.... which may not be quite true. It is to my embarrasment that I wrote no more back in May. We continued for about 3 more weeks, arriving in Hof, close to the Czech border, at the end of May. Then returned to London, spending a day in Leipzig on the way with some exposure to wonderful church singing (Bach of course!)
Now we are in Nuremberg, about to go by train to Hof and resume the Iron Curtain Trail, which has incidentally been magnificently renamed as Euro Velo 13. (There are Eurio Velo routes in the UK; will withdrawing from this network feature in Brexit?). We got to Nuremberg by train also, and Deutsch Bahn showed they are fully up to delayed arrival, though I did not find out if being 35 minutes late qualifies for compensation, as it does in Britain! We visited the "Dokumentation" exhibition about the rise and fall of the 3rd Reich; this was fascinating history and gave much food for thought as to how a demagogue can feed on "make our country great" to go, well, a long way; it included a bit on the Nuremberg trials, though we did not have time to visit the courtroom, in another part of town. We saw the rallying field with the rostrum where Hitler stood before the immense multitudes, on the Zeppelin plain. The whole complex there, unfinished when the war started and staying that way is fascinating. And,of course, it all led in the end to the iron curtain.
Going back to May, after Oebisfeltd and Wolfsburg, we continued South coming to the Harz mountains, where we had a nice train ride to the top on the "Harzerschmalspurbahn" (narrow gauge railway) with wonderful old steam engines, some of them apparently more than 100 years old. The top, the Brocken, at about 1300 metres was a high security radio listening post in communist days, but is open, and cold, now. We crossed the mountains by bike the next day, went to a spa, camped in glorous surroundings up a steep hill and continued via Duderstadt into the Werra valley, where there is glorious cycling on good cycle tracks. Another border museum, another spa (we like these) and a diversion to Eisenach where Luther translated the New Testament (and apparently founded modern German in the process) and Bach was born. More of this all in the next blog.
Now we are in Nuremberg, about to go by train to Hof and resume the Iron Curtain Trail, which has incidentally been magnificently renamed as Euro Velo 13. (There are Eurio Velo routes in the UK; will withdrawing from this network feature in Brexit?). We got to Nuremberg by train also, and Deutsch Bahn showed they are fully up to delayed arrival, though I did not find out if being 35 minutes late qualifies for compensation, as it does in Britain! We visited the "Dokumentation" exhibition about the rise and fall of the 3rd Reich; this was fascinating history and gave much food for thought as to how a demagogue can feed on "make our country great" to go, well, a long way; it included a bit on the Nuremberg trials, though we did not have time to visit the courtroom, in another part of town. We saw the rallying field with the rostrum where Hitler stood before the immense multitudes, on the Zeppelin plain. The whole complex there, unfinished when the war started and staying that way is fascinating. And,of course, it all led in the end to the iron curtain.
Going back to May, after Oebisfeltd and Wolfsburg, we continued South coming to the Harz mountains, where we had a nice train ride to the top on the "Harzerschmalspurbahn" (narrow gauge railway) with wonderful old steam engines, some of them apparently more than 100 years old. The top, the Brocken, at about 1300 metres was a high security radio listening post in communist days, but is open, and cold, now. We crossed the mountains by bike the next day, went to a spa, camped in glorous surroundings up a steep hill and continued via Duderstadt into the Werra valley, where there is glorious cycling on good cycle tracks. Another border museum, another spa (we like these) and a diversion to Eisenach where Luther translated the New Testament (and apparently founded modern German in the process) and Bach was born. More of this all in the next blog.
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