Our first trip after our December holiday home was to a destination we'd often considered but passed over many times for various reasons. Yup, you guessed it - The Harz. We picked out a weekend when we hoped it would be in decent snow so we could see the region in white, booked our nights accommodation in Wernigerode and planned out how we were going to get there and what we might do there. It all came together fairly easily - we just needed the snow part to co-operate. So that Saturday morning, we headed to the Alexanderplatz Station to catch our train to Wernigerode. It was a train run by a special private company, and the tickets for it could only be bought on board. The tickets were a bargain I thought - for a return trip over the weekend, it would cost €29 for the two of us and the train would take us to Wernigerode without having to change. It did take 3 hours in each direction, but this was neither here nor there as far as we were concerned and there was quite a lot of snow landscape to watch go by as the sun rose over the land. The snow was getting thicker, and then after Magdeburg it started getting thinner - to the point when we got to Halberstadt, about 20mins from Wernigerode there was no snow on the ground anymore. The snow returned in that last 20 minutes and we could see there was snow on the hills. We were planning to go into the hills anyway so we'd at least get snow that way. The train was slightly late and a lot of people piled off and rushed to go catch the Harz narrow-gauge Steam Train at the nearby platform before it departed. We were going to ride the train, but a bit later - we decided to visit the station and get our tickets now though. There was a sign on the door in German which we had to translate but it said trains were not running beyond Shierke to Brocken due to weather, which seemed to disappoint most people but for us that was fine as we weren't planning on going any further than Shierke anyway. Apart from the fact it cost over double to travel the extra distance from Shierke to Brocken at the top of the hill, I'd been keeping an eye on the webcams and weather at the Brocken, and it had looked appalling white-out conditions all the previous week. I've been up the Brocken in bad weather and I certainly am not looking for a repeat (to be honest with it being so exposed, having good weather up there seems a bit rare). We got our tickets, then wandered around the main streets of Wernigerode for a while and even visited the same shop where Dion got his socks from the last time I was there. They had some choice clothing sale specials on and Sasha and I bought one or two items each before heading back to the station, where we caught the train. The train took us through Wernigerode and up to Drei Annen Hohne, and while I expected the scenery to look pretty in the snow I didn't anticipate how pretty it might look especially with white hills highlighted with blue skies behind. Sasha and I spent longer out on the platforms than either of us intended getting photos! We knew at Drei Annen Hohne we'd have to change trains as our train would go on to Nordhausen instead. So we get off at Drei Annen Hohne and instead of 3 trains, there is only 2. The other train that was not ours looked set to head back to Wernigerode, so where was the train that we needed? had it not come yet? our train soon took off with no-one on it, but then parked the carriages up in a different platform and the engine then went off by itself. What on earth is going on? I went into the station and asked about our train - luckily the lady spoke a little English, and said the train we wanted to catch wasn't running but there was another one to Shierke in an hour. We hadn't planned on being at Drei Annen Hohne for much time, let alone an hour so we got some lunch from a nearby stand at the station and wandered to another areas of stands and got some Glühwein. Eventually our train showed up, we hopped on and rode up to Shierke where there was a large crowd at the platform, who looked like they were waiting to hop on the train and ride it back downhill. We anticipated that this would be the case also and beyond taking a few photos, didn't move much from the train. Only when I noticed that the carriages were all empty and that crowd had vanished somewhere, did I go ask the ticket office lady what time the next train was. Turns out we were going to be at Shierke for 90 minutes, which was longer than we anticipated or imagined. However we made the most of it by wandering up a snow driving path where some were using sleds, and Sasha fell in the snow about 4 times as she'd lose footing in the deeper parts! we also sampled some of the Schnapps of all sorts of different varieties that we'd acquired also, before eventually boarding the train and heading back down to Drei Annen Hohne where we had to change to yet another train in order to return to Wernigerode. Our plan was to go back to the clothing store upon our return to Wernigerode and see if there was anything else that we wanted to buy (loads actually, but we only bought a few more things - as we only had so much room in our bags to carry things!), and once that was done we had a little bit of time to kill before going to the Hotel Restaurant for our dinner booking so we started wandering the darkened streets of Wernigerode - only for it to start snowing on us, lightly at first and then fairly heavily! by the time we had gotten back to the Hotel it started easing but everything was covered in a pleasing blanket of white. We got our hoped-for table by the window for dinner, which meant our drinks were delivered by model train which was quite a fun quirk! After our very substantial breakfast, we checked out of the Hotel and headed out into Wernigerode, wandering our way towards the Schloss or Castle. Its not a leisurely hike up the steep path to the Schloss, but once we were up there we had a rather lovely view of a snow-blanketed Wernigerode. I'd been in the castle once before with Dion, and while we did think about going in we decided against it this time as it wasn't anything much special. After a walk down the hill and a fairly leisurely walk through the town, having coffee in a shop and checking out a few other shops (interestingly open on a Sunday, which isn't the norm for Germany) we arrived at the road intersection near the Westerntor station where the train goes through it. According to the timetable we should see two trains pass through, one in each direction within about 5 minutes of each other and in the very light snow we saw one, but the other was a no-show. We popped into the Westerntor station to look at the shop there, saw the display screen which listed the next Schierke-bound train and decided to go for a wander through the town along the path that follows the railway track and catch a photo or two of this next train when it would pass through. We decided to halt at a nice looking spot, and decided to try the last of our Schnapps bottles just as a group of Germans walked by - they seemed quite amused and said "Prost!" to us as they passed. The train came, we got our photos and then we walked back through town, eventually finding a place to have a late-lunch-early-dinner where we had a very hearty stew and a beer, before heading back to the station to catch our late afternoon train back to Berlin. The train was super packed upon leaving Wernigerode but we did manage to find two seats opposite each other in a group of 4, and I figured either the train would become even more full at the next main stop of Halberstadt or it might empty out. Just as we are pulling into Halberstadt I notice a family in a group of three seats behind us get up and walk to the door, so I plonked my bag on the seat and we moved into the group of three seats ourselves. Turns out the train emptied out, so we were able to keep the 3 seats to ourselves. Unlike some of our other travels where we arrive back in Berlin fairly late at night, it was only 8.45pm when we got back into Berlin so with the short tramride home, we still had a bit of the evening free to wind down and get things ready for the next day before heading to bed - which was quite nice for a change! Well we finally got back to the Harz, and it was the white wonderland that we had hoped for in the end! The special train made things fairly easy to get there and back, and Wernigerode is a lovely almost stereotypical German town straight from a fairytale - so very pretty. I think we both enjoyed the trip, and while we might have done a bit and seen a bit, it was on the whole a slower-paced and more relaxing weekend away than we have typically done in recent times. So we've done the Harz, although Quedlinberg still remains as a potential location to visit on our list. Quedlinberg can be easily reached by the same train that took us to Wernigerode, so its all doable - perhaps a summertime visit when its warm? Maybe we won't get around to that one, who knows. But I certainly enjoyed going back to Wernigerode, and also seeing the steam trains there in the snow again - like I had hoped I might!
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A Kiwi out travelling in the UK and surrounding countries Archives
August 2019
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