Distance: 118 km
Elevation: 996 m
I woke up a little too early. At breakfast it was rather cold and windy. On my way to my daughter Kara, I needed to make space for a two hour conference call with a client. That was my only business related call on the way and it was not very enjoyable.
At lunch time, I arrived at the place were Kara was staying. She had prepared a delicious meal for us and we exchanged latest stories, caught up with each other and laughed lots.
Then I went on to Duderstadt at the border between Niedersachsen and Thüringen. This is a very nice and old town full of “Fachwerk” type houses made wooden beams. Not far from there, in Teistungen, is the last border crossing between GDR and West Germany which had been completed and opened just before the wall came down in 1989. The buildings have meanwhile been converted into a large museum. The aura of the place is depressing though.
After having seen my daughter, I felt somewhat homesick. All this GDR stuff and a not very inspiring landscape did not help either. The roads in Thüringen are very hilly now and cycling has become more energy consuming. I still have some hundred kilometers to go, even if I passed the 2,000 kilometers mark today.
During this little inner crisis of mine, an elderly women overtook me on an electric bike. She went up a very steep hill with a far to high gear and could not manage to get up the slope and fell instead. I stopped and took care of her wounds with a band aid and some care. After this, she was very thankful and I felt much better.
Since I had lost 4 hours of cycling time (conference call, the lunch with Kara and the ambulance job), I needed to do some overtime on the bike. I managed to do 118 km but arrived at a very beautiful camping site near a lake and close to the geographical center of Germany only at 9 pm – but still got in with some luck.
After setting up my stuff, I enjoyed a beer at the lake front and went to bed with a smile.
