Main line

The journey is nearing its end. Today's start is in Bad Sulza. The route leads through beautiful Thuringian countryside and over small roads. The thing with the small streets is awkward when you're heading towards the motorway. The Hermsdorfer Kreuz is nearby, the A4 and A9 are important traffic arteries. The small streets are correspondingly full this morning...

But soon I'll be in the valley village region, south of Jena. It's quiet here. You meet at the fence and have a chat, a tractor interrupts for a moment, you turn around to look at the single motorcycle. The Leuchtenburg comes into my field of vision. First far away, then every now and then and finally in full screen mode 😊 I'm particularly familiar with a route here and I'm enjoying the ride. Stop in the village where the parents lived; it's lunchtime. Nobody familiar is in sight, it's a final farewell for me.

In the town next door, the students' good old Simson mopeds are parked in the school parking lot. It's great that they are so well cared for and can demonstrate their longevity.

Then I pass the old garden on the road and gradually leave the Orla valley. The road winds quite adventurously through the towns, forests and meadows. Now I am in the Slate Mountains, which are shared by Thuringia, Franconia and Vogtland, I have crossed the Saale one last time and am approaching the Main. And with it the border line between southern and northern Germany, for some it's also the Weisswurst border... but that's where opinions differ.

Very close to the old Geyersburg, now Geiersberg Castle, I'm sleeping in strange beds for the last time today. Before that, however, I allow myself to be enchanted by the medieval town center of the town of Seßlach.