Cycle Day 19 Lutherstadt Wittenburg to Dessau

We spend the morning in town and explore the life of Martin Luther. He was an amazing man and his influence on European history is perhaps unmatched by anyone else. Below is his house where he lived and taught. It now hosts a very good museum.
The town square in Lutherstadt Wittenburg.


We end up in Dessau and book into a rather nice hotel for the night.

Cycled 51.13 km
Busking earnings 0
No punctures

1200 km

1200km on the way to Lutherstadt Wittenburg.

Cycle Day 18 Ferch to Lutherstadt Wittenberg

What can we say? Germany continues to provide wonderful cycling. It is all so relaxing. We spin along at a fine rate and clock up the highest daily distance yet.





We finish in the amazing town of Lutherstadt Wittenburg, the home of Martin Luther and find a lovely campsite by the banks of the Elbe.

Cycled 95.34 km
Busking earnings - 0
No punctures

1100 km

In Potsdam, and I have now cycled 1100km. I am very pleased to have got this far!

Cycle Day 17 Berlin - Potsdam - Ferch

Thursday 7 August and we leave Berlin, cycling out of the city on the R1 Euro cycle route that we followed through the Baltic states. it is a hot day - close to 30 degrees.

We cross the Glienicke Bridge where spies used to be exchanged during the Cold War and stop for lunch in Potsdam beside a Soviet war cemetery. This grave is to an unknown soldier.

"Here is buried a soldier of the Soviet Army, name unknown"



Of course, outside Berlin there was much fighting. Soldiers are buried where they fall, in foreign lands. More lovely cycling through forests and by lakes and we stop in a small village called Ferch and pitch the tent for the night.

Cycled 52.13 km
Busking earnings - 0
No punctures

Berlin - lessons in East European history

Wednesday 6 August and we´re back in Berlin. We plan to spend a day here but there´s so much to see and do it´s hard to know where to start. We need to get our tent poles mended and find a shop in Karl Marx Allee which can do this for us. Then we head to our main visit of the day - the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.



The site consists of 2711 concrete stellae erected in a grid pattern on undulating ground. There is some ambiguity about the whole structure and little explanation as to why it is the way it is but the visitor quickly forms their own idea. Underground is a very good exhibition. Some things we noted as we visited..

The language is deliberate. Millions of Jews were murdered - not eliminated or exterminated - but a very personal murder. This comes out in the pictures of the early mobile murder squads which murdered groups of people in villages throughout Poland.

Although the exhibition mentions the Roma, disabled, communists, homosexuals and political opponents who were murdered, the title only refers to the Jews. this has provoked some controversy. The bigger thought that emerges (and which we have been coming to terms with throughout Eastern Europe) is how the Germans have successfully dealt with their own terrible past. The German people were victims of Nazi terror and amends have been made efforts have been made to understand and atone for what happened to ordinary German people. More importantly. Germany has managed to apologise to the victims in other countries and to build a new and better society.

Russia, by contrast has failed to even begin the process of apologising to its own people for their treatment under the Soviet regime. As for other countries and peoples. the Government appears to continue to be in denial. In Poland we talked about WWII and how it started on 1 September 1939 with the German naval shelling of a shore station near Gdansk. The UK immediately declared war on Germany in support of Poland. But, weeks, on 17 September, the Soviet Union invaded Poland as well! We did nothing about this. The Baltic States view the USSR as an aggressive invader of their countries as Nazi Germany was later to be.

At the root of this is the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact, the 1939 treaty between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that divided Europe into a German Soviet spheres of influence. In our school history, we learnt that the purpose of this was for the USSR to buy time to re-arm and defend itself against the Nazis. In reality, it used the time between the outbreak of the war and the June 1942 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union to invade most of Eastern Europe!

East Europeans thus bear a hatred towards Russians just as many Europeans did towards the Germans after the war. However, Russia has done little or nothing to come to terms with this reality. In their history books they still talk of the great Patriotic War from June 22, 1941. For them, the Second World War started then. To acknowledge that it started in September 1939, would pose difficult questions for Russians about what their leaders were up to and why Stalin provided extensive material support to Hitler during these years.

But Russians will only begin to come to terms with this when they can read about it and such is the state of press freedom in Russia today that there is little chance of that happening.

Andy has just finished reading Anna Politkovskaya´s Russian Diaries, a chilling account of the rise of oppression in Russia under Putin. Anna, of course was murdered in 2006. Don´´t expect any breakthroughs any time soon.

Next, Isla does some busking by the Brandenburg Gate and earns a respectable amount.



Next visit is to the Reichstag but the queues ares still too long to go inside.



Cycled 0 km (actually 20km but not counting towards total)
Busking earnings 49.80 euros
no punctures

Cycle Day 16 Jochimsthal to Berlin

Another fine day and more fantastic cycle facilities (see below)



We are all big fans of Germany. Here are some of the reasons why. The people are very friendly and helpful, The countryside and the towns are a joy to travel through, Things are well organised (like the trains), They make wonderful bread, The cycling provision is extremely good (cycling is a form of transport and all ages cycle), They have a forward thinking approach to the environment, They have strong local government in the municipalities which makes each town have pride in itself. On the outskirts of Berlin, we catch a train into the centre and the helpful people at the train station arrange an apartment for us - a lovely large bedroom with a bathroom and small kitchen next the Kleine Tiergarten - ideal and only 75 euros per night.

Cycled 52.97 km
Busking earnings - 0
no punctures

1000 km

1000km!!! We started this every 100km posting to log progress and to see where we would be every 100km - we would find some kind of random way of reflecting the places we cycle through. Exactly on 1000km, we find ourselves in an underpass under an autobhan! So, this is a pretty poor photo which does not reflect the beauty of the landscape we´ve been travelling through.



A few metres further on provides a better impression and in 50m is the Bicycle Church (see previous post).

Cycle Day 15 Schwedt am Oder to Joachimsthal

Our first full day in Germany and the cycling does not disappoint. Below is a photo of the cycle track along the Oder. For the whole day we are on beautiful surfaced tracks through fields and forests. We see deer and stoats in the woods. the wind is in our face so we do less km today. Isla also cycles over a piece of glass and punctures both tyres which loses us another hour.



There is also so much to see along the way, we stop and find out about them all. For example, what is this strange sign all about?



Well, it´s a bicycle church! Inside is a grand piano so we have a small concert. Other cyclists stop and play some Mozart. We are bemused as to what this Bicycle Church is all about - apparently there are services each year for bicycles.



We also see this humorous sign. Which one is each of us? Which one is you?!



Later in the evening we pass the former home of Franz Neumann, a famous German physicist. Here we also watch a wee stoat running around the field.



We stop at the small village of Joachimsthal and spend the night in a B&B. Many of these villages appear quite and somewhat deserted. We later learn that this part of the former East Germany has among the lowest population density in Germany due to many people leaving for the West in the years following re-unification.
Cycled 59.38km
Busking earnings - 0
2 punctures (one piece of glass in both of Isla´s tyres!)

Miscellany 1

OK, here are some miscellaneous pictures.

First of all, here is a cycle track in Estonia - very impressive. Nothing as good as this was to appear again until we got to Germany.

The Hauptbanhof (main railway station) in Berlin - a new, modern railway station opened just before the 2006 football World Cup. It is organised on 4 different levels for different kinds of trains.



This is how cyclists in Paris relax by the Seine...!

A view looking up the centre of the Eiffel Tower (actually the very centre at ground level is not accessible which explains why the photo is a bit off centre).

This cat is one of many who live in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. Their job is to control the rats. They are very well cared for!

900 km

Leaving Szczecin, I reach 900km! Nothing much of interest around this spot apart, maybe, from a Tesco store!

Cycle Day 14 - Szczecin - Schwedt am Oder

After a nice night spent in the Novotel in Szczecin, we head south to cross the border into Germany. It is a pity not to be able to spend more time in Poland. It is a wonderful country with a fascinating history and lots to see, but the excellence of German cycle provision lures us.



The German border is, like most of the others we have crossed, unmanned as Germany and Poland are both signed up to the Schengen Agreement. After crossing the border, the roads improve and soon we are following the Oder River south along beautiful, quiet country roads.

We arrive in Schwedt am Oder and realise that this is quite an appropriate name after a day´s cycling!

Cycled 57.4km
Busking earnings - 0
no punctures