Where's Bertie? He's back at the Stellplatz at Schöningen, having spent the afternoon in a car park on the edge of Hötensleben.
Weather: Some high level cloud, but mainly sunny and warm (feeling positively hot in the sun)
After a week using two of the navigation Apps I downloaded, I'd concluded that Gaia was the most useful, but that it would have been more so I had access to Open Cycle Map (OCM) on it. So, I accepted their offer of a one-week free trial of their premium offering, which not only allowed me to overlay OCM onto their existing map, but also allowed me to use the navigation function.
Thus, when we set out on this morning's 16km run through the local forest, Mick had our route on his watch, and I had verbal directions being delivered to headphones. Between the two, we efficiently got ourselves around the route I'd plotted.
The problem with plotting a route from a map is the lack of knowledge as to what you'll find on the ground. Happily, only one path (less than 1km) turned out to be a rutted, trip-hazard strewn, partially overgrown affair that was unrunnable.
We didn't tarry long at the Stellplatz after second breakfast and showers, mainly because with Bertie being parked fully in the shade, we were hankering after a bit more warmth (fast forward a few hours, when the day had warmed up, and we were happy to return to a shady spot).
A 5-minute drive down the road took us to our day-trip destination, where the first thing we did was to have lunch, in a location where lunch would not have been possible before 1990. Bertie was now parked in the 'no man's land' between the old East/West German border. We hadn't gone there just for lunch; there's a section of the old border that has been made into what is effectively a small open air museum.
Looking from the car park to the main part of the site. On the left: concrete wall topped by a rounded section to make gripping it difficult; then anti-car defences; then a ploughed strip so the footprints of anyone escaping could be seen; then the patrol area; on the right were double metal/barbed wire fences. All overlooked by watchtowers.
The information signs were informative, and helpfully (for us) bilingual
The dog run - the space in between these two fences was patrolled by dogs. Between 1983 and 1989, dog runs were installed along over half of the 1400km-long border.
An educational and eye-opening* hour was spent looking around. Probably not a place worth making a large detour to visit, but definitely worth stopping if you're nearby.
Curious as to whether there was any notable difference in the appearance of the village on the east side of the old border, we then wandered into Hötensleben. After a quick trip to the Eis Cafe (€1 per ice cream today, and not bad quality at all), a remarkably old looking church caught our attention.
Many churches we've visited in Germany claim to date back hundreds of centuries, but look curiously new, either because the old buildings have been completely subsumed by later additions, or because they were entirely rebuilt post-war (one we visited on our tour of Braunschweig was 1000 years old ...except it was rebuilt, ending in 1978). This one looked genuinely old. 1483, it turns out.
The inside didn't disappoint either
The conclusion was that, no, even though life in Hötensleben was, for 45 years, a complete contrast to the life of those living just 5km to the west**, the architecture of the town was not remarkably different from anything else we've seen in Germany.
Don't think I've seen a garden statue using a roof as a slide before, mind.
The only reason I came across the museum was because the car park is in Park4Night as a potential overnight stop. For us, there didn't seem to be any good reason to stay there, when we knew there was a perfectly good, very quiet official Stellplatz, with facilities, within a five minute drive - hence back here we came.
Statue of the Day. This may be stretching the theme slightly. We see a lot of these, most of them of better quality than this one.
(*I was in high school when Germany reunified, and whilst I remember it (the falling of the Berlin Wall in particular) as a major and significant news item, I didn't really understand (or have an interest in, at that time) what life had been like for East Germans, especially outside of Berlin. Today some of those details were filled in - notably the extreme efforts made to keep the East Germans inside of East Germany.
**At the entrance to the museum site was an exhibit that included quotations from residents of Hötensleben during the Cold War. One commented that, like a canary in a cage, they didn't miss freedom, because they'd never had it.)
Weather: Some high level cloud, but mainly sunny and warm (feeling positively hot in the sun)
After a week using two of the navigation Apps I downloaded, I'd concluded that Gaia was the most useful, but that it would have been more so I had access to Open Cycle Map (OCM) on it. So, I accepted their offer of a one-week free trial of their premium offering, which not only allowed me to overlay OCM onto their existing map, but also allowed me to use the navigation function.
Thus, when we set out on this morning's 16km run through the local forest, Mick had our route on his watch, and I had verbal directions being delivered to headphones. Between the two, we efficiently got ourselves around the route I'd plotted.
The problem with plotting a route from a map is the lack of knowledge as to what you'll find on the ground. Happily, only one path (less than 1km) turned out to be a rutted, trip-hazard strewn, partially overgrown affair that was unrunnable.
We didn't tarry long at the Stellplatz after second breakfast and showers, mainly because with Bertie being parked fully in the shade, we were hankering after a bit more warmth (fast forward a few hours, when the day had warmed up, and we were happy to return to a shady spot).
A 5-minute drive down the road took us to our day-trip destination, where the first thing we did was to have lunch, in a location where lunch would not have been possible before 1990. Bertie was now parked in the 'no man's land' between the old East/West German border. We hadn't gone there just for lunch; there's a section of the old border that has been made into what is effectively a small open air museum.
An educational and eye-opening* hour was spent looking around. Probably not a place worth making a large detour to visit, but definitely worth stopping if you're nearby.
Curious as to whether there was any notable difference in the appearance of the village on the east side of the old border, we then wandered into Hötensleben. After a quick trip to the Eis Cafe (€1 per ice cream today, and not bad quality at all), a remarkably old looking church caught our attention.
The conclusion was that, no, even though life in Hötensleben was, for 45 years, a complete contrast to the life of those living just 5km to the west**, the architecture of the town was not remarkably different from anything else we've seen in Germany.
The only reason I came across the museum was because the car park is in Park4Night as a potential overnight stop. For us, there didn't seem to be any good reason to stay there, when we knew there was a perfectly good, very quiet official Stellplatz, with facilities, within a five minute drive - hence back here we came.
(*I was in high school when Germany reunified, and whilst I remember it (the falling of the Berlin Wall in particular) as a major and significant news item, I didn't really understand (or have an interest in, at that time) what life had been like for East Germans, especially outside of Berlin. Today some of those details were filled in - notably the extreme efforts made to keep the East Germans inside of East Germany.
**At the entrance to the museum site was an exhibit that included quotations from residents of Hötensleben during the Cold War. One commented that, like a canary in a cage, they didn't miss freedom, because they'd never had it.)
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