On the Road Again: Edgar in Weimar (429 km)

(23-05-19/20) Admittedly, it borders on a loss of reality when you, as a tourist, complain about other tourists. But if you go to Venice or - as I did - to Weimar, you can't help but think: This could be such a dreamlike place, if only the crowds of tourists weren't everywhere! Weimar, the German capital of the educated middle-class, has a lot to offer; Wieland, Goethe and Schiller, Bauhaus and the classical Weimar accredited as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, even a republic is named after it. A full cultural program, in the hotel you get an assigned slot, according to your „early, normal or late breakfast eater skills“. No one is spared, not even children and teenagers accompanied by their parents, even before 07:30 AM on a Saturday [?!], they should show zest for action and thirst for knowledge.

Okay, Schiller, Goethe and the House of the Weimar Republic can be completed before breakfast, the House at the Horn, the only architecture realized by the Bauhaus in Weimar, can be visited from the outside after the program, but what to do in the meantime? The Park on the Ilm is well visited, it is much quieter at the Historical Cemetery, where you can discover a Russian Orthodox Chapel.

Hitler and his henchmen not only destroyed the Weimar Republic, but also built the Buchenwald [beechwood forest] Concentration Camp on the outskirts of Weimar, where more than a quarter of a million people were imprisoned between July 1937 - April 1945. In the morning hours, the Buchenwald Memorial is still deserted.

I leave Buchenwald riding further east, towards Bukovina, named after its extensive beechwood forests since the Middle Ages.