When passing Diesbar-Seuslitz, a small place, I decided to find Werner. A former colleague and friend who used to live there, but we lost contact almost 40 years ago. Seeing a company advertising board with Werner’s name I called the company. Unfortunately no connection. Then I dropped in the first pub. The waitress recommended me to go to another pub. Here the owner was suspicious first and gave me a series of probing questions. When seeing that my story is candid, she smiled, picked up her phone and called Werner ex-wife who still lives in the village. She remembered me immediately and asked me to come over.

Over coffee and cake we talked for more than an hour, and she gave me Werner’s phone number. He now lives in a different city. Though on my way, Werner was out of town. Nevertheless, we are in touch again. All without using Google!

Later, I asked a random cyclist for directions. He kindly offered me to follow him. He was a local and during our 10 km joined ride I learned so much about the villages, history and people. Later also another friend of his joined us and pointed to a forest where 25,000 Russian soldiers have been deployed for 40 years (… and maintained that the Russians and Americans are equally bad in playing world politics)

The last thing I found out today without Google was fun: A tipsy looking landlord of the B&B kept talking to me in very broken English. When I suggested he can speak German, his native language, he replied using his rudimentary vocabulary : “I drinking beers and beers today, German speak tomorrow.”

All in all an eventful off-line experience of 92 km with innumerable lovely talks