Day 6: July 6,2015
Brome to Hotensleben 50 miles
German breakfast rocks! Hot hard boiled egg in a cute little metal holder and tiny spoon, salami and cheese and various other cold cuts, cucumbers, tomatoes, yogurt, cereal, coffee, juice, and various types of home made bread. We ate and paid for our beers from last night ( 1 euro a piece!!). We said good bye to our friends and the inn keepers and headed off to stock up for the day at the Rewe supermarket. It was nice. And off we went. We cycled down to Zickerie and Bockwitz which were almost one village until the border split them in half. Our trail took us to the border in the woods near these two towns where we met up with Philip and Berndt again and they explained all about the fortifications because Berndt had been an East German border guard in the 1970s. Wow! He told us all about the rotations of the guards and types of fences. He explained, through his son, all about what it was like for him patrolling up and down the border for hours. He luckily never had to fire a shot but his experience was powerful. We are so lucky to have met these two guys. We learned stuff that we would have never known otherwise from them.
After our illuminating tour we traveled along following behind Philip ad his dad who travel much faster than us. We all ended up taking the wrong path down a farm track that wasn't even a farm track, past beehives and over some serious bumps. As we came up on Philip and Berndt stopped we realized there was a problem... A 6 foot ditch with a stream and a 6 inch board across it for a bridge... Phillip and Berndt helped us cross the ditch with our super heavy bikes after they had already gotten theirs across!!! Twice in one day they helped us without being asked!!! Then we traveled together down a slightly better path until we reached a series of downed trees from the storm last night... And I am talking about huge 50 year old beech trees. We all maneuvered around, under and through until we were back on track...
Literally... Another farm track... After a pit stop, some bananas and nuts we all went our separate ways. We wish those guys the best with their tour!
The rest of the day was also interesting... We got lost in Oebisfelde as the temperature started to climb... This is where we have to give a shout out to Joany, Andrea's mom, and her obsession with buying As Seen On TV stuff... Because one of her "gifts" actually worked!!! Joany bought us Enduracool towels that are neck scarves that are supposed to get cold if you wet them, snap them and put them on... And damn it they WORK!!! Thank you Joany!!! A way to stay cool in the sweltering sun!
We got lost again in the woods between Beendorf and Marionborn because the signage in the woods was non existent! But we found our way ( of course because Brucie is never truly lost...) on a communist concrete Kolonnenweg road that shook us all the way to our fillings!
When we got out of the woods we saw a Trabant (old East German car)on a stick about 20 feet in the air in front of an auto shop and 6 wheeled overlander for sale... Andrea wants the overlander if the Bus ever cuts out.
We picked sun ripened cherries in the side of the road (fun)on our way into our final town, right before a major downhill on cobblestones(not fun)...But we finally made it to Hotensleben and after much pointing and garbling Germanish we found our guest house for the night... but no one was home... Then about 30 minutes of doorbell ringing and calling the phone number a man came out who used Google Translate to tell us that the Hostess will return at 18:00... It was 17:00(5pm)... The time it said to arrive on the website... After some waiting a car pulled up with a lady who we thought was the hostess... She was actually a very nice neighbor who we pretty much accosted with questions about a "zimmer frei"(free room). Once we realized our. mistake embarrassment ensued, but the neighbor called so we could have a room. Then we found out there are no restaurants in town so after settling into our room we walked to the Netto market for dinner. Turns out we made a lovely dinner on back patio of guest house of sausages and peppers with all sorts of goodies from the market like "kartoffel salat" (potato salad) and pickles.
We finally passed out and slept well in our two twin beds... What a day...
The World is Ours.
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