On Friday, I took the train from Wittenberg to Uelzen and rode to Dalldorf, a small village about 20 km east of Uelzen to meet the family of my older daughter's boyfriend on his mothers birthday. On Saturday we drove around the area between Dalldorf and the old border with East Germany.

My train ride to Uelzen was uneventful, other than the two train changes and the train station at Uelzen. I had avoided having to carry my loaded bike bike up and down stairs in train stations on this trip, but the first train change on this trip was at a station where I had to do that. By stopping to rest half way up the stairs I had to climb, I managed to make it to the top, but then I needed several minutes to 'catch my breath.' A-Fib and all that. The second train change was here - at Magdeburg - so I was able to use an elevator to get back up to the second track. The final train station, in Uelzen, is an architecturally unique station which, because it has no right angles - it is sort of organic in feel - can be a problem for folks needing to get between levels, but was no problem for me because the tunnel under the tracks comes out of the station at street level.

I took my time - my daughter and her boyfriend were delayed and their was no one at his home who spoke much English - delaying my arrival in Dalldorf by several hours, So I got to have a nice lunch in Uelzen and to see much of its old town. When I rode from Uelzen to Dalldorf, I rode very slowly - there is a great bike path next to that part of B71 - and enjoyed the beautiful countryside and yet another nice wind park.

The weather was beautiful, if you were riding west since there was a 10 + mph wind from the east ;-}, and I really enjoyed riding slowly through the beautiful countryside. It compared very favorably to riding on the Elbe or Order Radweg since it was just as peaceful, just as easy with that tailwind, and the country side was more varied and so were the villages I rode through. This is the part of Germany that my friends from Hamburg like to come to to 'get back to nature.' During the Cold War, this area, which included the border between the two Germanies, was de-populated on the East German side, and only very lightly populated on the west German side. Compared to the rest of Germany, it is still very lightly populated and, because the East German part was allowed to lie fallow for 50 years, it has a lot of wildlife.

This area of Germany was settled by a Slavic people long ago. Those people are no longer living here but many of the village names and the way the villages are laid out come from that culture. These are round villages. The houses are laid out in a circle around the center of the village. Dalldorf had eight houses at its center, all facing each other. Now it has more houses - the population is around 100 people - scattered around that central core