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THE DDR - East Germany, though it asked never to be called that way - was the runt of the post-war continent. It tried so hard, it failed so badly; it's looked on now with scorn and pity and yet it achieved a surprising amount.

Its border happened to be where the Red Army waited for the western allies to catch up.

Stalin didn't want a country there. He offered to abandon it, three times, in exchange for a reunited and demilitarised Germany. The western allies doubted his motives and turned him down. Historians still debate those days but nobody challenges the outcome: that East Germany became a state that never stood a chance.

Not much remains of the fence that marked the border and the embarrassing failure to convince East Germans that good times were just around the corner. The DDR's leaders had spent the war in Russia; they were indoctrinated there and they were out of touch with the experience of the people they ruled. They could point to jobs for life, to housing too inexpensive to worry about, to the absolute equality of men and women (something the united Germany has yet to achieve) and to much else.

But just as capitalism isn't good enough for people, so people aren't good enough for communism.

I had a penfriend in Germany when I was 14. He told me how proud he was of the anti-fascist wall being built around his country. I was too young to understand and he stopped writing perhaps because of it. I had far more trivial things to occupy me at 14, marooned as I was between a dying interest in steam trains and a rising fascination with girls.

What happened to my friend, I do not know. He may have changed his mind; he may have joined the Stasi. Or, like the majority of East Germans, he probably just got on with his life and laughed with friends and played football in the park.

Most of the fence  has been torn down, along with its watchtowers People had lived through too much history to want to live it again. But a few far-sighted individuals thought otherwise and they have preserved their four decades of division.

It is on the line of the border that we plan to ride, where once were minefields and automatic guns and more. It has become a Eurovélo route, the dream of a member of the European Parliament called Michael Cramer.

I lost a penfriend because I was too young, too far away, when the fence went up. I experienced its dismantlement with more interest, but still from far away.

This will be our chance to see, to touch, to half-close our eyes and try to see the past, a past that held so many dreams but ended in failure.