Revival 2.0 My bike and I are on the road in Löwenberger Land

I must admit that I had my doubts at the beginning. Going out on the bike again, pedaling kilometers again, the same route again?

Well, last year with a car and a bike.

However, my ambition to cover the distance exclusively by bike was stronger. And my health has recovered after the rehab.

And indeed, once you are out on the bike, you regret nothing and are glad to have stepped out of your comfort zone once more.

I can literally feel the explosion of energy, and when a male cyclist overtakes me again and shouts to me as he passes by, “Quite an energetic karbid,” it’s evident.🙄

Yes, I am… fast, wild, adventurous. Thank God🙏🏼

25 km is the starting point today. After I start from Wischer at 9:00 AM, without saying goodbye to my neighbors since they are still sleeping, 🙄 I reach Stendal at 10:00 AM and am in Kremmen by 1:00 PM.

By train.🚃

There I take a break, visit my old school, places from my past, and reminisce about beautiful and wild times. Eventually, I find myself again at Doris and Gisela's garden enjoying coffee and cake.

By now it feels like coming home. Doris must be about the same age as my late mom. 🥹 Perhaps that's why…

Around 4:00 PM, I set off and embark on my Revival 2.0 bike tour.

There is a well-known shortage of many things in this country. Of kindness, skilled workers, but especially of confidence.

But not of soft serve ice cream. Blue and white flags are waving at me from everywhere. And just before I reach my first destination, I spot a sign reading: Soft Serve Butter Biscuit Lemon 🍋. I admit, it's a daring combination, but I really had a strong craving to try it. However, the thought of the delicious dinner ahead on the decadent castle terrace of Gut Liebenberg makes me act sensibly.

However, I didn’t know then that it would only be a “celery schnitzel.”😅

In fact, soft serve 🍦 is about much more than just sugar and flavor. It’s about the feeling of beaming back into the past within seconds. A smell can trigger it, a song. For me, riding over cobblestones and the stench of cow dung inevitably brings about that feeling. The familiar then becomes a luxury good in a constantly changing world.

And the soft serve is part of a whole world of vanished certainties.

Do you remember phone booths, video rental stores, catalogs in the mailbox? Or waiting for your favorite movie on TV?

Being sentimental is, fundamentally, a quiet protest against the passage of time.

And these stories, the more often they are repeated, become friendlier as well. The bad fades in clarity in retrospect, the good gains in color. A kind of survival mechanism of the soul. I don’t exempt myself from this. That's why, allegedly, it always snowed before. 🤭

Our present, after all, is anything but slow, stable, and reliable. Anyone living in such a time inevitably develops a longing for things that do not change. And I am definitely prone to addiction. Perhaps that's why so many old shows are experiencing a revival on television.

By now, not only companies are using this “mechanism.” “Things were better back in the day.” Populist statements are more positively received when sweetened with nostalgia.🍓

Individual soft serve ice cream sentimentality is still harmless.

Communities that collectively cling to an idealized past, trivializing dark capital and idealizing an idyll that didn't truly exist and is no longer contemporary, are stuck in a poisoned present.

What helps against that?

Maybe a “Flutschfinger” or a soft serve.🍦😜