Left Wittenberge on time after an excellent breakfast. Headed to the river, past the sculptures to find a dragon boat festival setting up. We saw a boat training yesterday.
A little further along we were stopped by an elderly German cyclist. It turned out to be our first experience of a DDR rapper! That is to say he spoke German at high speed, but in rhyme. It sounded a bit like Wilhelm Busch, Max and Moritz. We could catch no more than about 10% of what he said but it was clear he thought things were better in DDR times. He was 79 years old and looked fit for his age. I was sad we couldn't understand more of what he said. Lots of people's faces seem to glaze over when you mention 1989 but he was quite happy to talk about the changes. In fact you couldn't stop him!
The path followed on top of the Deich, beside the river, but you could also walk below the Deich as Shiel is doing in the first photograph. We missed a turn to Wentdorf but my Viewranger maps said there was another turning a little further on. We couldn't find it. It appeared to have been ploughed up as we have seen before on the walk. We decided to walk as near as we could to the track using GPS. We started over an area that must have been flooded a few weeks ago. There is a photo looking back towards Shiel in the scrub taken from where the old track reappeared again between two fields. It appears the track had been ploughed up where it left the Deich. In walking through the scrub I found quite a lot of blackberry brambles as the photograph of my calf shows.
We took a farm track, just south of Wentdorf, to bypass the village and finished up in Cumlosen where we had refreshments and cake. The gnome garden photograph was taken in the village.
We moved back to the Deich to do a sock change and had our second memorable meeting of the day, a woman who teaches in Wittenberg. Her daughter spent a few months in New Zealand last year. I think she is currently in Vancouver and about to study medicine. The teacher said we should visit her uncle in Hitzacker who is 92 years old and likes to chat. Whilst we would like to do so it is very difficult to make a 'cold call' on someone. Especially a 92 year old who speaks a different language but it was a very friendly offer and one can't help wondering what the old chap is like. He seems to have been well educated.
Outside Cumloser we walked on past an old concrete tower structure, from DDR times, which was used when this area along the Elbe was the border between the DDR and the West. It now seems to be an area where flood water services are based.
In Lutkenwisch, just before the ferry, was a memorial to the people who patrolled the DDR border. It seems quite a few of the older people feel the same way as our rapper.
We walked onwards to the ferry which was just leaving as we turned up. I took a photograph on the ferry and one of the sign, which one passes on entering Schnackenberg, showing a map of Europe before 1991.
We checked in at our hotel, did our washing, and then went to visit the Border Museum where the last few photographs were taken. It was an excellent museum and really took you back to the days of the DDR. We lived in Western Germany in 1983 and 1989 and made one visit to Berlin, both east and west via Checkpoint Charlie. To me at least the regime seemed very oppressive. I find it incredible that in the last two years we have walked from Poland, through the Czech Republic and what were East and West Germany without needing to show a passport. How radically times have changed for the better. Children born in the last 20 years can have no idea what it was like. The last two photograhs show pictures of a mini submarine an engineer and his wife used to try and escape from the DDR.
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