Day 17 Dalldorf to Magdeburg, Germany

The view from my hotel room's window
That is Magdeburg's main train station with part of downtown and a cathedral in the background

When I left Dalldorf, I rode - on the neat small roads - over to B71. Then I rode B71 to Salzwedel. which is about 25 km south and east. Salzwedel is in Saxony-Anhalt but Uelzen and Dalldorf are in Lower Saxony. In Salzwell, I thought I could get a Saxony-Anhalt railroad ticket and go any where in the state for 25 E including my bicycle. That meant I could ride to Salzwel and take trains to Wittenburg or Magdeburg or even Liepzig.

It was very beautiful that morning, and the riding was excellent. When I got to Salzwell, I rode around for a while - a very nicely restored old town - stopped in a church yard and ate the food I brought from Dalldorf and then rode to the train station. at that point I wasn't sure if I wanted to take the train or just ride - another 100 km - to Magdeburg. What I found at the train station - a broken ticket machine that meant I couldn't buy a Saxony-Anhalt ticket - convinced me to ride on.

B71 looked like this for most of today's ride, but about a third of the time it had a bikepath
Notice that the weather is no longer beautiful, but it never rained and the wind stayed good

Riding was good - I usually had a side-tail wind - and, although dark clouds formed, there were no storms. I stopped at Gardelegen to eat a Falafel Donner and snacked twice at service stations.

One of the many trikes I saw today, half of them were pulling trailers

Here you can see that the trike has a VW rear end
The front end is pure chopper.
That is Lugi's trike friend in the image above

At Gardelegen, B71 joined with another road and became an Autoroute so I continued south on the an old road. That was quite peaceful, if a bit bumpy in parts, and very pretty. At Letzlingen, after a bit of cobblestone, I was back on B71 and stayed there till it autorouted again near Magbeburg.

The old road south of Gardelegen

The old road makes its transition back to new pavement about 10 km south of Gardelegen

When I reached Haldensleben, I check it out looking for places to stay. I saw signs for four hotels, but never found any of them. I decided I better just ride on to Magdeburg. That ride got better when the B71 got a nice bike lane. Then it got more complicated when signs announced that B71 was becoming an autoroute. My GPS got in me into the city through the autoroute barriers - two of them. It would have been hard to ride in from the east without that guidance. When I got in the city , I tried using it to help me find places to stay, but it wasn't as useful at that. I final rode by a place I could stay. it was one that I had ridden by years before and thought it might be fun.

I stopped at the City Hotel which is a small, modern, hotel, right by the main railroad station. It cost too much - twice as much as the great place in Wittenberg - but it was in the right place, the wireless worked - it has an open wireless network, and the room was comfortable, clean, and very functional. And, of course, it is about a km from the Elbe Radweg.

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