Days Flying Fast!

We haven't really lost track of the days, but after five days away from home, it takes a while to catch up.

Of course it was fun in the Harz!  We left Monday and stopped along the way in Goslar where the German Kings of the Holy Roman Empire had their major castle.  There's lots of slate and stone, practical and decorative, and lucky for us some relatively good weather.

Our hotel in Quedlinburg was as usual just charming.  The house was built by a "city farmer" in the mid-1600s and now has an assortment of hotel rooms and apartments along with a restaurant and Biergarten.  We do love a Biergarten.

Tuesday it was up the Brocken, the highest mountain in North Germany but of course pretty puny by The Alps' standards.  But it's a good walk and certainly steep enough to wind me and make us all sweat even though it was never over 65°.  The woods are home to witches and devils and trains and mountain bikers.  There's a clear view from the top only 60 days a year (!!) and we were lucky to get one of them.

The next day we stopped at an Antique shop we'd seen the day before and all of us came away with treasures - Hannah with cameras, Hunter with walking sticks, me with linens (what else?) and Werner with a double chopping blade.  Along the way to the Witch's Dancing Place, we stopped at the Devil's Wall.  Lots of danger around here from evil forces, it seems.  The myth of this geological oddity is that the Devil made a pact with God that he could have all the land he could wall in before the cock crowed, but the cock crowed much earlier than normal, before the Devil was finished.  He was so mad he knocked down part of the wall he'd built - and left the rest for us to marvel at.  It was the most impressive part of the trip for me.

We took the gondola to one peak and the chair lift to the other and between the kids rode on a bob-run - individual cars where they controlled the brakes.  Fun!!

Day three was spent in Quedlinburg, visiting the castle, convent church and seeing the treasury there.  An American officer had "saved" most of these medieval treasures by secretly transporting them back home to Texas after WWII.  When he died, the heirs gave them back to their rightful owners for a 3 million handling fee.   There were jewel-encrusted bibles and psalters, relics of Heinrich I, the first German king and decorated manuscripts.

So long, Quedlinburg!  On the way back to Bremen we walked UP yet another mount to look at the castle in Wernigerode, another of the seats of the German kings.  They had 90, so we could have visited a lot more, but you take castles when you can get them.

Back home again ....