It’s difficult to come to this neck of the woods without becoming involved in the WWI obscenity that was the battle of Verdun. We are camped a few kilometres south of Verdun but the main military action was centred just to the north of it. We drove up to look.

Our guide book says that the battle of Verdun lasted 300 days, so let’s say 10 months. It began with a German artillery barrage that went on for 10 hours and expended 2 million shells. By the end of the 10-month carnage, 700,000 men were dead, missing or wounded.

We began our sobering tour at the Fort Souville, where some advanced technology of the time made 15.5cm guns rise from the ground, fire, then disappear back into the protection of what was essentially a silo. The ground is now forested but remnants of the fortifications can still be seen in the ground left cratered and undulating by the explosions of shells.

Nine villages were completely eradicated by the actions. We drove off to where one stood but there is nothing now to be seen. I went expecting that I might see something along the lines of the ruins of the WWII martyr village of Oradour-sur-Glane, near Limoges, where the SS murdered the entire population in June 1944 shortly after D-Day but apparently, these villages near Verdun were so completely razed that no trace of them could be seen in aerial photographs taken shortly after.

We finished with rightly shredded emotions at the Ossuaire de Douaumont which, standing in the middle of the battlefield, serves as the main monument to the Verdun terror and holds the bones of many thousands of unidentified bodies. After the battle, some 120,000 French bodies were identified, being about one third of those killed. The Ossuaire is fronted by a suitably regimented graveyard where 15,000 dead are buried.

I’ve often wondered about “missing” and “unidentified” but I think it must go like this. Bodies litter a battlefield. If they weren’t blown to bits when they were actually killed, continued shelling where they lie subsequently does either blow them to bits or throws up wads of earth from nearby which falls over the corpses and ends up burying them.

I considered myself blessed to have been part of what I believe to be the first generation not to have been plagued by a European war. Verdun has had a tumultuous history featuring in the Franco-Prussian War, WWI and WWII. The EU was formed following WWII, which was really part 2 of the first atrocity, to prevent further European bloodbaths. The theory was that nations that trade together would not try to wipe each other out and it has proved very effective. The EU may well not be perfect but anyone doubting its usefulness really should see these monuments to the terrors of what used to happen before its existence. Surely preventing such senseless carnage is worth a degree of imperfection.

What a difference a border makes. Our first full day back in France and we needed some shopping so we zoomed about 8kms down the road to a slightly larger town with a supermarché – not one that we’d heard of, Colruyt, but a supermarché nonetheless. Gone was the German restriction to pork, chicken and beef [lamb is almost as rare as hen’s teeth in Germany]; now we were faced with the luxury of choices including guinea fowl legs and quail halves marinated for the BBQ.  We were like kids in a sweet shop and bought some of each of those to keep us going for the next two days.  The quail halves being quite small, I supplemented them with some saucisses aux pimentes d’Espelette. Well, you get addicted to sausages after a few weeks. Oh, and I couldn’t resist some of France’s wonderful Rillettes du Mans (potted pork) for lunch.

After our most enjoyable shopping trip for three weeks, we discovered that our memories had not been playing us false; the local fields of France immediately knocked wildlife spots off anything that we saw in our entire time in Germany. On a brief drive through country lanes on the side of les-côtes, we stopped at a sloping roadside verge smothered in wild flowers. Francine was particularly pleased at last to find an orchid in the form of a small cluster of Fragrant Orchids (Gymnadenia sp).

Many of the flowers on the roadside bank were Field Scabious (Knautia arvensis), which is particularly attractive to butterflies. So, apparently, was a type of Knapweed. Both the Scabious and the Knapweed were absolutely smothered in Marbled Whites (Melanargia galathea) butterflies – I counted 20+ on just one Knapweed plant but there must’ve been 50+ in total scattered along the bank. There were also handfuls of Large Whites (Pieris brassicae) and Meadow Browns (Maniola jurtina) but the Marbled Whites won the contest easily. As we drove back along the lanes,  butterflies appeared almost every 10 m or so, disturbed from the verges or just flitting across the road to the next patch of potential food. It was a vision completely unseen in Germany. Indeed, this one trip probably outnumbered all those we’d seen during our entire German trip.

We were out looking for likely dragonfly habitat and, after a couple of false starts finding inaccessible ponds on private land, we arrived at les Etangs du Longeau. It looked a bit private with a small campsite and café on the land but there were fishermen beside one lake so we bit the bullet, parked and bailed out. What a find it turned out to be. In about an hour and a quarter, we racked up an astonishing collection of 17 species:

• Calopteryx splendens (Banded Demoiselle)
• Ischnura elegans (Common Bluetail)
• Enallagma cyathigerum (Common Bluet)
• Coenagrion puella (Azure Bluet)
• Erythromma najas (Large Redeye)
• Pyrrhosoma nymphula (Large Red Damsel)
• Platycnemis pennipes (Blue Featherleg)
• Aeshna cyanea (Blue Hawker)
• Anax imperator (Blue Emperor)
• Anax parthenope (Lesser Emperor)
• Onychogomphus forcipatus unguiculatus (Small Pincertail)
• Cordulia aenea (Downy Emerald)
• Somatochlora metallica (Brilliant Emerald)
• Libellula fulva (Blue Chaser)
• Orthetrum cancellatum (Black-tailed Skimmer)
• Sympetrum sanguineum (Ruddy Darter)
• Crocothemis erythraea (Broad Scarlet)

Walking back through woodland from the two lakes, we came across one bush playing host to at least half a dozen Silver-washed Fritillaries (Arginnis paphia), too.

What has Germany done to its clearly beleaguered wildlife?

This, we hope, will be our last full day in Germany. Tomorrow we head over the border into France.

We are on the so-called Weinstraβe, which was established in 1935 as another marketing ploy, this time to boost local wine sales. We’ve had a short drive around a few rather less than interesting villages but finished up at Deidesheim where we decided to have a spot of lunch, skilfully avoiding the haute cuisine Deidesheimer Hof featuring menus ranging from 128€ – 229€. Nein danke.

Hitherto “a spot of lunch” has proved rather difficult because full blown meals appear to be the German order of the day at lunchtime. Here in Deidesheim, however, we found a delightfully shaded courtyard at a café/bistro offering uncharacteristically modestly sized bites to eat. Francine was drawn in by a chalkboard offering Quiche Lorraine with salad. The ice-cream menu was much more extensive than the savoury menu but I eventually decided to try a Flammkuchen, Greek-style. As I suspected, it turned out to be a sort of German equivalent to a pizza which was actually very thin, crispy and delicate. All good. Francine could not resist following up with yet another iced coffee. So much for a light bite.

Incidentally, there’s something of a collection of subject Straβen in Germany. Francine spotted another on the map as we trying desperately to travel on the autobahn: the Schuhstraβe. So, come on all you shoe fans, hasten there with all speed.

After our first day disrupted journey around Lille, our journey east through Germany to visit our friends near Altenburg was pretty much unhindered, save for an exit that Sally Satnav wanted us to take but which was inconsiderately gesperrt [closed]. Our journey back west, so far, couldn’t have been more of a contrast.

Our first major westward step a couple of days ago to get to Dinkelsbuhl should have been a doddle at a mere 130kms/85mls most of which was on autobahnen [motorways]. It was everything but. we slammed into two massive queues caused by two sets of roadworks which, in total, lost us 60 minutes. When attempting to plan journeys to take in the accursed mittagsruhe, a closure that generally runs from 13:00 to 15:00, the last thing one needs is a journey almost doubling in length. Sally Satnav knew about the first delay but seemed blissfully unaware of the second which is curious considering that it was quite clearly a long term engineering project: “delays until 2020” and it felt as if it would take us that long to get through it.

After Dinkelsbuhl we embarked upon our next westward step, a journey of about 210kms/130mls to get to Wachenheim in the Pfalz wine area. Our fortunes were no better than on our previous leg. This time Sally Satnav came up with stationary traffic and a 20 minute delay (diversion not recommended) caused by a multiple vehicle accident. Much of the autobahn system is 2-lane and, when a major incident occurs the road tends to be completely blocked. The delay went up to 60 minutes (diversion recommended).

Driving in France and avoiding the péage autoroutes is reasonably easy because there is usually an N-road, a route nationale, running in a similar direction. We have now realised that the same is not true in Germany where the autobahn system, being free, really is the equivalent of the N-roads; avoiding them can be very tricky in many places. In this case there was a side-road alternative but it took a long delay to make Sally Satnav think that the diversion might be a good idea.

The diversion, which we were happy to take, followed a road with three sharp hairpin bends down into a village in a valley. We were surrounded by a long stream of trucks which had similarly turned off the autobahn to avoid the stationary traffic. The line of trucks must have been in excess of a kilometre – we could see the solid line down the hill and up the road climbing back out of the valley. Each truck had to pause at each hairpin to allow traffic coming up the hill to round the bend. The line on the opposite side of the village was occasionally static, then moved before coming to a halt again. That road did not have hairpins. What it did have, we eventually found out, was a small traffic light controlled roadworks with alternating flow. Brilliant.

We eventually re-joined the autobahn beyond the accident and sailed into another mega-queue caused by yet another long term set of roadworks. The Germans really know how to cause maximum chaos. On both our recent journeys, the roadworks have been positioned at an autobahn kreuz, the coming together of two autobahns. I have never seen so manty static trucks in my life. Major disruption was caused in both directions. Some trucks, perhaps because of the tachograph, pull over onto the hard shoulder and just sit. The traffic doesn’t clear but maybe they stop breaking any driving limits. [Just a thought, maybe wrong.]

Once again, on what should have been a straight forward journey, we lost 65 minutes and just about arrived on the dot of 13:00 when mittagsruhe was about to start. Phew!

… I embarked upon a school cycling trip through Germany beginning at Dinkelsbühl. I can remember nothing about the town but its cute name and the fact that we were staying in Jugendherberge [youth hostels]. Our holiday turned out to be a stinky hot tour, with temperatures topping 100°F [it was 1968 so we didn’t do Centigrade] and, given my youthful propensity for bad sunburn and doing lobster impressions, I was forced to ride my curious Mouton Standard, complete with only 4-speed Sturmey-Archer gear box, in denim jeans and long-sleeved shirts. The Germans had never seen such a bicycle and their jaws dropped as they stared. It was one of the best holidays of my life.

Having mentioned my school trip on numerous occasions, Francine was fascinated to see Dinkelsbühl for herself. Since we’d be passing close by on out return drive, we made for it. After a nightmare of a journey along an autobahn containing two sets of highly disruptive roadworks that lost us an hour stuck in traffic, we finally arrived yesterday at a campsite within walking distance of the old town. Happily we arrived just before the accursed MIttagsruhe. We’d booked in for two nights to give us today to give me a blast from the distant past.

Dinkelsbühl old town is a charming mediaeval vision with cobbled streets adorned by several towers. Dinkelsbühl  lies on the so-called Romantische Straβe, which seems to be a bit of a touristic marketing ploy. The guide books suggest there is nothing to mar its mediaeval atmosphere – nothing, that is, save for a couple of modern construction cranes which can be avoided for holiday snaps. Oh, and cars are permitted to drive around the cobbled streets, of course, which looks a little less authentic than carts drawn by horses.  Sadly, none of this nudged any memories from the far flung recesses of a 15-year-old schoolboy’s memory.

We went in search of the youth hostel where I would have stayed. Luckily, it is marked as a building of interest on a tourist town map, so we had a fighting chance of finding it. Find it we did and my memory continued stubbornly to fail to recall any details of my original visit. We snapped the youth hostel anyway and went in search of more adult refreshment.

Much of the town seemed to contain hotels rather than beer gardens but we finally found a more relaxed looking hostelry which served us some Dinkelsbühler Weizen [wheat beer]. Wheat beers are light and quite refreshing in heat and I have to say that this example is about the best Weizen I’ve tasted to date.

After another short wander, clearly Francine wasn’t quite refreshed enough and decided that an iced coffee would be in order. Lunch time was beginning to slip by, too, so, not doing well without a minor lunch, she accompanied this with a slice of cheesecake. Pop! I went for an apfelstrüdel and simple espresso, to keep the volume down. ‘T was OK but the strüdel had clearly been nuked in a microwave so the pastry was soft.

At last Francine had seen my old German cycle tour starting point. I can remember bits of the holiday, such as a 6th-former filling his water bottle with beer and not getting rid of the flavour from that point on, but I still recalled only the name of Dinkelsbühl.

We’re at a pleasantly quiet, rural site at Hohenstadt whose main purpose was to hide us from the swell of weekend campers. It’s just to the east of Nürnberg. We were a little concerned that the site was billed as one of those “unmarked pitches” jobs. Our concern was born of our recent experiences at Pahna where a complete lack of control had units pitching literally one metre away from another. This site, however, though unmarked, at least had madame showing us around and looking for potential pitching areas. She showed us one area with a tree for shade – madame was finding life too hot herself – which should also protect us from encroachment on that side. It was also on the extreme edge of the site facing a rough piece of ground loaded with weeds wild flowers which were attracting slightly more wildlife than we’d hitherto seen throughout our tour of Germany. As this site worked, we actually ended up with more space between adjacent units than we would normally get with marked pitches.

We pitched Guillaume to face our meadow, away from others on the campsite. It nestled in a bend of the river flowing by the campsite. An old lamppost was leaning at a rakish angle which made me wonder if it had once been an active part of the campsite. Now, it offered us some privacy and entertainment.  Francine decided to list the plants that she was able to recognise here and came to 30, ignoring the grasses, of course.

Wildlife in Germany has been both interesting and, frankly, a bit of a surprise. At the various water bodies that we have happened across, I have, of course, been looking for dragonflies. I have found several species, some in good numbers, including a few that I have not frequently seen; nothing new, though. What we have been struck by is the lack of most other forms of wildlife that we tend to take for granted.

With the exception of our little “private meadow”, Francine has been struck by the paucity of wild flowers in general. There have been a few but nothing like the blooming flowering meadows dotted with different colours that we’d expect to see in rural France at this time of year. Where there have been a scattering of wild flower species, we have ridden, driven or walked by them and been staggered at the lack of insects that our passing disturbed, whereas normally one would expect to flush modest clouds of flying critters from cover. We cycled by a corn field verge of poppies mixed with other white flowers, perhaps field camomile, where we disturbed absolutely nothing. We have stared across larger rough meadows and seen a complete lack of butterflies. It has been quite stunning. The butterflies we have seen have been of few species – generally Whites, Painted Ladies, Meadow Browns – and in low numbers. Our meadow did produce the only Comma I’ve seen thus far. It posed, too.

Since leaving Belgium, we have been lucky enough to have experienced unbroken clear blue skies with not a cloud to blot the horizon. There have been almost no birds blotting the horizons either. We did see a few Red Kites with H&G and heard the occasional lonely Blackbird and a few Blackcaps but there’s been little else. On a 30kms drive around two valleys from our “private meadow”, I saw just one Magpie cross the road. England is inundated with Magpies and you rarely see just one. Cycling from our private meadow staring at crystal clear blue sky there was not a bird in sight. It really is quite staggering.

This pattern has been the norm throughout our German excursion. I can’t explain it but it is somewhat eerie.

Our meadow has produced something of a wildlife highlight, though. As we sat watching the occasional butterfly and some of the hoverflies that were our almost constant companions, usually sitting on camera lens hoods, we spotted movement in the grass. Actually, at first we really just saw the taller plants moving. The culprit proved to be what we now suspect was a Field Vole, though we began by referring to it as “Mouse-ouse”. Because of the moving plant stems, we finally referred to them as Michael, in honour of the late Michael Bentine and his flea circus models. We’re not sure quite how many there were but we think at least four with neighbouring territories dotted along the meadow edge. We sat still and watched enchanted as they occasionally ventured nervously into the open. Trying to get a photo was a challenge because there was normally an obscuring piece of vegetation in the way. After two days and some luck, I did manage a decent picture, though.

We will miss our meadow and particularly our voles when we move on but after what will have been four days there is little more to hold our attention here.

I really have no recollections of how camping in Germany was when we last tried it about 30 years ago.

Our first experience on this occasion with the genial Herr Wolf was a delight: hedged marked pitches of about 10m², each with water, waste and electricity. Our next experience at Hohenfelden was of a large campsite which, at first sight, looked scuzzy, with vehicles crammed in beside a lake and many static units taking up much of the centre ground giving the appearance of a sort of shanty town. We did, though, find a marked pitch of adequate size, with pleasant neighbours, further from the lake (and shanty town).

Then we moved to Pahna, again beside a lake which used to be a surface coal mine. I had made a booking, which mentioned pitch A107, and we were directed to our area. A107 was misleading because there were no marked pitches; you positioned your van/tent where you wanted and a man came to hook up the electricity, which was metred. We found what looked like a very pleasant spot with natural shade from a tree and no nearby neighbours. Until the evening, that is. Another caravan arrived and, ignoring all the free space before us, proceeded to position itself aligned with us and only about 2m from us. It left masses of empty space on its other side. The reason became clear the next day when more family members turned up in other camping contraptions, one of which was a converted fire engine, and proceeded to circle the wagons. Help! Actually, they were quite friendly and reasonably considerate save for one evening when the noise went on to 23:30.

It was a holiday time and area A became very full. There was no attempt at any pitch control, nor concept of personal space. A campervan behind us positioned itself less than 1m from the draw bar of a Dutch caravan. Two tents pitched a similar distance from another German van. We began to hate the site but could not move on given our visiting agenda.

Then things began to change; units started leaving. The site was beginning to feel more comfortable again. Units continued to leave and no new arrivals came in. Bizarre. Eventually, we were left with just one other remaining unit far away. We were supposed to be here for one more night and I went to reception to check that this was OK. It was. Apparently the Fire Brigade had the entire area booked for a children’s outing from Wednesday, complete with a huge marquee. We were leaving on Tuesday so all should be well. We were, indeed, the last to leave when we had the entire area to ourselves. Bliss! Well, it would have been bliss had there been much grass. At least it was now very peaceful.

We have now moved about 180kms to a new campsite in the back of beyond, in the Franken Wald. Given our earlier experiences, we are now trying to avoiding camping sites beside lakes, which are magnets for Satan’s Little Disciples. Though this recent particular German holiday time is now over, it is still important for weekends. The heat is rising, with temperatures hitting 40°C being forecast. We wanted shade and found a pitch beside a tree. It gives us midday shade but the sun moves and in the evening we will need the shade cast by our caravan. The pitch is hedged on one side but very small, only about 8m x 8m, just 64m² – there’s just about room for the van and car but forget about having an awning, too. Forget about swinging a cat, come to that. [We don’t have one with us, neither awning nor cat.] The caravan’s services are right on the edge of the pitch. We are used to a 100m2 minimum in France, the centre of the camping world. 😀 At least it is a marked pitch, even if small. Other pitches are certainly a little larger but we were attracted to the shade. Hopefully, no one will be attracted to the space beside us. Oh, and the electricity is 16amp – sheer luxury.

Our fiends H&G were keen to know what we’d like to do during our visit. One thing that sprang to my mind, that I thought may feature j=high in the German psyche, was a visit to a Biergarten. I think that got a little misinterpreted and we ended up booked onto a tour of a Brauerei [brewery]. Noto so bad though, eh?

Hmm, well, we our tour would apparently not start until 17:00. H&G kindly collected us from our Pahna campsite and drove us the 45 minutes or so to Bad Köstritz, where the Köstritzer brewery was located. H parked in the visitors area just after 15:00 and we sauntered through the baking heat to register. We were somewhat flabbergasted to learn that the tour and tasting would last about 2½ hrs. Strewth! Somewhat daunted, we walked out of the beer factory – it didn’t really look like a brewery in the traditional sense – to the local park where, mercifully, there was some light relief. We came a cross a pond with some odonata life, one of which was our rarely seem Brilliant Emerald (Somatochlora metallica) again.

• Calopeteryx splendens (Banded Demoiselle)
• Ischnura elegans (Common Bluetail)
• Coenagrion puella (Azure Bluet)
• Platycnemis pennipes (Blue Featherleg)
• Anax imperator (Blue Emperor)
• Somatochlora metallica (Brilliant Emerald)
• Orthetrum cancellatum (Black-tailed Skimmer)

We returned to the brewery to face our punishment. With about 8 others, we were treated to something like a 30+ minute introduction, including a video, all in rapid, complex German. Finally being asked to done a white coverall and, if footwear was deemed inappropriate [open-toed sandals], blue plastic shoe covers, we were ushered out into the baking sun to sweat for a little more historical introduction, staring at the old factory building. We looked more like a CSI team than visitors on a brewery tour.

The threat of a coverall and overshoes, together with the joy of being subjected to 2½ hrs of rapid German was enough to put Francine off; she opted out and stayed behind to have a natter with G, who kept her company. The organisers weren’t happy though, concerned apparently about health and safety. Nonetheless they got away with it.

The stalwart remainder moved on lamentably slowly, slowed even further by one over-interested body that kept asking questions. I was about to ask H to tell him to stop asking questions when H asked one of his own. We did find the master brewer, an array of computer terminals, mercifully not resembling Windows 10 [“please restart to install beer into bottles”; “the fermentation has failed, OK?” NO, not OK!]. There wasn’t a warm body in sight, other than our own overheated bodies.

Finally, oh please finally, we were into the bottling plant which is where the plastic CSI overshoes were required. This was actually quite interesting; we were shown the biggest dishwasher I’ve ever seen, all the time containing 40,000 bottles. Clean, sterilised bottles issued forth to begin their journey through an automated check for cracks, finally to be filled and labelled at breakneck speed.

At last we could return to the tasting room for a drink. My ears certainly needed a drink. 50% of this brewery’s production was a dark bear, essentially a dark mild. Other offerings included a pils, as might be expected and an “English style“ pale ale, which might not be expected but which certainly tasted the part. Actually, at 7% ABV it tasted more than the part since I don’t know of any English pale ale brews getting anywhere close to that.

We bought a sampler pack since tour attendees got a discount and retired hoping that our ears would recover during what was left of the evening.

… or Colditz castle, in the English-speaking world.

We are camped in our large, crowded, unappealing campsite about 30kms away from the notorious Colditz castle, which I’m sure was equally crowded and unappealing to its former inmates. It was used in WW II by the Nazis as a high security prison camp for Allied officers [officers only] who had escaped from other camps. In effect, the Nazis had put all their bad apples in one basket. As such it was the scene of many ingenious escape attempts, some of which were successful. Naturally, being so close, we were keen to see this iconic piece of history for ourselves.

Our German friends, H&G, raised their eyebrows a little, apparently not understanding our interest. It seems that they, I think in common with most Germans, know nothing of the castle’s story. Nonetheless, they offered to drive us to see it first hand.

The castle stands, as would be expected where castles are concerned, towering above the town of Colditz itself. There are understated road signs indicating the way to the castle, once you get within striking distance, but it is certainly downplayed; there are no advertising hoardings or any such promotional material on the outer roads. The approach to the castle itself is through a maze of residential streets and little is provided in the way of parking for visitors. H found a parking place by the roadside easily and we tipped out to walk the last hundred metres or so. This provided, I think, the most impressive view of the building.

There is little in the way of signage even in the entrance courtyard, save for a sign to a youth hostel which is now located in the buildings. [There’s an irony here: incarcerate the youths in a prisoner of war camp. Excellent – I could suggest a few inmates of my own.]

Turning a corner and passing through a gateway, we learned of a piece of Colditz Castle’s history that was unknown to us as well as to H&G. Obsessed with human perfection, up to 1938, the Nazis had incarcerated some 84 “sub-standard” people and systematically sedated them and reduced their diet such that they eventually died either of starvation or of vitamin deficiencies. We came across a cellar set up as a memorial to those who died there. Two rooms artfully crafted mattresses cast out of cement. I didn’t count them all  but I’m guessing that there are 84 such rolls in total.

Back outside we found the entrance to museum to the prisoner of war history. For a modest 4€ each (3€ for H ‘cos he has a disability card), we gained access to a series of rooms detailing some of the more famous officer inmates and their escape attempts. In addition to the usual explanatory boards, cabinets showed items demonstrating the ingenuity and skills of the officers: handmade tools; a wooden sewing machine; buttons and insignia cast from compressed foil in plaster moulds; uniforms fashioned from bedding and dyed. There is also a reconstruction of the glider that the inmates were famously building in an attic but you only see this on one of the guided tours.

Our most famous Colditz inmate was probably Airey Neave who made the first successful British “ home run” in the company of a Dutch officer. It’s a sad irony that, having survived the Nazi regime, Airey Neave was eventually assassinated by the IRA. The French record at Colditz was particularly good with their 12 successful escape attempts (those which made it outside the castle) resulting in a 100% record of “home runs”. Bien fait!

Perhaps surprisingly, only one war prisoner was killed at Colditz, during an escape attempt; a much better record than those 84 poor souls who had been were completely unknow to us before our visit.

It has been interesting listening to H talk about “in the DDR times”, when this eastern part of Germany was the GDR as we called it. We’d be driving with them along a road and he’d say, “in the DDR times there was accommodation for Russian soldiers here”. He seemed to remember his time working in the DDR fondly.

They were keen to show us around their main town of Altenburg, where they did used to live in a small flat overlooking the main square. We found a parking place and began a walk towards the town centre.

It seemed as though more than 50% of the shop units were empty. Some were still trading but many were not. There were some magnificent old pieces of architecture that were falling into disrepair, too. Altenburg was definitely a town in decline.

H&G explained that since the reunification of Germany, many of the old former East German businesses had ceased trading mainly because they had been set up to supply Russian markets and those markets no longer existed, not to them, anyway. In essence, the financial rug had been yanked from beneath their feet. The population of Altenburg had been 60,000 but had now dropped to just 35,000. Most of those lost have been the younger people looking for work; the population is declining and aging, to boot. This is the no longer used and maybe no longer needed dancehall.

The main square of Altenburg was charming, nonetheless, and we popped into a local watering hole for some local water. Fortunately the Altenburg brewery is still working well; so well that it produced the best lager I’d yet tasted in Germany. Our table right up against the bar was a interesting curiosity, too.

Another business that I was interested was just off the square in a side street. This was a senf [mustard] shop and I’m happy to report that this still seemed to be thriving, perhaps because the enterprising proprietor sold hot bratwurst which you could then slather in a huge array of different mustards varying to tame to fiery. Somehow I resisted  the temptation of a bratwurst and we restricted our purchases to a bottle of mustard with horseradish.

One business that had failed had been an historic hairdressing salon. It had been closed down in the 60s. Heirs of the family, wanting to sell the building, had opened up the salon and discovered a treasure trove of historic hairdressing equipment, dating from early in the 20th century, much of which resembled instruments of torture. The machinery certainly didn’t seem as though it would pass any health and safety inspections today. It is now run as a fascinating museum … and it has the benefit of being a small museum.

In contrast to our walk around a rather saddened Altenburg, our personal guided tour around Erfurt had shown off a thriving town. It’s a university town with a large student population and, being the main town of the Thüringen region, receives a goodly amount of financial support. It was quite a stark contrast.

Not everything was great “in the DDR times”, though. Our friends had mentioned being unable to travel abroad, for example. Sounding extraordinary, they also said that folks could put their name down for a car and then might wait 10 or 15 years to get one … whichever colour and limited brand choice might eventually become available.

On balance, they thought reunification had been beneficial, just not all rosy.