Where's Bertie? He's in a free Stellplatz in the town of Oschersleben. Electricity and water are available for small fees. Exact location: 52.02144, 11.23212
Weather: Sunny and warm (27 degrees yesterday, bit cooler today)
Firstly a quick skip back to Schöningen, where something remarkable happened: we had a Danish van on one side of us and a Czech van on the other! If we ignore Hameln (the only touristy place we've been, where there were 5 Dutch vans), we had, prior to this occurrence, only seen two other non-German motorhomes since arriving in Germany two weeks ago.
Perusing options as to our next destination after Schöningen, which sensibly would have been somewhere slightly north or west, this Stellplatz in Oschersleben, another 30km further east, caught my eye due to having a lot of reviews at an unusually high average rating. Reading some of the reviews didn't tell me what was so good about the place, but I felt that the extra detour was worthwhile to find out what the fuss was about.
The drive here was through swathes of gently undulating agricultural land often unbroken by any signs of habitation, then into the town we drove, slotting Bertie into one of the remaining spaces in the Stellplatz.
One of the 'attractions' hereabouts is the park and zoo that sits immediately behind the Stellplatz, so that was our outing for yesterday afternoon. This is the third such zoo we've visited in Germany (the first one was the location of a post-parkrun coffee meet-up; the path through the second one was part of a parkrun course), and they're not zoos like we would associate with that word in the UK. Boar, Hungarian wooly pigs, deer of various breeds, ibex, goats, sheep, llamas, horses, donkeys, rabbits and lots of different birds (from tiny finches in an aviary to ostriches). The animals provided a side interest to what would have otherwise still be a pleasant walk through parkland.
Snap taken on Tuesday's run through the zoo
Having decided to spend two nights here, we didn't want to exhaust all possibilities of things to do in a single day (in reality, it would have been comfortably possible to do so in an afternoon), so we deferred a look around the town until today ...except that I'd promised Mick an ice cream after tea, which required an 800m walk through the town. We kept our blinkers on and resisted detouring from the direct line to see anything surrounding us.
Weather: Sunny and warm (27 degrees yesterday, bit cooler today)
Firstly a quick skip back to Schöningen, where something remarkable happened: we had a Danish van on one side of us and a Czech van on the other! If we ignore Hameln (the only touristy place we've been, where there were 5 Dutch vans), we had, prior to this occurrence, only seen two other non-German motorhomes since arriving in Germany two weeks ago.
Perusing options as to our next destination after Schöningen, which sensibly would have been somewhere slightly north or west, this Stellplatz in Oschersleben, another 30km further east, caught my eye due to having a lot of reviews at an unusually high average rating. Reading some of the reviews didn't tell me what was so good about the place, but I felt that the extra detour was worthwhile to find out what the fuss was about.
The drive here was through swathes of gently undulating agricultural land often unbroken by any signs of habitation, then into the town we drove, slotting Bertie into one of the remaining spaces in the Stellplatz.
One of the 'attractions' hereabouts is the park and zoo that sits immediately behind the Stellplatz, so that was our outing for yesterday afternoon. This is the third such zoo we've visited in Germany (the first one was the location of a post-parkrun coffee meet-up; the path through the second one was part of a parkrun course), and they're not zoos like we would associate with that word in the UK. Boar, Hungarian wooly pigs, deer of various breeds, ibex, goats, sheep, llamas, horses, donkeys, rabbits and lots of different birds (from tiny finches in an aviary to ostriches). The animals provided a side interest to what would have otherwise still be a pleasant walk through parkland.
Having decided to spend two nights here, we didn't want to exhaust all possibilities of things to do in a single day (in reality, it would have been comfortably possible to do so in an afternoon), so we deferred a look around the town until today ...except that I'd promised Mick an ice cream after tea, which required an 800m walk through the town. We kept our blinkers on and resisted detouring from the direct line to see anything surrounding us.
Tuesday
After running two and a half laps of the zoo, then frittering away the rest of the morning, this afternoon we walked back into town. Our early impressions of the place were cemented: it's tatty, with a lot of abandoned buildings, most of which (most notably high street shops) had broken windows and grafitti. This is not what we're used to in Germany, and having so little experience of this region, we don't know whether it's normal in these parts/in the old East Germany, or whether it's just this one town.
It's a pity we haven't got time to explore more around here to see if we can form a clearer opinion on the point.
The other thing that's unusual here, compared with our prior experience in the country, is the dearth of bike routes. One of the many reasons I'm such a fan of Germany is that wherever you park, there's always a bike path next door, providing somewhere obvious to run or walk - except that doesn't seem to be the case on the south side of Oschersleben.
So, after two days, what's my opinion of this almost universally adored Stellplatz? I don't see what the fuss is about! It doesn't seem to me to be any better than most Stellplätze that we visit (in that it's a car park, with dedicated motorhome bays, and has a service point and electricity available), but it has the downside that there's a 'world famous' motorsport arena within earshot and, for the last two days at least, has been in constant use by what sounds like high-powered motorbikes.
That said, whilst there's barely anything of the slightest interest in the town from a mainstream tourist point of view, I'm still happy to have come here. Getting a feel for the small, non-touristy places is still interesting - even if it fills less time.
(*I was contemplating today whether, when given a free Stellplatz with electricity available, the polite thing to do is to buy some of that power. Is it providing the town with some small amount of income from the provision of the Stellplatz, or is the cost of power so high just now that they're running the hook-up at a loss, and thus it's more polite not to plug in?)
I was excited to hear of the bike racing circuit and hurried to inform my son W who has spent most of his life as a bike racing mechanic. It seems that this is one of the few European circuits he never visited. He tells me that it was well known for endurance races. Good to see you stoking up with the calories.
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