More »leben« country and a Bauhaus university

This was my final day and I decided to cycle to Aschersleben and catch a train back to Berlin from there.

I left Halberstadt through some industrial estate, but found a traffic-free route to Wegeleben and Adersleben. Back on the road I reached Aschersleben after passing Hedersleben and Schadeleben.

Aschersleben boasted a very similar water tower to Halberstadt's.

There is also an odd monument of someone walking along a section of the old city wall.

I had breakfast in a nearby bakery and caught the train to Dessau where I had to change for Berlin.

Half of Dessau to one side of the station is an ordinary medium-size town with stark reminders of its Communist past.

The other side to the north-west of the station is an entirely different matter. Looking around I was very impressed by the traffic-free road crossing the university campus.

The road is surrounded by Bauhaus architecture and filled with cyclists and strolling pedestrians – a calm glimpse of what cities could feel like if our society could muster the collective will to ban cars and win back the space which is currently sacrificed to individual traffic.

Halberstadt

I spent the morning looking around Halberstadt and probing various cafés for breakfast. The main pedestrian mall is next to the town hall and cathedral.

Halberstadt's old town is picturesque in places and can have a village-like atmosphere.

Some buildings exhibit the strict lines of Prussian architecture.

The historic centre of Halberstadt is nicely renovated, but turning some corners still exposes the charms of 40 years of Communism during the past century.

Mount Brocken and »rode« country

In the morning, I left my hotel without breakfast on my way to the summit of Mount Brocken. The route out of Halberstadt was again dangerous and unpleasant, leading along the already familiar B81, however this time without any footpath or cycleway.

The radio station at the top of the mountain was visible immediately upon leaving Halberstadt.

After about 5km at Langenstein I was able to turn off the B81 onto a slightly less scary road. There were some pretty towns like Silstedt along this road.

After some cycling I started feeling like breakfast and found a Steinecke bakery inside a shopping mall on the outskirts of Wernigerode.

With new strength, I found a traffic-free cycle route towards Altenrode and Darlingerode.

Back on the road after 3km, I continued until the bottom of Ilse valley which was going to lead me up to Mount Brocken. The little cyclist on my sat-nav had quite a hill ahead of him.

The town of Ilsenburg, situated at an altitude of 250m at the bottom of the climb, was very pretty.

The traffic-free hiking path leading up Ilse valley was paved with compacted gravel and made for very pleasant cycling. It leads up the hillside through beautiful forest, following the course of the Ilse river which frequently appears next to the path.

Occasionally the stream is occluded by boulders and only the gushing sound of water can be heard, as explained by this sign.

From about halfway up I could frequently hear the sound of the Brocken steam railway as it was working hard to pull coaches full of visitors uphill.

Just below the summit I crossed the railway line just in time to catch a glimpse of 997247-2.

After 2h of climbing I reached the top of Mount Brocken at 1141m. The engine was being shunted to the back of the train at the station.

There's really not very much around for miles and miles…

The former radio station at the top has been converted into a museum.

I replenished with some bratwurst and fassbrause, a kind of brewed lemonade not unlike ginger beer, but without ginger. For the way down I decided to stay on the main road.

Somewhere along the way I passed a group of Segway-users going uphill. It was an odd sight and my best explanation is that it might have been some sort of publicity stunt, trying to prove a point about being able to reach the highest peak around by means of battery power or some such…

I passed through some villages in the typical architectural style of the Harz region, recognisable mainly by the ornamental wood-panelling.

The route was quiet and traffic-free up to the town of Schierke where it joined onto a much busier road again. This region could really use a more interconnected network of cyclable roads and paths in my opinion. I was glad when I had the opportunity to turn off onto a slightly quieter road to Elbingerode at Drei Annen Hohne.

Rather than attempting to ride back into Halberstadt on what were more likely than not going to be horrible roads again, I decided to catch a train from Blankenburg and get off at the pretty little Spiegelsberge stop right next to my hotel. When I arrived at Blankenburg, it was immediately obvious that it had none of the touristic charms of its predecessors on my way down the mountain. It was dotted with derelict buildings, I didn't find a nice restaurant or café near the station where I could pass the hour's wait for my train and I felt that the people acted more suspiciously towards me.

A ride through »leben« country

For a long time, I had been wanting to visit the Harz mountain range for some cycling. Since it's a pretty long way from Berlin it's not really suited for a single day trip. Today I set off on a four-day getaway to Halberstadt and surroundings.

I caught a train to Magdeburg, had some hipster hot-dog next to Hundertwasser house and found a bike shop to buy spare parts for my sat-nav because its bracket had broken. They didn't have the necessary parts in stock so I came up with the following strictly pragmatic solution.

Then I left Magdeburg heading for Halberstadt which turned out to have been a bit of a mistake.

I had assumed that there would be some nice cycle paths, perhaps along the Elbe river, but the only route that my sat-nav could come up with lead along horrible roads where drivers were obviously not used to cyclists and didn't particularly care for their (which is to say, my) well-being.

I passed through some nice villages along the way like Ottersleben, Wanzleben, Klein Germersleben and Klein Oschersleben where I spotted this cute converted railway siding.

In Hadmersleben I stopped at a Netto to stock up on snacks. A short stretch of offroad cycle path took me to the next town.

Continuing, I found Kleinalsleben and Großalsleben.

Frequently torn between sign-posted cycle routes and the route suggested by my sat-nav, at one point I ended up on a traffic-free path that was generally in the right direction, but not mapped. I overtook another cyclist to ask directions and we ended up chatting the rest of the way to his home village of Emersleben.

Eventually, I ended up on the official cycle-route to Halberstadt, but it was just a path right next to the very busy B81 roaring with lorries, so it was really no fun at all. If this region would like to position itself as a cycle-friendly tourist destination, establishing some pleasant ways to get there in the first place would be a good start.

The dual-carriageway into Halberstadt leads across a railway bridge and past some disused real estate advertising the city's claim as a »hub« to the Harz region. A certain insurance company also seems to have taken a liking to it.

Halberstadt itself boasts beautiful narrow-gauge tram lines throughout, but the trams themselves are nearly as rare as they are camera-shy. Eventually I managed to catch one on my mobile.

I crossed the city and arrived at my booked hotel, Gästehaus Spiegelsberge. It was situated very pleasantly at the edge of the forest at the foot of a hill and also featured a comfortable-looking beer garden. When I asked about my reservation nothing was known about it, so I showed my printout from harz-online.de where I had booked the night before. Apparently the usual procedure is for someone running the website to phone the hotel and ask about available rooms, but in my case that step seems to have been missed, unfortunately without preventing my online booking from being confirmed.

As it turned out, all the rooms at Gästehaus Spiegelsberge had been booked for Deutsche Bahn railway engineers who were working in the area, so I had no option but to find a different place to stay. The lady at reception was very helpful and not only recommended some nearby places but also let me use her phone for inquiries. I found a room that was available for the entire length of my stay at Lindenhof.

This nicely illustrates that phones are the primary (and only reliable) means of telecommunication in Germany in 2015.

I had dinner at the beer garden of my new hotel, right next to the converted former railway station »Spiegelsberge«.

I don't have the slightest idea why Ensign Crusher is sitting on a bench out front.