Down in the valley of the Flöha, on the edge of Olbernhau, stands an industrial village that looks almost too neat to be real: slate-roofed workshops, a hammer mill, workers' houses and a stout gatehouse, all enclosed within a wall. This is the Saigerhütte Grünthal, a works that separated silver from copper ore by a technique called liquation, and it is one of the best preserved sites of its kind in Europe. It forms part of the Erzgebirge/Krušnohoří Mining Region, listed by UNESCO in 2019 for both the German and Czech sides of the range.
The works flourished from the sixteenth century, when silver from the Ore Mountains fuelled the wealth of Saxony, and it operated for hundreds of years. The copper hammer mill with its great water-driven hammers still works on demonstration days, and the thump of iron on metal echoing through the yard is a sound you will not forget. A few kilometres away, Seiffen is famous for its wooden toys and Christmas ornaments, the nutcrackers and smoking men that miners once carved in winter when the shafts were idle, and the village glows with candle arches in December.
The roads here are among the most enjoyable in eastern Germany. The Erzgebirge rises in long, wooded waves from north to south and then drops sharply into Bohemia, so the routes along the ridge and across the border are full of curves, crests and forest switchbacks. Expect patched surfaces, logging trucks and farm traffic, and in winter snow lies deep and long; this is one of Germany's colder corners. Motorcyclists from Saxony love the ride along the border road towards Seiffen and the descents into the Czech valleys.
Olbernhau has more than ten thousand residents, and fuel, bakeries and inns are easy to find. Try the local potato dishes and a slice of Eierschecke, the Saxon custard cake, with a coffee, and on a clear evening ride up onto the ridge for a long view across the hills into Bohemia.