Europe is a history lesson, events that we all learned at school and some lived through, embedded in the very continent I am lucky enough to live in.
I am constantly reminded of events in history as I travel around Europe but none more powerful, or more recent as the two world wars and it's consequences. Of course the USA was involved in both theaters of war but, unless you are visiting Hawaii, you are unlikely to come across visual reminders in America of those world shaping events.
This past weekend I was traveling on the back of Martin's motorcycle around the region of the Harz mountains in Germany. A popular biker destination, with it's curvy roads & open spaces, particularly popular to those of us who live in the "lowlands" and crave hills and mountains!
The group of six bikes and seven people was made up with bikers from the international biker group, started by Martin. I always enjoy the eclectic mix in a biker group but the international flavor means a very varied group of people and nationalities. This time we had two Greek brothers, a lady rider from Romania who was engaged to one of the Greeks, a Russian nuclear physicist , a Scot and us, the Brit/Americans! As you can imagine the conversations over the weekend were culturally interesting and funny, and we all learned a lot about life on an oil-rig, Greek traditions and each other! There was much laughter and a great deal of support and kindness, brought on by the extremely hot temperatures....motorcycling in full gear is not pleasant in temperatures of 33C (91F) and yet no-one lost their temper or caused ill feeling.
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| International Bikers |
The Harz is an area of 2,226 square km and is in Lower Saxony, with a national park, 17 dams, lakes, mountains, a steam train and towns full of timbered houses, it really is a beautiful area to explore. Of course I was there with bikers so it was all about the riding so no hiking for me this visit! The area is full of history, from being one of Goethe favorite places to the weird Walpurgis Night, a sort of Halloween when witches cavort, apparently naked, in the forest!
The most recent of Harz's history was what made me sit up and think. Through the Harz area ran the infamous dividing line that ran from the Baltic to Czechoslovakia, splitting Germany in half and Eastern Europe from the West, the "Iron Curtain". Here I was riding freely in an area that was once fringed by electric fences, patrolled by soldiers armed with machine guns, that divided towns, families and the world's opinion for 45 years. I remembered watching the changes in 1989 as Europe became whole again and marveled that I was riding here.... with a Russian! How Europe has changed since those post war years, but it continues to experience "growing pains" and I feel so strongly that a unified Europe is absolutely what we owe ourselves. When "the Wall" fell 100,000 Germans climbed to top of the Harz mountains, to the Brocken peak, to celebrate ....a peak once denied them as it was home to one of the East's "listening posts." The bonus of the traffic-free border zone is that it became a rich nature reserve over those 45 years and now is a prospective conservation/memorial area with the European Greenbelt Initiative, a nature reserve running for 12,500 km through Europe....so out of something so tragic, something positive for all of us and our planet is occurring....... an ecological phoenix.
http://www.europeangreenbelt.org
http://www.erlebnisgruenesband.de/en/startseite.html
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