Via Romea Germanica Day 20: Domäne Stiege - Neustadt im Harz

Ein jeder sieht, was er im Herzen trägt.

(A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.)

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part 1

I left my Wanderhütte at Domäne Stiege to follow a dirt road through pastures and forests to Stiege, coming into the village just below the castle. I passed beside the bell tower of a red wooden church beside a small lake just as the bells tolled 9 o'clock. A steam whistle reminded me that I was again on a branch of the Harzer Schmalspurbahnen narrow-gauge railway network. The Selketal line, the first to be built, runs up the Selke valley to Quedlinburg, said to be a beautiful town; but at the slow speed of the narrow-gauge railway, it would take almost two hours to get there, and another two hours to get back again! 

I hadn't enough time to make the trip, but I did take the time to stop at the village shop and café for a cup of strong, hot coffee; there had been nowhere to boil water at the campground, unless you had your own pots and pans, so I'd had instant coffee dissolved in cold almond milk as my breakfast drink. Great on a hot, sunny morning, but not ideal on this cold and cloudy day! 

The castle and church at Stiege

Stiege

The castle at "Styghe" was first mentioned in 1329, and its construction was attributed to the Counts of Blankenburg, possibly to protect the nearby "Hohe Strasse", the road connecting the towns of Hasselfelde, Güntersberge (Kohlberg) and Siptenfelde in this area abounding in iron ore. Today, it is a quiet village of a thousand souls, with the air of a minor holiday resort. 

 

The Dorfladen or village shop

On my way out of Stiege I passed another pretty wooden church, which was also closed, but had a stamp and a variety of wooden sculptures outside it offering cute photo opportunities! 😄

🎵 He's got my whole backpack, in His hand... 🎶

New walking buddy?

I then crossed the railroad tracks and passed by the station, but there were no trains coming through for twenty minutes - a long time to wait for a train I didn't want to catch, but only take a photograph of - and so I carried on into the fields, stopping only to tuck my trouser legs into my socks and spray the lower part of them with tick repellent, to be on the safe side.

Over the grassy fields, and through a forest of young beech trees - finally spotting a deer along the way, and quite close, too - I came to the boundary between the regions of Sachsen-Anhalt and Thüringen, and entered the third of the four regions of Germany that I will walk across!

This stream, called the Bere, is the border

Thüringen, the region that gave birth to Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, surely the three greatest Johanns ever (until I came along 😅), welcomes pilgrims with a picnic table by the stream/border, but I pressed on until the next picnic table before stopping for lunch. 

From here the Via Romea Germanica follows the old postal road built in 1802, running right through the forests of the Harz to connect Braunschweig with Nordhausen, now a sunken road in the woods. The region of Thüringen is known chiefly for its forests, and in fact my initial impression of the region is that there are indeed a lot of trees! 

In some spots the two-hundred-year-old postal road had been churned up by modern logging machinery on caterpillar tracks. There were a lot of different gravel roads, dirt tracks and trails running through the forest, and the waymarkers were hard to spot among the trees; two or three times I went down the wrong track for a few hundred metres before realising my mistake! At one point I was walking along a clearing created for the power lines; the trees had been cut down, but the ground was very uneven, and it seemed odd that a hiking trail would go this way, so I checked my gps track and saw that I was supposed to be a few hundred metres further over to the east. I was heading in the right direction,  though, and there was not a lot of undergrowth in the forest, so it was easy to cut through the trees back onto the sunken road.

The trail began to head steeply downhill. Another wrong turn took me into Neustadt by a slightly longer route, but in this case it was a good mistake, because it took me past the "mammoth tree", a 140-metre-high Sequoia planted in 1870. I was equally impressed by the ancient beech trees, more appropriate and native to the area. 

Neustadt

Despite its name, meaning "new town", Neustadt is not really so new: it is first mentioned in historical documents in 1372, under the name "Novenstadt". The town stands at the foot of Hohenstein Castle, built in 1120 and now in ruins.

I came into Neustadt at the top end of the town, by a pretty little park with a small lake in it, the Gondelteich. On weekends, and/or in summer, there is an ice cream kiosk there; today, it was deserted. In fact, pretty much all the businesses in the town turned out to be shut, except for a small café/bakery and a sort of general store called Preisgut, just outside the town centre, which looked like it hadn't changed much since the days of the DDR! 😄

The latest fashions, on display in the same aisle as the canned goods and instant noodles

There was no fresh produce for sale at the store, despite the wealth of plants and flowers offered for sale outside... I guess you have to grow your own! So I bought a tin of lentil soup to heat in the microwave at the hotel, as all the town's restaurants appear to open only on weekends, apart from the ubiquitous kebab shop! Which also does pizza, a potentially interesting option, unless you come from Italy and don't trust German pizza! 😅

Neustadt does, however, have a beautiful church, St. Georg, which is kept open; you can go in, turn the lights on for yourself, take as many photos as you like, stamp your own pilgrim passport and sign the guest book. Don't forget to turn out the lights again when you go out; who knows how long it will be until the next pilgrim comes by!

Neustadt city gate (1680)

 

Where I live, roofs are tiled with slate; here, walls too!

Roland (b. 1730)

Neustadt also has one of Germany's last five surviving Roland statues. In medieval times, these statues of a knight with a drawn sword, representing the popular hero Roland (or Orlando), were erected outside the town hall or in the market square to represent the city's freedom and town rights. This particular Roland was rebuilt in 1730, the date appearing on his belt.

Right where the Via Romea Germanica comes into Neustadt stands Pension Haus Ibe, a fully operational farm that rents rooms. My home for tonight! I'm really looking forward to having farm-fresh eggs for breakfast! 😋

Pension Ibe

Pension Ibe

The farmyard 

Self-service egg shop

My room

Domäne Stiege - Neustadt 21 km