Back in DE

I came back a few days early as Cass and the kids stayed on in Eagle Crag, then went down to Rhode Island to see Rocky and Colleen.

Being suddenly back in Germany it initially felt like being on vacation in Europe. I did a bunch of Jay-interest Berlin stuff:

Moss overtakes the rail lines in the Gleisdreieck forests.

This is the rubble of a former switching tower. One of the cooler train yard ruins in Gleisdreieck Park. And then unfortunately one day it was pulled down in the name of...? Not sure why they pulled it down. 

I did a long ride along the old Berlin Wall trail from Frohnau back to Mitte, one of the longest stretches of the 90-mile circuit that I haven't covered  yet. They've made a bike trail out of the old DDR jeep road that the soldiers used to ride up and down.

This photo (1989) of the wall and a guardtower.

Same vantage point today. The guardtower somehow survived the bulldozer, it is one of 4 or 5 that are left around the former Wall route.

Ghost train station Siemensstadt, just west of Moabit neighborhood. Closed in the 60's during DDR times and still carries shell holes from the war.

Then Jani and I tried to go to Hamburg for our big Euroeyes Cyclassics bike race, but the trains broke down and we sated our sorrows with some Berliner Kindl.

Wall infrastructure on Zimmerstrasse.

Martin Gropius building, also a trove of bullet holes.

On the day we were supposed to be in Hamburg, we did a big northern loop outside Berlin instead. Here are some more scars in northern Berlin on our way out of the city.

An old Trabi in a small town on the route.

Forest roads are really wonderful to ride!

Finished up the ride at Bornholmer Strasse, one of the first crossing points in the confusion of November 9, 1989. Today, bits of the wall survive in behind interp signs. 

Then the family came back! Yay! I bought some Lederhosen to celebrate.