Start:  Hodenhagen 

Finish:  Soltau

Distance:  21

Total:  1680

I had a productive 21 mile walk through mostly farmland today. The cooling trend has begun and there was a nice breeze. 

I got started at 7:40 today, which was a little earlier than usual because of the longer distance to walk.  My first four miles were on a very quiet, one lane country road. I could hear the autobahn in the distance and eventually crossed over it on an overpass. Eventually the back road merged with a busier highway upon which I walked in the ditch for a couple of miles. 

By 11:00 I’d reached the halfway point of today’s route and wandered into a grocery store to check out the lunch options. There was a bakery/pastry shop in the entry way of the store so I had a sandwich for lunch. 

After lunch, the last 10 miles of my day were along a footpath beside a busy two-lane highway.  I gave my hotel a call about 1:00 to make sure there would be someone there when I arrived at about 2:45. Unfortunately, I was told there wouldn’t be anyone at the hotel until 3:00. So when I was within about a half-mile of my destination, I stopped in another bakery and spent the fifteen minutes I needed to wait by having a snack. 

Tonight’s hotel is a guest house and restaurant. The nice lady who runs the establishment agreed to do a load of laundry for me so I skated out of that chore for the day. I plan to patronize her restaurant in a little while to thank her for doing my dirty work. 

Tomorrow it’s another 19 miles north through more farmland. I’m beginning to see the harvesting of all this wheat they have here. The corn is not ready to be picked yet but the wheat harvest is in full swing. 

Thanks for following along. JB. 

Start:  Elze

Finish:  Hodenhagen

Distance:  15

Total:  1659

Today was another H-O-T day in northern Germany. I got to my hotel at 1:30 and it was already 97; going to 99 for a high. But the good news is there’s a front coming and will start cooling it off gradually over the next few days. 

After a good night’s sleep last night in Elze, I got out the door at 8:20 this morning with 15 miles to walk. I had a sidewalk for the first mile, then I was in the ditch for all except the last three miles. Luckily, the ditch had been mowed so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. 

By noon I was within about three miles of my destination and was getting hungry. I was just walking into the only little town I’d seen all morning and there was a cafe, so I wandered in and I was the only customer; just me, the lady running the cafe, and some really nice looking food. I had also noticed a couple of small tables outside the cafe as I came in; just big enough to seat two people. They were sitting in the direct, 90+ degree sun. I also saw two small tables inside the cafe so I walked straight to one of the inside tables and started taking off my pack. After I got it off and put it in a chair the lady behind the counter said the cafe closed at noon; it was 12:01.  I clarified with her the cafe was now closed?  She said yes, I could buy food and sit outside. WHAT!  You’re closed; but I can buy your food and sit outside in the 90 degree heat in the direct sun, and eat it?  Yes, that’s what she would allow. I walked out and didn’t eat until I’d walked my last three miles, stopped to check in at my hotel, where my room wasn’t ready, dropped off my backpack, and walked another half-mile to a restaurant to eat lunch.  

So here I am; it’s now 3:00 and I’m sitting in the lobby of my hotel waiting on my room to be cleaned. It’s OK because I called ahead earlier in the morning and asked the nice girl here at the hotel if I could ask for a room on the side of the building away from the afternoon sun. She said they’d hold me such a room so I’m not going to press them. I’ve learned my lesson over the last few days that you DO NOT want a non-air conditioned room on the sunny side of the building in 100 degree heat. 

Tomorrow I walk 21 miles to the city of Soltau. I wonder if it has any connection to my friend and former work associate, Jim Soltau?  Maybe he will read this and comment. Otherwise, that’s it for today. Everyone have a great Thursday!  JB. 

Start:  Hanover

Finish:  Elze

Distance:  15

Total:  1644

I had an uneventful 15 mile walk today from Hanover to the small, one hotel, one restaurant town of Elze. The only memorable thing about today is the heat. It’s 98 degrees outside now and forecast to be 100 tomorrow. At least I’m coming off a very restful day off yesterday. 

I got started today at 8:00 and decided to eat breakfast at a McDonald’s about an hour down the road. I don’t make it a habit of eating at McDonald’s at home or here, but it was convenient and right on my route.  I was having a little trouble getting the attendant to understand what I wanted to order, so he went in the back and brought out a full blood American employee from Pennsylvania. We chatted for a minute after he took my order. 

After breakfast I was walking on a sidewalk through several Hanover suburban town. The sidewalk was good for me because the road was busy with morning commuter traffic. Though I didn’t get a picture today, the predominant cash crop has now turned to corn vs. wheat.  There are miles and miles of corn fields. 

Tomorrow I have another easy 15 mile day north to another small town;  Hodenhagen. Counting tomorrow, I only have 12 days left in Germany.  

I think that’s about all for today. I have a one mile walk down the road to the restaurant. I think I’ll wait a while before I go there; maybe it will cool off a little. JB. 

Start:  Hanover

Finish:  Hanover

Distance:  0

Total:  1629

For this to have been a day off, I was very busy. It all started yesterday afternoon with hotel problems and I really stayed busy all of today. 

As I said in my last post, Hanover is a very large city, so with that comes an almost unlimited choice of hotels. Because I don’t have very many options in the little towns I visit, I usually end up in a small, family run guest house. They’re normally OK, and I’m not complaining because it beats sleeping in a tent. But when I get to a larger city like Hanover, I try to stay in a “real hotel.”  So yesterday I checked into a hotel, which will go unnamed, that happened to be a popular, though not particularly expensive, American brand. The hotel was conveniently located and had your usual amenities, with one exception. AIR CONDITIONING.  I walked into my room about 3:00 PM yesterday, and since all the rooms in this hotel face west, the sun was streaming into the room and it was HOT. The high temperature yesterday was 88 and forecast to be in the low 90s today. I opened the windows in the room, and there was a fan, but there was little hope that there was going to be any relief from the heat in this oven. 

After the sun went down, at about 10:00, the air began to cool a little, but the party was just beginning. Across the very narrow street from my hotel was a very large, open air bar, where 90% of the patrons were outside on the sidewalk, partly because it was cooler outside, and partly because the volume of the music was tolerable out there. So with my windows wide open, fan going full blast, and the booming music and crowd noise from the bar, I was laying wide awake until the bar closed at 2:00 AM.  While grooving to the thumping of the music, I started looking online for another hotel to move to on my day off. I settled on the Crowne Plaza, which I called to verify had AC before booking.  

I checked out of the first hotel this morning about 10:00 and headed straight to a laundromat about a mile away. I needed to do some laundry including washing my backpack, which is difficult to do in a washing machine because you have to take the internal frame out of it to get it to fit inside the machine.  But after two hours at the laundry, I got it all washed, dried, and reassembled. Then I walked another half-mile to the new hotel, where I found my room as cool as a cucumber.  I spent the next couple of hours just enjoying the comforts of the new hotel. 

Late this afternoon, I headed out in search of a barbershop, which I found fairly quickly and entrusted my lovely locks to a 20 year old who didn’t speak a word of English. After several run-throughs, he finally got my hair short enough. 

After the haircut, I was off looking for anything I could find in this over-the-top busy city that looked the least bit “authentic-German.”  That was pretty much a lost cause. After Hanover got bombed heavily during WWII, the reconstruction effort did little to rebuild anything back to its former self. There were a few interesting sites, but the downtown Hanover I visited was almost exclusively a modern city. 

I’m back on the road tomorrow, headed toward Hamburg, the last large city I’ll visit in Germany, and one which I will not walk directly through. I’ll go through the outskirts of Hamburg this Sunday on the way to my 5th country, Denmark.  Thanks everyone for reading. JB. 

Start:  Hildesheim

Finish:  Hanover

Distance:  19

Total:  1629

I take back everything I said previously about how large German cities are not spread out with  urban sprawl. Today when I walked into Hanover, which has a population of 535,000, I thought I was never going to reach the center of the city. 

I got on the road at 8:45 this morning with 19 miles to cover. Lucky for me it was bike paths and sidewalks all the way. And it’s a good thing because the road was 4-lane with a 100 KPH speed limit. There was a little town every couple of miles along my route until I got about half way to Hanover. From that point on I was walking in one big continuous business district. Even the trolley ran out to a point 9-10 miles from downtown Hanover. That makes sense because the metropolitan area has 1,100,000+ population. 

Tomorrow is a day off here in Hanover. My route today did not take me through the old part of the city so tomorrow I’ll venture out and do a little site seeing and take some pictures. I’ve got some errands I need to run as well. 

That’s it for today. Pretty uneventful I’d say. More to follow in Hanover tomorrow. JB. 

Start:  Bockenem

Finish:  Hildesheim

Distance:  14

Total:  1610

I had a fairly leisurely walk of 14 miles, almost entirely on a bike trail, on this beautiful Sunday in northern Germany. My day ended in the historic old city of Hildesheim. 

I hit the road at 8:30 this morning and immediately found myself on a bike trail running right beside the road. After about two miles, the trail ended because there was a hill to climb with switchbacks, which has almost always meant no bike route until you make it over the hill. Today was no exception. After about two miles of climbing and following the road back and forth through the forest, the bike trail reappeared and stayed with me the remainder of the day. 

Two observations I’ve made concerning Sunday’s in Europe. First, the truckers must have a very strong union, because there are absolutely no trucks on the roads on Sundays. It must be their unwritten rule that they just don’t work on the sabbath. Second, considering how many churches (almost exclusively old churches) there are in this part of the world, I have not observed anyone at any of those churches, at anytime. Not on Sunday mornings or any other time. You would think that as many Sunday mornings as I’ve walked through towns and cities, I would have seen someone coming or going to church. Or maybe I would have seen a gathering of cars in the church parking lots. But I honestly have not observed any organized church activity. I can’t explain it, but it makes me wonder. 

Tonight I’m staying in Hildesheim. It’s a fairly large city of 101,000+, and was founded around 815. Their current city hall was built in 1268. Most of Hildesheim was destroyed during air raids in 1945, the majority coming only two months before the end of WWII in Europe. Only 27% of the homes in Hildesheim went undamaged, and the city center was almost completely destroyed. Because housing was needed so badly after the war, most of the city was rebuilt as modern concrete buildings so Hildesheim lost much of its medieval charm.  However, part of the center of town was rebuilt to look as it did before the bombing. 

Tomorrow I walk to Hanover, which is 19 miles north of here. I’ll have a day off Tuesday before tackling next weeks heat wave; temperatures back into the mid-90s for a few days. I hope you all had a great weekend. JB. 

Start:  Osterode am Harz

Finish:  Bockenem

Distance:  21

Total:  1596

Today’s walk was my first 20+ mile day in some time. It was also hotter today than it has been in a while; the high was in the mid-80s. But overall, it was a nice day of walking through the north central German countryside. 

I started walking at 7:45, a little earlier than normal, but there were thunderstorms in the forecast late this afternoon so I hustled down the road all day. I spent most of the day off the main road and walked through several small town along the way. 

By lunchtime I was in the town of Seesen. The city center was alive with activity, headlined by the local fire department doing demonstrations with their fire fighting equipment.  Paramedics were there teaching CPR as well. I stopped into a cafe for some lunch and a gelato. 

I made it to my destination around 3:00 as the clouds were building but it didn’t rain on me. I’m staying in another Gasthof tonight; it seems like there’s at least one of these small inns in every little town.  Sometimes I’m the only guest, especially on weeknights. 

Tomorrow is an easier day with a 14 mile walk to Hildesheim. It’s forecast to be a beautiful day with sun and 75 degrees. I hope everyone’s Saturday was enjoyable. Mine sure was. JB. 

P.S.  I forgot to mention yesterday that I posted a new video. Click on the video tab on my website or search “The Walking Aggie” on YouTube. 

Start:  Gieboldenhausen

Finish:  Osterode am Harz

Distance:  16

Total:  1575

Today got off to a slow start.  It ended even slower. 

I went down to the restaurant for breakfast at 8:00 and there was a steady shower coming down outside. That was surprising because the forecast didn’t say anything about rain. Luckily, I was scheduled for a short 13 mile day so getting a late start wouldn’t be a big deal. The gentleman who ran the hotel said I could hang out in my room until the rain stopped so after breakfast, I went back to my room and worked on some lodging plans down the road. I also checked the hourly weather forecast which said the rain would end around 11:00. And right on time, it stopped at 11:00 and I started walking. 

Today’s route had me walking on the highway for the first three miles. With the wet roads, that didn’t sound like a good plan. So I backtracked a mile and got on the bike path. It lasted for about four miles where I transitioned to a back road with little traffic. Where the bike trail ended I found an interesting little cafe called Tom’s Hutte (Hut) for lunch. It’s the first time I’ve had a cheeseburger where the hamburger patty was cooked in a deep fryer. Interesting; but it tasted good. 

After my deep fried cheeseburger, I got on the backroad for about three miles. Then, my route said to get off the road and walk on some trails straight up and down a 1200’ tall hill, plus part of that route went through woods for which I could not tell what the trail consisted of. After walking a few hundred yards up the trail to assess the situation, I turned around and got back on the road. Unfortunately, by taking the road it added another two miles to my route. So all total, my 13 mile day turned into a 16 mile day. I still got to my hotel by 4:45. 

Tomorrow I have a 21 mile day. It wasn’t originally planned that way but the town I was suppose to walk to tomorrow had two hotels and both are full. So I’m combining the next two short days into one long one. That will put me another day ahead of schedule but I’ll figure out what to do about that later. 

That’s all for today. Happy Friday!  JB. 

Start:  Worbis

Finish:  Gieboldahausen

Distance:  18

Total:  1559

I never really know what I will stumble into when I start my day. Today was one of the most interesting days I’ve had, and I had no idea it was coming. 

The day started out innocently enough when I walked out the hotel door after breakfast at 7:45. I first walked through Worbis and then found myself walking on the highway but there was absolutely no one on the road. I’ve been on this road before and it is normally busy. I walked an hour and never saw a single vehicle. It was eerie. After about three miles on this road I walked into the next little town and realized why there was no traffic. The highway through town was completely closed for construction. Traffic coming into town from the north was diverted off the highway. Traffic from the south where I’d just come from had been diverted at a point before I got on the road. So the three mile stretch I walked on was completely abandoned, except for me. After the construction the road was open to vehicles and luckily there was a bike trail. 

As I approached the town of Duderstadt, I noticed a building that said museum in German. It really didn’t dawn on me what the museum was about until I walked another 100 yards and saw a large sign that said “ Hier waren Deutschland undo Europa bis zum 10. November 1989 um 0:35 Uhr.”  Translated: Here were Germany and Europe until 10 November 1989 at 0:35 o’clock. Directly behind the sign was a large barrier gate, and later were some buildings that looked like they use to be guard or inspection stations. I realized I had just crossed one of the few official border checkpoints between the former West and East Germany.  Without even knowing it I had been walking through the former communist East Germany for several days. Somewhere south of Suhl, where I arrived last Friday, 12 July, I had entered the former East Germany without realizing it. So Suhl, Ohrdruf, Eckardtsleben, Mulhausen, and Worbis, town I stayed the night in, were actually in the former East Germany and now I was walking through an old border crossings back into what was West Germany until the Berlin Wall fell on 10 November 1989. Though the official reunification of Germany didn’t happen until 1990, the date in 1989 is recognized as the day the borders were abolished. 

I continued into Duderstadt, a beautiful German city, and had lunch. Duderstadt was a key city during the time of the communist border because it was here where the lucky few who could get permission to go into East Germany to visit family would board busses and make the short ride to the checkpoint to cross the border. After clearing both West German and East German customs, passengers would get off the first, West German bus and board a second, East German bus to continue to their destination. 

After realizing I had crossed the former border, I didn’t recall seeing any signs of the old fencing and other security boundaries that the communists had in place on their side of the border prior to 1989. However, I must admit, I didn’t realize I was in old East Germany so I didn’t know to be looking. 

Tonight I’m staying in the Hotel & Pension Amtsrichter in Gieboldahausen. It’s a beautiful old building which has been updated inside.  The gentleman who checked me in spoke very little English but he said something about the Fuhrer and 1932.  Not sure if he was trying to tell me that Hitler stayed here in 1932 or not. 

All in all, it was a most eventful day. I hope you enjoyed hearing about it. 

Start:  Muhlhausen

Finish:  Worbis

Distance:  16

Total:  1541

Today was a straightforward 16 miles across more farmland. The weather was a little warmer than it has been for the last few days. Even though it stayed overcast, I was comfortable walking in a short sleeve shirt. 

The day got started with a very good breakfast at my hotel in Muhlhausen. I was out the door at 8:15 and walked for about two miles before I was out of town and in the countryside. I spent most of the day walking on what we would call a Farm-to-Market road at home. There was some car traffic but no trucks. They were over on the main highway. I had about a 1000’ climb early on. The hills here tend to be large, rolling hills so I might be climbing or descending a hill for a couple of miles, but the grade is not that steep.  

I noticed today these strange wood boxes on little skids along the side of the road. They’re about the size of a large dog house and have some type of granular coming out the bottom front. (See picture). I saw them every quarter mile or so all day. I hadn’t a clue what these things were for. When I got to my hotel, I showed the picture to the gentleman at the reception desk and he said the granular substance is gravel and is hand-spread by a work crew on the roads when they get icy.  A truck comes along and refills the box when it gets low on gravel. Makes sense. 

My hotel here in Worbis is on the edge of town so for dinner I had to walk a ways down the street to a steakhouse.  That’s the first real beef I’ve had in over a month. 

The weather is forecast to start warming up over the next few days, but not the heat wave Europe had a couple of weeks ago. I’m about 51 degrees north latitude here; about the same as Calgary, Alberta, so the normal high should be about 70F.  Being this far north also explains why it gets daylight here around 4:30 AM and doesn’t get dark until 10:00 PM. That will only get worse when I get to Sweden and Norway. 

That’s all I have to report today. Because my hotel is located just as I came into town, I didn’t see the bear sanctuary I mentioned yesterday.  Maybe I’ll see it tomorrow as I walk through and out of town. JB