Crossing the Old Iron Curtain

Ten miles into our chilly, windy 56-mile ride today, we crossed the old "iron curtain" as we traveled from West to East Germany. This term referred to the boundary that symbolically, ideologically, and physically divided Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II until the end of the Cold War (roughly 1945 to 1990). It was popularized by Winston Churchill in a 1946 speech ("... an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe ... lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere ...")

We knew that East Germany hasn't come close to reaching economic parity with West Germany, but we weren't sure how much of a difference we would see between these two regions. In fact, the difference is striking, greatly exceeding anything we would have guessed. An immediate change for us was that our bike path ended the moment we crossed the line; after near-continuous bike paths in Belgium, Holland, and West Germany, we suddenly had to compete with cars on a fairly major road. Other, far more consequential differences soon became apparent, including:

-- we saw many buildings in a state of serious disrepair, some abandoned and others occupied, unlike the uniformly well-kept buildings in West Germany and prior countries on our trip

-- the bigger towns have large, drab Communist-era housing blocks

-- we saw almost no industry (unlike the West, which is full of manufacturing plants and other business establishments)

-- the towns had few stores and eating places (unlike the towns in the West, which were filled with pastry shops, excellent restaurants, and chic stores)

-- several car drivers acted in a rude manner towards us, coming close to cutting us off, diametrically opposed to the extremely courteously behavior of drivers that we had previously encountered on our trip

-- there were frequent instances of police cars racing down the road with sirens blaring

We were impressed, on the other hand, by the incredible number of wind turbines in the eastern (as well as the western) parts of Germany. By one estimate, 25% of all wind-generated electricity in the world is in Germany. But Germany will have to greatly increase its power generation from wind and other renewable energy sources if it is to succeed in its recently announced, ambitious goal of closing all of its nuclear power plants by 2022. Nuclear power now generates almost a quarter of German electricity.

Road sign located at the junction between East and West Germany

We lost our bike path as soon as we entered East Germany

One of many buildings in a state of disrepair in East Germany

Communist-era housing block

Some of the thousands of wind turbines that we've seen in Germany