Campsites,Germany #12of14

Rolandwerth’s campsite was on the Rhine River, between Bonn and Koblenz near the remains of the Ludendorff Bridge, at Remagen. During WW II, as the German Army retreated, they tried to destroy all bridges across the Rhein. Only part of the explosives on the Ludendorff Bridge exploded, and it stood long enough for several divisions of the US Army to cross the Rhein. The Germans concentrated artillery fire on the bridge, it fell on March 17, 1945. The shore-line piers remain.

The drive along the Main River south of Würzburg, is exceptionally delightful. We looked around in Kitzingen, stopped in the campsite, then the next morning we drove along the Main River to the little walled town of Sulzfeld.

We were tired, so returned to Artlenburg on the banks of the Elbe, to one of the campgrounds we had passed an hour or so earlier. We mentioned to the campsite manager that Boizenburg (in what was formerly East Germany) appears quite clean, and many of the houses look newly renovated. He said, “It's a “Potemkin Village,” named for Russian Prince Grigori Potemkin, who built a false-front village to impress his ruler. Only the buildings along the main street have been renovated, the rest of the buildings in the town, await their turn.

At the front desk of a small hotel in Lübeck, a pretty lady named Rink gave me a map and perfect directions to the campsite. I don’t say they are pretty unless they really are, but when we (I!) stopped here the next day to thank her (I said!), we found it was her day off. The campground, at the edge of Lübeck, is run by a young man who has lived in the West for a few years, but has family he visits regularly in the East, now (1991) that the Berlin Wall has fallen.

From Dresden we drove through Meissen, and on to the Castle at Moritzburg, built on a small island in a lake. We stopped early at the very nice campground nearby, and took it easy for the rest of the day. The next morning, headed east, we found the east bound lanes of the Autobahn had been completed 50 to 60 years ago, as a two lane road. The west bound side had been graded for lanes, but now large trees, not just weeds, grow as a forest where the autobahn was planned. They were harvesting the trees, regrading and preparing to complete the road surface after all these years.