Always looking for the next great bike ride, Ron spotted a group of five little lakes on Google Maps, just a bit north of us. This should be a good ride, except for one small problem. We couldn’t find a bike path between us and the lakes (we nicknamed them “The Great Lakes” as they were unnamed on the map). The town in the middle of The Great Lakes is called Stotternheim, and we had passed the Stotternheim train station on some of our trips. Perhaps we would take the train there and just ride around. In the meantime, we had plenty of other bike trips planned, so The Great Lakes bike trip was placed on indefinite hold.
As luck would have it, we unexpectedly stumbled on a bike path marker not two miles from our home indicating “Stotternheim 7.7 km", which is about 5 miles. Perfect – we could bike there, ride around and see the lakes, then ride home.
We left early on a Sunday morning. The first part of the ride was rough, "sketchy" in young person parlance. The path was unused and had become quite overgrown (Mother Nature always wins), and it was littered with broken bottles and graffiti. No worries. The German countryside had not failed to amaze us, and we were certain that rolling hills, quaint villages, and charming gardens were just around the next bend. We were wrong.
The area north of Erfurt struck me as the land that time forgot. Reminders of the Soviet era remain on display here. For example, under the communist regime, heat was provided by the state to every home, and the large steam piping that supplied the heat is still visible. The apartments and offices of the era still stand: aseptic, unadorned, functional buildings that seemed grey and tired on this cool and colorless morning. We climbed the only hill of the day, an overpass over a section of highway and train tracks.
Looking to my left I could see the factories, steam pipes, and modular buildings of the old GDR; to my right, the wind turbines and rolling pasture lands of today’s Germany. It is ALL Germany, Ron corrects me.
We continued on toward Stotternheim. It wasn’t a long ride, but it seemed to take forever. It was sobering, these unexpected reminders of the not-too-distant past, and the images triggered in me reminders of the horrors that preceded the Soviet occupation. My dark thoughts were interrupted by a brilliant splash of color – I almost dropped my bike, I jumped off it so fast to take a photo. Then other, walking deeper and deeper into the field of wildflowers. Yes, Mother Nature always wins.
And then we were in Stotternheim.
We followed the signs to the “See” (German for “lake”). I was concerned we had not encountered the other lakes, two of which I had expected to have passed on the way to Stotternheim. Where were The Great Lakes? We reached a tall fence, and followed it. The fence ended, and we saw another sign, indicating the “See” was now behind us and we had just passed it. Hmmmm. I lifted my phone as high as I could over the fence and blindly snapped a picture. Yep, there was the lake, boarded up for the season. At least we found it….
Church bells beckoned us back to the little town, and we ate our picnic lunch in a quiet cemetery behind the church, serenaded by the hymns of the faithfully gathered. We pedaled out of the church yard just as the service ended, nodding goodbye to the surprised minister.
The sun finally made an appearance as we neared Erfurt, and we stopped to appreciate the little garden plots on the edge of our neighborhood.
We had biked through this little alley many times, but today, we were grateful for another, final reminder – to appreciate every bloom, wherever planted.
Bike Talk
Radweg # 6 Stotternheim
13.66 miles
22 km
Average speed 7.2 mph
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