Wanderung 32

It dawned sunny, which was a relief, but quite cold; out our front window I could clearly see the frost on top of the cars in the parking lot below us. Brrr! But we only had to go about 15-16 km to reach our hotel in the center of Magdeburg, so I figured it wouldn't be too bad. Although the hotel in Glindenberg was quite nice and our suite very spacious, the variety in the breakfast buffet (1 type of rolls, 3 types of meat, and 2 types of cheese) was surprisingly limited given what we had become accustomed to, which was at least 4 or 5 of each thing on the buffet. We were spoiled, I think, because we certainly could eat perfectly well even given that limited variety.

It was still quite cold when we set off, but the sunshine helped warm us up a bit and certainly cheered me up immensely. Just after we left the southern edge of Glindenberg, we saw this huge canal marching across the floodplain of the Elbe River on what looked like gigantic stilts! Detouring over to get a closer look, we saw that the Midland Canal did in fact cross over on top of the Elbe, and what looked like stilts from a distance were really large steel support columns that braced up the really huge U-shaped steel sections of the canal, which were all connected into a kind of continuous big boat hull, except that in this case the hull was designed to keep water IN the canal rather than keeping water OUT. What a feat of engineering that was!

Crossing underneath the canal, and trying not to think of the many tons of water sitting right over our heads, we continued on toward the northern edge of Magdeburg, which turned out to be an industrial area. We saw a huge plant apparently making windmills to generate electricity, and some of the unfinished wind vanes out in front were just gigantic. The push for renewable energy has resulted in many windmill farms covering parts of northern Germany, but the effort has been largely successful as I read that Germany now has 85% of its power produced by renewable sources, an astonishing achievement. Continuing southwards into the residential areas of Magdeburg, which is quite large, we were perforce given an informal tour as the Komoot route zigzagged southwards to the center.

Arriving just before noon, we locked up our bicycles in a "Fahrad Box" and signed into the hotel.

After resting a bit, we ventured out to the main train station to buy tickets for our trip back to Hamburg and have a belated lunch in the food court area of the downtown shopping center. We ventured out a second time to explore the area around the hotel, which featured some nice sculptures, and buy sandwiches and drinks for our evening snack.

Monika even went out a third time that afternoon to do some shopping, but I had had it by then and just relaxed in our room, sewing up yet another sock with a hole worn in the toe, and a slit in my courier bag where some of the fabric was starting to give way again. Monika came back with a city map she had acquired at the Information Center down the street, and that should be useful for wandering around the city tomorrow . Not having another book, we played with the iPads until bedtime. As it got dark outside, however, we were treated to a free light show put on by a high-rise building just outside our window! The framework of the building had apparently been adorned with red, white, and blue LED lights, which were switched on and off in different pretty patterns. It was quite an intriguing way to be lulled to sleep, I must admit.