Daisy’s home, and so is Stoker Jutta. Her final musings.

We promised in an earlier blog post to wrap up our tandem tour of Germany with musings from Jutta, so here, a month on from our last-day 100-mile dash to home in Sheringham, is Daisy’s final wrap..

Well, we returned a week earlier than initially booked (12 weeks rather than the full three months) and made it home from Harwich in only two days via Cambridge, where we visited Mark’s sister and cycled on that last day our furthest on this trip with an enjoyably mad 170 kilometres, reflecting the tenor and theme of our journey.

We had an extra week to settle in, and as far as I’m concerned, things remain a work in progress, with our now near-weeded garden crying out for the summer flowers that I couldn’t plant before we left, and weeds wishing to persuade me to appreciate their beautiful green as if they knew how many scorched and dried out fields we had encountered in August-like mid-Germany as early as June.

Mark faithfully kept this blog going as we travelled. So let me add here some stoker’s musings from the back saddle.

Not only was it a journey through Germany. This was also a journey back to family, friends and places of earlier times, for Mark and me, together and separately.

It meant also coming face-to-face with Germany’s history, society and culture through the centuries, with waves of creation, construction and progress interspersed by war, plagues, violence and destruction, tumbling individuals and communities through the struggles of each period.

Germany is an intensely beautiful country.

The countryside and architecture of each geographical region has its own individual charm, though it’s the lush vegetation, hills, mountains, rivers and valleys of my Bavarian homeland that particularly make my heart sing.

I can imagine having a good life anywhere in Germany – except perhaps industrial Mannheim and Ludwigshafen on the other side of the Rhine, where this time I really wanted to tandem through and out as quickly as possible.

This was a little sad, since as a 10-year-old Ludwigshafen gave me my first encounter with a large urban park, with a great (for those days) playground, beautiful flowerbeds and small-animal enclosures.

We didn’t have those in my rural Bavarian market town, which was more about meadows, forests and a river as our personal playground and space for wild swimming.

Many of the areas we revisited are now much more attractively accessible thanks to Germany’s excellent cycle routes (on which Mark has very clearly set out our views), in contrast to the hopelessness of the UK’s non-existent cycling infrastructure, even on National Cycle Route 1 overgrown in places with brambles scratching the passing face and nettles stinging the legs, and with no space for an oncoming cyclist to pass.

Germany’s well-maintained cycle paths in contrast invite all to savour the country’s rivers, hills and nature – a free space for both recreation and practical transport, down to kiddies in transport bucket bikes, four-year-olds pedalling already like professionals, stabiliser-free in the middle of busy towns, observing all traffic lights just as well as old age pensioners like us do.

German’s traditional love for Kaffee und Kuchen, coffee and cake, hearty snack or ice cream in an Ausflugslokal (excursion café or restaurant) makes it easy to find gourmet rest and replenishment – a luxury in which we indulged regularly.

I’ve been asked repeatedly (including by Mark) what my favourite part of the journey was, and it’s really difficult to put all my experiences into some kind of hierarchy.

I’ll name some as they tumble out of my remembered impressions, like the beautiful half-timbered city centre of Hamlin (Hameln in German, and yes, of ratcatcher fame) and the most delicious marzipan in Lübeck whose famed towered gate exudes a gently powerful nod to merchants’ affluence during the Hanseatic period.

Despite having been completely destroyed in World War Two, Hannover and Heilbronn now present a pleasantly bustling, modern and welcoming face.

Hamburg’s harbour area with its giant toy-like container port has transformed itself into a cultural centre with the Elbphilharmonie, a hyper-modern and daring concert hall, and an exciting top-voted Wunderland exhibition of model railways and landscapes in the old harbour buildings.

The equally hyper-modern port gleams with towering, polished-looking cranes and efficiently-cased units shifting an ocean of containers.

As I wrote these lines at the end of July, it was the anniversary of the 1943 bombing raids on Hamburg, intended not just to destroy Germany’s economic, war and trade potential but also workers’ and citizens’ morale. Obviously, that did not work.

As we can again see today in Ukraine, in times of attack, war and hardship people pull together.

Parking Daisy close to Lüneburg Heath for a day, we took a train to Bremerhaven to visit the emigration museum there, with an enormous library-like collection of biographies and data with stories of joy, hardship, triumph and sadness, a fascinating insight into the hopes that drove millions of Europeans over the centuries, and especially at the end of the 19^th and beginning of the 20^th, to seek new lives overseas.

I had not realised just how many German emigrants who followed Catherine the Great’s call in the 18^th century to cultivate the regions in Ukraine were doing so in pursuit of her promise of religious freedom. I had always thought that they were pure economic migrants, possibly younger siblings who were left empty-handed when an oldest brother inherited the farm or business.

On a lighter note, Mark and I stroked the Bremer Stadtmusikanten (the donkey-dog-cat-cockerel Musicians of Bremen), something I had longed to do as a child though now as adults we had to share the experience with hordes of other tourists.

The Baltic Sea with its soft, white, sandy beaches sadly did not coax our swimming costume/trunks from the bottom of our panniers, since at the beginning of May as we travelled through from the West it was still bitterly cold.

But in a pop-up café on the cliffs of the island of Rügen we did get to savour a delicious break in one of the legendary, stripy Strandkörbe, the windproof wicker beach chairs that are characteristic of Germany’s Baltic coast.

Our journey East had taken us across the river at the port of Travemünde into what until 1990 was East Germany, recalling for me a journey by car ferry from here in the summer of 1973 to what was then Leningrad (now again St Petersburg), returning to my then workplace at the West German embassy in Moscow – the city incidentally where Mark and I first met 49 years ago.

Travelling more slowly now by bicycle along the former GDR coast, information points told sad stories of the displacement and destruction that came with wars both hot and cold determining so much of these parts’ 20^th century experience.

This is so typical for Germany – beautiful landscapes and architecture as background to suffering and turmoil.

As we travelled through the villages and former concentration camps of Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald, we felt very connected with how these stories continue in the war in Ukraine, with all the robbery and destruction of lives and homes.

Our tandem trip opened my eyes to how sheltered my own childhood had been from the legacy of the last century’s wars.

My little Bavarian hometown of Vilsbiburg with its pilgrims’ church had not been damaged in the war, thanks to a devoutly Catholic army general who, as the Americans approached in 1945, had refused to flatten a town devoted to the Virgin Mary.

Growing up in a small town-centre apartment in a solid, once-wealthy bourgeois merchant’s house, with magnificent gable and walls a metre thick, must have given me a sense of solidity, safety and containment as from my comfy windowsill seat I watched the to-and-fro on the buzzing market square.

Our nearby historic regional capital of Landshut where I went to secondary school had – beyond the railway station and adjoining industrial district – also survived the war largely unscathed.

So as a child I was not familiar with the Bombenlücken (“bombing gaps”) which in other German cities were plugged in the 1950s with quick, modern, no-frills buildings, replacing streets, districts and indeed entire cities turned to rubble and now being rebuilt post-war.

Duesseldorf. Essen. Hannover. Hamburg. Bremen. Magdeburg. Frankfurt/Oder. Berlin. Leipzig. Dresden. Zwickau. Heilbronn. Cologne. And so many smaller towns.

Just some of the broken cities we travelled through on this trip, where we were both also struck by how many churches had remained standing with relatively minor damage amidst the destruction around them.

As a child, the islands of Rügen and Usedom had always sounded to me like places of fairy tale and magic.

So, it was quite a shock as we tandemed through to find just how scarred they were (and remain) by the last war and the ensuing years of GDR communist administration.

Still, they’re such popular holiday resorts now that on Rügen, despite the continuing late spring cold, we actually had no choice but to camp. No other accommodation was available. For all the wonderful Radwege we otherwise enjoyed, Rügen incidentally has a long stretch of indescribably bad cycle path. I eventually got off and WALKED for sheer survival.

Crossing through the heartland of Baltic tourism, we briefly ventured into Poland, noting how –  whatever the national border and even when there are no guards or checks – a traveller and especially a cyclist focusing intently on the quality of the road surface (think potholes and tree roots) instantly feels the change of country, and not just from signs, language and architecture.

The ease of international travel within today’s European Union still awes me, as I well remember returning from our glorious childhood summer holidays in Italy to endless, unpleasant customs searches on the Germany-Austria border as the rain bucketed down and our stressed parents fumbled for the right paperwork.

If only travel in and out of Brexit Britain could be as joyfully easy and comfortable as it is now on the continent, even in and out of non-EU Switzerland.

Much of our tandem route these three months took us through die neuen Bundesländer, or Germany’s “new federal states” as they’re now referred to, avoiding reference to the old, unloved GDR.

We encountered so much positive change: old heavily-polluted rivers cleared up; new roads; new housing; previously unsightly GDR Plattenbauten (concrete slab-built apartment blocks) creatively refurbished and given a new look and comfort with externally fixed balconies and touches of colour.

And yet, East Germany’s communist system, and four decades of neglect superimposed onto the damage of war, hit these parts particularly hard, breaking the backbone of traditional Germany with its middle-sized family businesses and traditional farmsteads.

The vast fields of the GDR’s former collective farms, the shoddily-constructed, uniform slabs and squat square corners of that era’s agricultural and administrative buildings and blocks of flats, and the rough concrete-slab roadways on which our cycle route often took us, still scar the old GDR countryside in a way that makes it, still, instantly and recognisably different from that of Germany’s west.

Quite often the question presented itself to us Who is looking after What? What happened to people and communities, with much of the younger generation leaving for better opportunities elsewhere?

We definitely saw more abandoned or decaying housing in the new Bundesländer than in the older federal states of Germany, especially villages or small towns that seem to have been forgotten by time, with only the occasional house having been meticulously refurbished.

Churches in contrast, enjoying generous financial support from their Western branches, were universally very well kept, not just those of the traditional beliefs.

In one of those otherwise rather forlorn villages, a Buddhist Centre stood proud right next to the village church, advertising itself with colour and banners. I suspect it used to be the Rectory, the Pfarrhaus.

As we cycled, we could feel the voiceless stories of loss, of dis- and re-placement, of brutally enforced change and people robbed of agency, especially in areas crippled by GDR border security now blinking awkwardly into the light of modernity after decades of Dornröschenschlaf (Sleeping Beauty sleep).  

Sadly, some older GDR folk would moan and grumble at us and our tandem’s excessive size, readily reprimanding us for being in the way. One morning we were told off five times during the first three hours of that day’s tour.

This just didn’t happen in the areas of the old federal states, and younger people in the new ones also weren’t put out by us either.

So, chatting away with each other while pedalling along, Mark and I mused on how hardships in these new federal states, whether the old stresses of the communist regime or the consequences of re-unification, left not just houses and villages behind but also individuals with their lost routines, social security, jobs, familiarities and perhaps friends and relatives who moved away.

Of course, it’s a combination of factors, but where throughout our trip the sight of Daisy’s extraordinary three-wheeled road train would bring smiles and cheer, in old East Germany we could quite often also feel, a third of a century after reunification, an undertow of bitterness and victimhood.

Leipzig with its annual Bach Festival on which we chanced was a breath of fresh air – and the picture, with Bach’s home church of St Thomas in the background, captures tickets for our four concerts in 36 hours.

While the town is doing its best to minimise and refurbish its post-war communist, concrete functionality, there’s enough old housing stock here to feel a warm connection to history.

With parents happily ferrying their kids around in bucket bikes on excellent cycling routes, Leipzig conveyed a distinct, thriving and positive buzz.

Also, it has to be noted that Leipzig (where Mark studied in 1971) has a bike shop and sales service that warmed the cockles of Daisy’s captain’s heart, conveying him to cycling seventh heaven. As chronicled in an earlier blog post, we parked Daisy here to allow us a day’s train excursion to Dresden to visit my father’s family grave.  

I haven’t mentioned Berlin in detail yet, where once-upon-a-time Mark and I set out into our life together and where we now connected with my own family and our friends with such warm welcomes.

Ah, and basking in my own language again for all these weeks. How I love it, and how I miss speaking German in the UK.

Berlin was wonderful and warm, but at our fourth (!) puncture there in just one day, I did feel at one point like chucking in this whole cycling project…

However, silver linings and all that, the breakdowns gave Mark the opportunity to savour again (first visited in 2017 on our way back from Tallinn, and sorry Leipzig) his actually favourite cycling shop in all the world, Stadler in Charlottenburg.

Waiting for his return at the roadside with Daisy upended on the pavement didn’t exactly reward me with an alternative similar perk – picture below of puncture no 1 alongside the Berlin wall with its Trabbi breaking through in the middle distance.

When we did eventually arrive at our intended destination that day, I was all the more grateful to spend some time with my brother Jochen and his lovely German/South-African wife Lydia.

Berlin is of course full of memories, putting us back in touch with our on-balance happy years in the city with Reuters and the BBC, with the joys and the challenges of getting established as a married couple, starting a family and launching studies and careers – all beautifully held and embraced by friendships East and West that have lasted decades.

Heartbeat Berlin, as one of our fridge magnets says, is very much still alive in us.

As we left Berlin to the West, our route out took us along where the old Berlin wall had been, now turned into a cycle path and bringing us in the south-west to a short stretch of original, raw and – unlike the Wall in the centre of town – artistically unadorned slabs standing high and forlorn pointing towards the Glienicker Lake, traversed by the famous Bridge of Spies over the old division right down the middle of the waterway.

The picture below is of the waterway that leads to the Glienicker Bridge, but here solidly West Berlin, with brother Jochen and his South African/German wife Lydia.

One could weep over Germany’s tragedies and suffering, as over those of so many nations scarred by wars hot and cold. Now folk swim happily from one side of the Glienicker See to the other.

Unhindered, pure, peaceful joy.

So many people were really interested in our tandem, surrounding us at times with whole groups of people curious from where and whence we were travelling.

Quite often I would be asked which of the two countries I preferred – England (nobody said UK or Great Britain) or Germany.

I was not just diplomatic when I said that each country has its pros and cons.

Everybody, except for one person, was completely baffled by Brexit, and pitied us for living in England.

Germany’s historical identity is blighted by the political excesses and discontinuities of the last century and the ensuing, failed East German communist regime that so criminally distrusted and bankrupted its people.

Through reunification, many East Germans felt they had lost a political identity. They didn’t just shed their government and became Other-Germans, they also morphed from geographical to political Europeans.

Perhaps the all-German pride in being European is now facilitating a sense of unity and belonging between formerly East and West Germans, helping both, under the wings of Europe, to take pride again in their shared cultural heritage and social and economic achievements.

Membership within the multinational EU seems to be seen as a mutually fruitful and complementary alliance rather than a conflicted, confrontational, exclusive relationship.

Generally, Germans seem to value and be proud of their European identity. So many construction and nature projects announce the EU contribution on some visible plaque. In contrast, here in Sheringham on England’s North Sea where we live, passers-by can be forgiven for never noticing a minuscule sign noting the EU’s help in constructing our fishermen’s ramp.

Yes, in Germany there is also criticism of the EU, and frustrations in particular about certain measures and regulations affecting traditional small family businesses.

But there seems to be a matter-of-fact acceptance that consensus between countries is important, and that working together towards change is necessary and possible. To the vast majority of Germans, the European Union simply makes sense.

There are so many beautiful places, experiences and encounters that I haven’t mentioned. So, I’ll conclude with some big, broad brush strokes to highlight my experience about the Rhine, the last leg of our journey from Germany’s bottom south-west corner at Basel.

When I was working in the Foreign Ministry in Bonn in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I would take lunchtime strolls along the Rhine promenade, and when I later did my teacher training, again the college buildings overlooked the Rhine, a big, brown, busy river with its steady stream of enormous barges.

Brown has since turned clear as the river has been cleaned up, and it’s now possible to swim safely in its so much fresher waters. Bliss after a day’s cycling, though swimming is perhaps the wrong word as the powerful current swept us effortlessly along.

Cycling along much of the Rhine from Switzerland to Hoek van Holland where it empties into the North Sea, we witnessed the river’s gradual transition from pure mountain-fed green vibrancy in its infancy to the mature, labouring waterway carrying cargoes to and from the sea while all along refreshing its banks and people.

On one of our childhood trips to Italy in the 1960s we visited the Rheinfall at Schaffhausen, the largest waterfall in Europe.

It so impressed me at the time that I absolutely wished to revisit it on this trip.

So we did just that, and again the force of water deeply moved me. Nowadays, there is even a glass elevator to take people back up from the viewing platform providing an equally breathtaking overview.

Visiting 14 of its 16 federal states, we consider our three-month tandem journey to be of course a trip through Germany.

But we also dipped into Poland, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, and obviously the Netherlands.

And France.

The best red wine I drank on this entire trip was in the little restaurant of an inconspicuous little French camp site. Complimented on the bottle, the owner shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s just what we drink locally,” he said.

Sadly, I’ve forgotten the name. So, back home now we revert when we”re feeling flushed to the very much more expensive Châteauneuf du Pape of our local supermarket.

Enough for the moment of my musings that came to me on the back of Daisy as we enjoyed the pleasure of steady physical exercise, beautiful scenery, lovely people – and delicious breaks for Kaffee und Kuchen.

Thank you for reading this far.