We continued down the MLK and stopped at a marina with wifi before arriving on Tuesday lunchtime at Wolfsburg. Wolfsburg is the home of VW in Germany and I guess the world, and had a huge factory here making Golfs.They also have a great Autostadt (or Car City) with all sorts of exhibits, restaurants, museums etc. So after we had tied up we biked down there and went to get a couple of tickets. They were 11 euros each but luckily the girl serving us said if we wait 20 mins we can get the special -Two hours in the Autostadt for 7 euros AND the 7 euros can be used as a credit in the restaurants. That was an 18 euro each saving as we had intended eating there any way. SO in we went...
We visited the Audi, VW, Lamborghini buildings and saw all of the latest models and tried them out for size. We sat down (As the weather was still very hot) and had a lovely icecream sundae between us, and we went into the museum with cars from the earliest Benzs and Model Ts to the early model VW beetles like Adolp Hitler was given. A fascinating few hours. We finished off in the restaurants with a cold beer and a shared plate of "all you get on a plate" salad and gratins. It's amazing how much a plate can hold :)
The next day we continued on our way down the MLK but alas as we backed out of the berth into the canal I noticed that the steering was not working. Luckily it was calm and and it had failed with the rudder straight. So using the bow thruster to steer I manouevred back into our berth and looked to see what the problem was. There seemed nothing wrong so I fiddled about with this and that and amazingly it started working. So off we went, a bit cautiously to Heidelslanger where we spent the night. That night I looked at the steering again and all seemed fine but when we left the marina on Thursday morning, the same problem occurred and nothing I could do would make it work . We tied up and asked our neighbour who was an ex Sabena pilot for help. He confirmed that the steering oil was way too low but we didn't have any spare nor did he. He said an old trick was to use salad oil so in went half a litre of salad oil and heh presto all was working well again.
That was fine to get us to the Elbe where we hoped we could get someone to drain and refill the steering as somehow salad oil as a substitute for quality hydraulic oil didn't seem a long term prospect. 
And so around lunchtime on Thursday we droped down 18m in a lock into the Elbe and battled upstream against 8km currents to get to the yacht harbour in Magdeburg. There was mail for collection there (thanks Nick!) and we found a mechanic who sorted out the steering, and then went sightseeing in the old city. We spent two days there in drizzly rain and I realised then what had happened with the steering was the oil level though low was managing because of the very hot temperatures we had had recently. On the day it first failed the temps had dropped 10c (and remained that way until now) and the oil level had contracted and it just wasn't enough to do the job.
We had to make a a key decision now. Go up the Elbe to Prague, down the Elbe to Domitz or straight across to Berlin. It all depended on the Elbe water levels. Unfortunately with all the hot weather we had been having they were too low to go either up or down, so reluctantly we decided to head for Berlin and a day's sailing later we were in Brandenburg at the start of the beautiful Berlin and Mecklenburg lake area. Over a 100 lakes interwined together over 500 km with beautiful scenery and great sightseeing. We stayed for Saturday and Sunday on the Plauersee and on Monday we head to Berlin...
