A railway station is not what you would expect on a list of highlights, but Uelzen is not an ordinary case. The town's main station was rebuilt in the late 1990s to a design by Friedensreich Hundertwasser, the Austrian artist who hated straight lines, and it opened in 2000, the year of his death. The result is a joyful mess: coloured columns, tiles in shining patterns, golden onion domes on the roof, trees growing out of windows and a floor that undulates beneath your feet. It looks as if a child had been allowed to design a station and had been given a big budget. Inside there is a normal functioning railway. Outside there is a line of motorcyclists taking photos, because this has become a kind of pilgrimage for people on two wheels.
Uelzen itself is a calm town of about thirty-five thousand people on the Ilmenau, at the eastern edge of the Lüneburg Heath. It was a Hanseatic member in the Middle Ages and it has some good brick churches and old timber houses, and in the surrounding countryside there are sugar beet fields, potatoes and the straight, flat roads of the north German plain. The Elbe Side Canal runs by the town and has a large ship lift, which is a minor attraction for people who like engineering. Fuel, groceries and cafés are easy to find in the centre, so it is a very good place for a reset.
The riding here is mostly about the connections. The roads to the north and south are straight, with long views across open fields, and the main risk is wind rather than curves. If the wind is from the west, it can be a long day on a light bike. There are quiet lanes through forest and farmland on both sides, and in spring the verges are full of wild flowers and, in a good year, the fields of rape that turn the landscape bright yellow. The old trading route between Lüneburg and Magdeburg ran through this region.
Take your photo from the forecourt, and if the sun is behind you the colours are strongest. A weekday morning is calmer. The staff are used to people who come to look and not to travel, and the cafés in the station building are a pleasant place for a coffee.