By Eric
The night before we had walked our bikes about half a kilometer up a steep hill on a dirt road before we found any flat ground. Our tent was just off the road but hidden among young pines, a little bigger than Christmas trees.
We were drinking coffee and a bright sunny morning when a jeep drove by. It passed, stopped, backed up, and a man in uniform got out. Somehow he had spotted our well-hidden tent among the trees. Our tent's fly is electric blue. We want to get a camouflage cover for it."Guten Morgan," he said.
"Guten Morgan," I replied cheerfully from within the tent.
"Gehen sie diese Morgan?" (are you leaving this morning?).
"Ja."
"Gut." Then he left.
We broke camp pretty quickly after that. We planned to enjoy a rest day. We figured to ride to the next campground, about 10km away, and camp early.
But by the time we reached Hasselfelde clouds had come in and the air felt cool. We rested at a bench along a lake in town. Nothing stirred, no one was around, even the ducks had there heads turned around and their beaks buried in their down.
It occurred to us to get a room in a guest house for the night. But we decided if we went through all the trouble of loading the bicycles, we might as well ride another 20 km to Braunlage. .
So we rode on. The scenery was nice but we had been expecting something more dramatic. The hills were certainly difficult enough on t
he bikes, but they were very rounded, no tall peaks towering above us. Nothing spectacular, just nice rolling hills mixed with patchwork fields and woods. The prettiest things in the park were the forest streams.We passed the former East Germany/West Germany border. There was no sign of the barbed wire or guard posts at all. We crossed a small bridge that had a weight limit sign for tanks (most bridges in Germany have the same signs). But there was no sign of a border, not even a change in the paving of the road.
In Braunlage the air felt even colder (it's located 565 meters or 1850 feet above sea level) and the sky was greyer. Rules of thumb for the weather in Germany: if you wake up to sun, the day will be cloudy; if you go to bed to stars, the next day will be cloudy; if it's cloudy in the morning, the day will probably be cloudy but you might see a nice sunset; and if you see a sunset, the next day will be cloudy.
To get over the grey cold windy weather, we decided to have our anniversary meal. We got out a credit card and ate the works. I had a pork steak smothered in mushroom cream sauce. The owner gave us a complimentary shot of liquor for desert.
We decided not to camp in Braunlage after all. Our rest day wasn't yielding much rest. It just felt too cold to stop and camp. So we continued.
We climbed for six km out of Braunlage up to about 850 meters (2800 feet). We were stopped at the top to adjust our clothing when another cyclist pulled
up behind us.Reinhard was riding a very nice suspended mountain bike and wearing the mountain biker uniform of lycra. He had a military haircut and mustache, which suited him since he was in the German air force.
The nice thing about this point of our tour, is that we always have something to talk about with strangers, namely our trip. So we talked Reinhard's ear off. We're probably a little too anxious to tell everyone about our trip but he was interested. He was very likeable. For his part, he was on vacation in the park and wason his way to the highest point, called Brocken, at 1140 meters (3740 feet).
Reinhard said he had been in Italy recently and so we asked him about it. It turned out he was stationed there at the very beginning of the war in Yugoslavia. He was an air traffic controller (hence he spoke perfect English) for a German wing of Tornado fighter bombers. He had been on duty when the first German planes went into combat since WWII. The pilots were his friends and it really hit him what might happen. When they all returned several hours later, he got on the radio and said just, "Good to see you again."
He updated us on the latest news about the war. We had been without a newspaper for a long time. Now some of the jokes we had received on email made more sense. Also we learned that NATO had not killed two jo
urnalists as Willy the grounds keeper had told us, though Reinhard said he didn't know who did.We camped about 15 mountainous kilometers later near a town called Clausthal-Zellerfeld at around 600 meters or almost 2000 feet. On our "day off" we had gone 55 kilometers and climbed several mountains.
The next morning at 5 a.m., Joan was extremely sick -- nauseous. (JOAN: I think it was food poisoning, but I can't think what food it might have been). So we decided to have a real rest day and just stay where we were. She spent most of the next 24 hours in the tent recovering while I read Voltaire's "Candide" and caught up this desperately-behind journal.
Next: Germany Chapter 9: Land of Baron von Munchhausen and the Pied Piper
