2017-07-20 Bremen to Lübeck and boarding ferry

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Bremen to Lübeck and boarding the ferry to Sweden

A long deep sleep here on the stellplatz at Bremen, several motorhomes arrived during the night. Not a caravan in sight, in fact we have not seen a caravan since leaving the UK; we do wonder what the UK’s obsession with caravans is about. We have a friend who has a caravan who asks us regularly why we drive such a huge vehicle around when we could have a caravan. We politely ignore his taunts. The truth is that motorhomes and caravans are different, suit different types of travel and never the twain shall meet.

Rain dominates the weather, we service the Hymer, then try Google maps for navigation. This is a first while in Europe, our mobile phone package gives us data throughout Europe so it’s time we tried it. The result in excellent. The German autobahn roads are better than we expected, smooth curves and long straight stretches of road, it reminds us of Canada.

We need to buy wine and food, Sweden is not a good place to buy alcoholic beverages, the Scandinavians have a strange relationship with booze. The wine-producing countries such as France and Germany have extremely low taxes on alcohol, especially wine, whereas the consuming countries, such as the UK and Scandinavia have extremely high taxes on alcohol. Scandinavia also restricts sales to government shops, it’s bizarre. There is a very useful graphic that illustrates how much tax is collected on wine in different countries here (open in a new tab).

Our first call for food and wine was Aldi, especially as Germany is the home of Aldi and the surprising fact that in Germany Aldi and Lidl between them sell 48% of all the wine that is sold in Germany. I wanted to check out the difference between Aldi wines in Germany and the UK. To be honest I’m not that impressed by the UK selection of wines at Aldi, Germany is totally different. We found good white wine in Aldi at €1.79 a bottle and plenty below €3 a bottle. We also visited Familia, another German supermarket that is more like Wal-Mart in North America in that Familia seems to sell just about everything. We also bought wine in Familia.

We made our way to Lübeck and Travemünde where we took a walk along the seafront, no beach, just a walkway. Boarded the ferry and found our cabin easily, wandered around the ship and waited for our 10pm departure, then went to bed. Hard to believe that we are on a ship heading for Sweden, in contrast to the North Sea crossing there is no vibration or noise.

Bremen to Lübeck and ferry boarding photos

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Summary of motorhome trip to Turku in Finland

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