Oberhausen (Essen area)

Oberhausen Day 1, 13°C, Sunny, 440 miles

Arrived 1230 at the Volksgarten (fawlty towers esque) B & B in an outer suburban part of the town.
First impressions were good, opposite the B&B was a fair stretch of woodland and in true German style everything was clean. Found the Balkan Grill about 300 yards down the road, had a pizza, very filling!!!
Went for a long walk, got lost looking for an internet cafe, of which there must be about 200 of them in the old centre of town (featuring a Woolworths!) which has been obliterated by the development of Europe's largest shopping centre just down the road which we were to visit for a few seconds later. We found the internet café's somewhat suspicious as if there was something to hide by having all of the windows covered so we unsurprisingly decided not to. Managed to find a Lidl or two (of course the only reason for visiting Germany (lol!). After walking around in circles for a while we stumbled across Olga Park.
We decided to find the Centro shopping centre which the overly enthusiastic host at the B&B recommended who spoke a little English as there really was not much else to do around there. We went looking for public transport to take us there as we were a little fed up of walking. There is a tram and busway which are on the same raised 'track' on a viaduct, a very confusing system of interlaced networks which as a tourist was impossible to navigate, eventually we decided to walk to the bus stop and caught the bus to the tram stop from which the driver told us we could catch the bus or tram to the Centro centre which turned out to be another Meadowhall featuring such foreign shops as M&S, Vodaphone and The Body Shop! It certainly did not feel like Europe's largest. We must have been the only people to not purchase a single item in the entire complex that day! All of the bars were like restaurants, the only pub was an Irish themed one which we decided was the only proper pub! The service was unusual. After staying there for a while we headed back to the b & b and had a comfortable nights sleep. Breakfast was good and we had a very brief conversation with one of the cleaners who had a relation that worked as a taxi driver in York.

As I write this James has just joined the autobahn for 477 km.

(The above was written by Dan on the Autobahn until we could get internet!)