Wanderung 30

After breakfast with Heinke and Gustl, we tried out the e-bikes. I rode Gustl's e-bike, which is identical to the one I have stored in the cellar of Detlef's rental condominium in Haffkrug. Bob of course rode his brand new e-bike. He just loved it.

(Bob) How do I love my new e-bike? Let me count the ways:

1. It does NOT have a crazy coaster brake! so i can easily rotate the pedals freely and get them at the right angle for pushing off or stretching my right or left leg whilst coasting.
2. It does NOT have a "girl's bike" type of frame, so i can just stand up when I come to a halt and the bike will lean against my right or left thigh--> the "U" shaped frame bikes fall over underneath me when I simply stand up like that!
3. It has a 7-speed Derailleur shifter, so the chain is jumping from sprocket sprocket with that satisfying "clank" sound that let's you know you are in a different gear. (Hub shifters are very quiet and I'm never quite sure when they actually shift gears!)
4. It has really, really strong disk brakes front and rear! They gave so much more braking power than the normal rim brakes that I am used to, that I had to learn to consciously squeeze the brake levers with less force to achieve a given amount of deceleration--kind of like recalibrating my control movements when I fly different airplanes.
5. I also found I preferred the rear wheel hub motor rather than a front wheel version because the motor's impulse was always in line with the direction of the frame of the bike and thus easier to control. The front hub motor pulls in the direction that the front wheel is cocked, which can pull you to the side a bit at slow speeds, which can be disconcerting! Still, I preferred to shut the motor assist off completely when winding my way thru the crowds on the beachside bike path.
6. Finally, the bike has a nifty combined LCD display on the handlebar that continuously shows the voltage of the battery, your current speed to the tenth of a kilometer per hour in big numbers, and even an odometer just like on a car! also just like a car, the display has an on-off switch for the lights, and they were bright LED lights powered by the battery pack so I did not have to engage a separate dynamo rubbing against one of my tires. I decided to aleays run with the lights on, day or night, as a safety precaution.

Ohlsdorf cemetery is really a very large park that includes even a beautiful little lake in the center.

For our test ride, we rode all around and up and down the roads in the cemetery for over two hours. A cemetery is the perfect place to practice the bagpipes or try out a new bike, because although people are dying to get in, they don't tend to drive around once they are here and the roads are correspondingly empty. Sections of gravesites are kind of scattered around Ohlsdorf cemetery, and we also enjoyed stopping to look at the flowers and sculptures placed lovingly amongst the graves. Some of the flower-bedecked graves were almost cheerful, but some were also quite sad and moving.

Surprisingly we also found an outdoor museum of gravestones that had been rescued from a different cemetery. A little farther on a beautiful gate led into a quiet meadow. This was a place where urns of unknown people were buried, which I have heard termed a "potter's field".

There were little chapels all through the cemetery for memorial services. Most of them were modern and obviously still in use, but there also was an old one with a very disturbing sculpture in front of it.

Finally we came upon the most moving place, a burial ground for people who died during the WWII bombings of Hamburg. It consisted of rows of simple stones, some had names and birthdates, some only last names, and some said "Unbekannt" ("Unkown") but all had an exact date of death, the date of the bombings. In between the graves were rose bushes, that should bloom beautifully in the summer.

The thought occurred to Monika, that one of those might have been her if the bomb that landed in front of the house had come a few feet closer. The thought occurred to Bob, that so much would have changed if Monika had been killed as a baby in those bombings. Bob was so moved that during the night he wrote a simple poem in German ("Unbekannt") to express his emotions at all these untimely deaths and wasted lives.

When we were tired, we returned to Heinke and Gustl's condo for lunch. Monika helped Heinke prepare the meal because Heinke is a very good cook and Monika hoped to learn from her. That evening, Detlef came by to drop off the battery charger for Bob's e-bike and the keys for his rental condominium in Haffkrug, which was to be the staging area for our bicycle tour of Denmark.