Via Romea Germanica Day 17: Veckenstedt - Wernigerode

Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders, Gott helfe mir!

(Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God!)

 - Martin Luther, quoted on the Angel Bench on the Klosterwandernweg

Dagmar and I are both early risers; we were out of bed at 6 and out the door by 7. With some difficulty; the barn door where we had come in was locked from the outside! But we found another way out of the rambling farmhouse in Veckenstedt and set off across the village. 

Wernigerode was only ten easy kilometres away, but we decided to make our route longer and more interesting by going the long way around. We followed the river Ilse to Ilsenburg, where Dagmar took the train home to rejoin her family and get back to work on her new book; she is walking the Via Romea Germanica a few days at a time, to fit it into her schedule. I was sorry to see her go, as I enjoyed her company, and whenever we met someone or needed something she did all the talking - not many people in Eastern Germany speak English! 

In Ilsenburg 

From Ilsenburg I followed one stage of the Klosterwandernweg, a trail  from monastery to monastery through the woods of the Harz. 

The Harz, from Hardt meaning hilltop hardwood forest, is a low mountain range, 110 kilometres long and 35 kilometres wide; its highest peak, the Brockel, is only 1141 metres high. But in this flat land it is considered a major attraction! Part of the Harz is a national park, and while the portion that was in West Germany has been exploited for forestry and replanted with second-growth spruce trees - now suffering and dying of disease - the eastern part, with the Brockel, was in the East German restricted zone adjacent to the border and was therefore left alone for several decades. Its mainly deciduous forests of beech, oak and sycamore are still thriving. 

The monastery just outside Ilsenburg was, unfortunately, closed until 10, and I wasn't about to sit in the parking lot outside waiting for an hour, so I continued through the forest to Kloster Drübeck - though definitely not by the shortest route! The Internet signal in the Harz is spotty, and I hadn't downloaded the gps track of my route in advance; there were all sorts of trails criss-crossing through the woods. Location services worked, so I could tell where I was and head in the general direction of Drübeck; eventually I reached the former Benedictine convent, now an evangelical centre with a theological school, conference facilities, gardens and a café. 

Construction of the church began in 1004, with extensive modifications in the 12th century. 

Linden tree planted in 1732

The café was still closed when I arrived, so I sat on a bench with a view of the 300-year-old linden tree, eating bread and chocolate out of my backpack and using the Kloster wifi to orient myself better and access useful information, as I had no Internet access other than wifi practically all day. I hope it won't be like this all the way across the Harz!

Then I moved on, stopping to buy half a kilogram of fresh strawberries from a kiosk outside the monastery gates. By lunch time I was in Hasserode, the village two kilometres outside Wernigerode where I had booked my lodgings. My plan had been to take the narrow-gauge railway from there into town, or the opposite way for a ride up into the mountains and back, but the train schedule is organised to facilitate daytrips for tourists, so the trains going up into the mountains departed in the late morning and returned in the late afternoon; I arrived during the gap in between. I walked the two kilometres into town, without my backpack, which I had dropped off with Frau Homann, the sweet old lady who has rented me a room. The path ran beside the railway tracks, but not a single train passed by. In Wernigerode, I headed first for the tourist information office in the main square, where I spent rather a lot of time on the wifi figuring out places where I might stay for the next couple of nights and then asking Sabine, the friendly English-speaking head of staff, to call and book them for me. Sometimes I can see why people book organised tours; when you travel independently, you are sometimes so busy taking care of the logistics of the next stages that you don't have time to fully enjoy where you are at the present moment!

The church in Wernigerode was closed, but I found myself in front of the open town museum and, for three euros, went in and took a quick look around. All the information was posted in German only, but the exhibits about the history and geology of the Harz were worth a look.

Wernigerode 

The suffix -rode means, in this part of the world, a clearing in the woods; a patch of forest was cleared to build a lowland castle here at some time before 1121, when Wernigerode is first mentioned in a historical document. The present romantic castle, perched high above the town, is of late 19th-century construction. The town's Gothic city hall with a timber facade dates from 1498.

Westerntor 

Further logistical requirements put my sightseeing expedition to an abrupt end; I needed to buy food, and the last train back to my lodgings on the narrow-gauge railway line left the main station at 17:25. I searched Google Maps for a supermarket, but they were all outside the town centre, and already closed! Shopping hours seem to be shorter in eastern Germany! So I settled for what I could find within easy walking distance: a cheese and tomato sandwich from a bakery, along with a bread bun with which to make another similar sandwich for tomorrow, with the cheese and tomatoes left in my backpack from yesterday; a banana, an apple and some Ayran from a Turkish greengrocer. With the half-kilo of strawberries from Drübeck, that ought to be enough!

I waited at Wernigerode station for the last train of the afternoon on the narrow-gauge railway, which was not a steam train (they save those for the tourist runs up the Brockel) but a 1970s diesel railbus (combined locomotive/passenger car). 

The ten-minute ride was fun, but soon over. Frau Homann was out doing her gardening when I arrived at her house, thwarting my attempt to sneak in the back door unobserved and avoid struggling through another conversation in German! 😄 The kind lady offered me a lawn chair and a glass of orange juice, and I summoned the vocabulary required to pass on the greetings of Sabine from the tourist information office. I discovered that my hostess, whom Sabine told me was over 80, had been to the Aquarium in Genoa (she called it an "underwater museum" in German, which I found quaint), to Stresa on Lago Maggiore, and to Verona. And possibly also to the Cinque Terre, or maybe she just said she knew where they were!

I wished Frau Homann a good evening as soon as I decently could, and retired to my quarters to consume a rather frugal dinner of cheese sandwiches, instant asparagus soup, a banana - and half a kilo of strawberries!

Ferienzimmer Homann

Veckenstedt - Wernigerode 23 km