that I present for your amuzement is this plaque with a name of a building - a person who pronounces it correctly (although I don't know what that would be) will get a chocolate from me next time I see them!We then drove to Bad Frankenstein (aka Bad Frankenhausen) through the Kyffhäuser mountains along a strip of road which was in curvature similar to the Black Spur drive when going from Melbourne to Marysville. There were LOTS of people on motorbikes... herds and herds of them. The town itself was a small pretty german countrytown, and we even scored ourselves a single-bed room, since everything else was booked out (that whole thing about missing out on other travel 'cos of last minute planning...). The following day we went to see the Panorama museum, which is a round building (see pic) housing a single painting which is 14 by 123 meters! The building was actually built specifically for the painting and the picture was painted already inside - it took a bunch of artists a mere 5 years to do it. We also got to take a photo of a group of bikers, who complained that we were walking into their photo :) And the signs for walking tracks are covered by a little roof - very cute. After that we visited the Kyffhäuser Denkmal - as our Lonely Planet guide describes it as a 'spooky memorial' in commemoration of German national unity. The day was beautiful and sunny, so we didn't get all that spooked, but the memorial is indeed very dark and solid. It is built over a site of an old castle (at some point the largest in Germany), and around the monument there are various ruins and remains. In the bottom part of the memorial there's a serious looking dude with a huge beard, which makes any other beard look like mere undercoat on a husky. This place also houses the deepest castle well in the world - something like 176 meters through sheer rock. And if you want to throw in a stone, you gotta buy them at 1EUR a piece. And in case you want to wonder around by yourself without your loved one (eg. a dog), you're welcome to park it in a designated spot (see pic) - ah those Germans, gotta love 'em - thought of everything!
Retiring to the car and having a 'warm-straight-from-the-boot' banana for lunch we headed towards the Harz... this is a nice little mountain range - popular with hikers and skiers. We stayed in a town called Braunlager, in a pansion that was definitely not for vegetarians... all the walls were covered with stuffed animals and animals painted on targets with freshly pumped bullets.
The next day we were going to do a hike through the mountains but it was raining and they promised storms higher up, so we headed towards Kassel instead. The mountains are very pretty and there are little lakes here and there. And we also encountered an interesting looking bike
As we got there we walked around the town for a bit and went into the Brothers Grimm Museum, which took us about 10 minutes to walk around... mainly kids pictures to the fairytales, and their books translated into various languages. A nice old building in the picture is an old entry to a hospital... which I think isn't used anymore but just gives one an idea on the age of these 
towns. While hunting down some lunch we came accross a place that made baguettes and was called 'Michael Baguettski' - the menu is hilarious, my favourite being a salad called "Taiga Deluxe".
On our last day we went to the Wilhelmshöhe Palace Gardens, which houses an "internationally known" gallery, which indeed was very good, and a big statue of Hercules (which unfortunately was being renovated and we couldn't properly see it). In the gardens there's also a cute little castle Löwenburg which the king built as a toy for himself in the end of 19th century. At about 4pm we 
set off on our drive back to Berlin. Now we're off to Oldenburg next weekend to celebrate Jack's uncle Wilhelm's 50th birthday.
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