Day 12 Bröckel to Rietze - 20 km. Total km: 257

We slept long and well in our very comfortable beds upstairs in Torsten's home. There was no rush this morning as he said breakfast wasn't until 8 am. And what a lovely breakfast it was - boiled eggs, jams and spreads including local honey, cheese and cold meats, and warm from the oven buns. And we breakfasted by candlelight.

Our breakfast table. 

We chatted as we ate. Torsten said again that his decision to host pilgrims came from the heart. He said he usually has about 20 pilgrims as year. He would like to see that number grow but he said that more pilgrim accommodation needs to develop if that were to happen.

He said he particularly likes it when pilgrims from overseas walk this route as he said that they can see that German people are good people - he gave a little laugh, then said that Germans are not Nazis. He said it is good that we are learning about Germany and it's people. 

He did say that we will see a difference between the people who live in what used to be East Germany, and those in the West. He said that when the East and West were reunified most of the young people left the East, leaving just the older people and those young people who Torsten said were angry about what was happening. Torsten said we will find the people, architecture quite different, and the area not as prosperous. 

We spent about an hour chatting then it was time to get walking. 

Torsten stamped and signed our passports. 

Torsten - he said he loves his home and his village. Such a lovely man. 

On our way again. 

Torsten laughed when he told us that he was the only Catholic in the village but holds the key to the Protestant church.

We had another cold bleak start to the day, colder than yesterday, and for most of the day's walk was alongside roads or on very minor roads. Once again past massive cropping areas - potatoes, grains, and asparagus. Torsten told us the asparagus pickers are from Romania and Bulgaria. He said Germans wouldn't want to work so hard, also Germans would expect higher pay. 

We also passed many wind turbines. 

We saw markers to Rome for the first time today. The sign below says 166 km from Stade but at that point we had walked 242 km. Maybe the route has been slightly changed since this sign was made. 

And during the day we passed cows outside which is unusual. Anna Wiederhold, who we stayed with in Bellen, told us that cattle used to be kept indoors year round but that is now illegal, they must spend part of the year outside. 

Asparagus harvesting continued. Torsten said Germans love white asparagus but he thought it is too expensive. 

The asparagus stalks are very thick, much thicker than the white asparagus we saw in Spain. 

For the first time since we started walking we saw irrigators being used. Several large blocks were being irrigated at the same time. Heinrich, our host for tonight, said the soil is so sandy here that irrigation is vital.

Something that we have seen in several places are bio-gas plants. Maize is harvested and the whole plants are cut into fine pieces and stored without oxygen for a year then microbes are introduced to produce the bio-gas which is converted into electricity. 

A bio-gas plant.

We walked past and through a few small settlements and stopped in one called Eltze for our lunch break. Shortly after our lunch break the sun came out and it got relatively warm for most of the rest of the afternoon.

In Eltze.

Then it was onwards to Rietze where we are staying tonight. I had been in contact with Heinrich Hennigs, the route sponsor for this area, and he arranged for us to stay in the Dorfgemeinschaftshaus - the village community centre. 

Just outside of Rietze we came across a pilgrim rest area with a plaque about the Via Romea Germanica. 

The Dorfgemeinschaftshaus, our home for tonight. 

Heinrich met us at the community centre and chatted for quite a while, telling us the history of the area and the types of farming that had been carried out here over the years. He said the first documented history of Rietze was written over 800 years ago. He is very proud that Abbot Albert, the monk who wrote of the way Rome, had an overnight stop in Rietze. 

While Heinrich was talking to us the mayor of Rietze came to see us for a short while then his daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter arrived to see us as well. They had spent some time in New Zealand a few years ago and wanted to talk to us.

The mayor's daughter & her family. 

Once they left Heinrich took us on a lengthy tour of the village, telling us about the various houses and their history. Initially the village consisted of what he called farms. He explained that the farms all clustered together for safety. He also explained about the massive buildings - they have wide entrances and years ago the massive room immediately inside the doorway was used for threshing grain crops. He said the family lived in a wing of the building behind this room, and animals were in the areas on either side of threshing room. Now there are only three working farms in the village, the rest have been converted into homes.

Heinrich took us to his 'farm' which hasn't been used as a farm for many years. Much of the main building has been covered into home space - and there are many huge buildings that make up his farm. Just Heinrich and his wife Dagmar live there. Heinrich was born there, as was his father and grandfather - he said his family have been at that property, with many changes to the buildings, for many many generations. Soon Heinrich and Dagmar are moving to another village and their youngest son and his young family are going to move into the family farm. The generations of ownership will continue. 

Just a small part of Heinrich's & Dagmar's home.

The dark doors on the right were for the pigs.

Another small part of their home.

We sat in chairs in the sun, one of the chairs can be seen on the left, and chatted to them for about an hour. While sitting there Heinrich pointed out a storks nest that he made 5 years ago and installed on the roof of his house and for the last 4 years the same pair of have nested there. Not long ago five eggs hatched and we were able to see one of the parent birds feeding the chicks - we couldn't see the chicks though, just the action of the food being regurgitated. 

Heinrich took a photo of the 4 of us before continuing on with the village tour and back to the Dorfgemeinschaftshaus. 

The sun too bright!

Back at the community centre Jeff and I hurriedly organised our dinner in the centre's kitchen as by then it was very late! 

We have caused quite a stir in the village as we are the first New Zealand pilgrims to stay in the community centre. 

Rietze is a village in the municipality of Edemissen in the Peine district of Lower Saxony. Rietze is located north of the district town of Peine, between the two major centers of Hanover and Braunschweig, off the main roads on the edge of the Southern Heath.

Population 280

Source: Wikipedia