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.
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