Sunday, October 7th - Hiking up the Brocken.
Bob: I had been trying to get to the Harz region and walk up the highest mountain there, the Brocken, for our last couple of visits to Germany, but it just never seemed to work out. One time we ran out of time and one time we had everything set and they had a huge snowstorm in the Harz which basically closed down all the roads and trails. So when the day promised to be sunny and clear, I was rather eager to tackle the climb. After checking our paper and electronic versions of topographic maps we thought we had identified the shortest and most gradual climb to the peak, so after breakfast we drove over to a small WWII German military cemetery, parked the car, and started to walk a wide, paved path into the cool, quiet evergreen forest. The path was always in the shadow of the tall trees, but here and there some rays of sunlight broke through the canopy and illuminated the forest floor of heavy moss-covered detritus, and that cheered things up a bit. The climb was, as promised by our maps, quite gradual for the first 4 or 5 kilometers. Right about where the forest ended we encountered the remains of the old fortified border between West and East Germany. The fence, guards, guns, and watchtowers are all completely gone, of course, but a curious concrete track remains. The best Monika and I could guess, the track was for tanks or other heavy equipment to move around right behind the guarded perimeter. Still, those concrete tracks made for a real Cadillac of a walking trail. Since this was a Sunday and the weather was great, Germans streamed in to join the pilgrimage to the Brocken from each of the side trails from the various little towns, and the old tank track became a kind of a "Wanderbahn". People stopped to eat snacks or have a drink at almost every open, sunny place that had benches or rocks to sit on, and everyone was in a holiday mood. |
Monika: Today was the fulfillment of one of my dreams. When I was in 10 grade in High School, our class took a two week trip to the Harz to a vacation home for schools in Hamburg. It was somewhere near Bad Harzburg and close to the former border between East and West Germany, so it must have been not too far from where we are staying now. My strongest memory is walking with a few of my friends to the border, looking out over the no-mans-land, waving to the border guards on the other hand, and trying to cheer them up by singing a folksong. We saw the Brocken, the highest mountain in the Harz, but could not reach it since it was situated in the East. The border ran right through the middle of the Harz. At that time, I never thought things would change, especially after the bloody repression of the Jun 17th uprising in 1957. But a little over 30 years later, things did change. And in a peaceful uprising of the people in the East, the Wall was torn down and the border between East and West Germany was obliterated. So today, we could walk from the West across and along the former border up to the Brocken. To walk up the Brocken had been one of the reasons we were in the Harz and the weather for this Sunday sounded promising. So the evening before, Bob spent quality time with the map of the Harz he had purchased the day before. It showed all the hiking trails and contour lines to aid in assessing the trails. We decided a trail from the B4 road not far from Braunlage looked the closest and seemed to have only a change of 350 meters in altitude. At breakfast I asked our hostess, and she also said that that was the best route. So after breakfast we got ourselves ready and managed to get to the parking area by 10:00. Since this is Germany, we were, of course, not one of the first ones there. Most of the more obvious parking spots were taken, but we did find a spot that seemed to be off the main drag. ( When we got back, all halfway possible and some impossible spots were taken, and people had parked along the major road.) We started walking through the forest on a wide paths with a very gradual uphill. After two kilometers we came to the former border, where we could see cement tracks for tanks and foundations were the watch towers had been. We walked along the tracks, and there was something very peaceful and satisfying to see hikers where 20 years ago tanks had driven. It reminded me of "Swords into Ploughshares" and made me very happy. |
Bob: As we approached the peak, the trail narrowed down to a steeper and narrower path with patches of mud and rocks. I was wearing my walking boots and was OK with that, but Monika was in tennis shoes and had problems slipping now and then. In some places boardwalks had been built above muddy sections, and that helped a lot. For a while our path was parallel and right next to the narrow-gauge steam railway that runs to the top of the Brocken, and it was always fun to stop and take pictures or movies as those little old steam engines came huffing and puffing their way up the mountain. I could almost hear the trains going uphill say, "I Think I Can, I Think I Can" and the trains going back downhill say, "I Thought I Could, I Thought I Could!" as they passed by us. Finally a road crossed the railroad line, and we turned left to follow that more direct, paved route for the final kilometer or so to the top of the mountain. At that intersection we found a memorial to Goethe, one of Germany's leading poets, who had ridden a horse to the top of the Brocken in 1777. He used the Brocken in his Faust play for the witches' dance on Walpurgisnacht, and the fame of the play helped to make the Brocken become a tourist attraction. When we finally reached the top after exactly two hours of walking, we took a circle trail around the peak that gave us great views, about 50 miles or more, in all directions. In fact, we could clearly see the the ski jump on the peak next to Braunlage where we had climbed our first day in the Harz, and the castle in Wernigerode that we had visited on the previous day. We also saw a memorial to Heinrich Heine, another great German poet who visited the peak in the 1800s and whose poetry I have greatly enjoyed. |
Monika: At the end of the walk along the border we had the first steep uphill to the tracks of the train that goes up to the Brocken. By now several different trails had joined and a trickle of people became a steady stream of people enjoying a sunny Sunday in October. We went along the tracks on a nice path that had wooden planks whenever the ground got too muddy since we were on the side of a moor. When the train started to circle the mountain, we had a final 1km and 100 meter altitude differential to get to the top. Once we got there, I thought I would be wiped; but actually being on top of the Brocken was too exciting. We circled the top, past the place were the witches dance on Walpurgisnacht (night before May first) and finally made it to the top. Of course, a "We were here" picture was obligatory! |
Bob: Curling in to the center of the peak, we passed the large, rocket-shaped communication tower to get to the absolute top of the peak, about 1142 meters above mean sea level. It was great to have made it up, but we were tired and hungry. But this was Germany and part of the culture is to have small restaurants everyplace that Germans could conceivably want to eat. There were a lot of hungry Germans up there, and predictably there were restaurants to serve them. We chose the one attached to the hotel, and I had a half a chicken and a roll while Monika had goulash soup and a roll. The food plus a half an hour rest gave us the energy for the return journey, but this time the return trip took almost the same two hours as the walk up had. Part of that two hours, however, was due to visiting the German military cemetery on the way back. The cemetery has 99 German soldiers who died defending their homeland plus 14 Russian prisoners-of-war who were with the contingent at the time. Simple crosses marked each grave and a large stone cross was the centerpoint, but I found the cemetery extremely moving. I just couldn't stop thinking about those young men who had never had a chance to really have a complete life like mine with a career, a family, grandchildren, retirement, and all that. War is always capricious in who lives and who dies, and that is at least part of the great tragedy of it. |
Monika: Afterwards we had lunch at a little restaurant with a buffet line. Bob had half a broiled chicken and I had a bowl of goulash soup. Both were excellent and gave us the strength to reverse our steps and head back to the car. Before we reached the car we stopped at the "Ehrenfriedhof" soldier cemetery were 99 German and 14 Russian soldiers were buried that had died in 1945 in the Harz. It was heart wrenching to read some of the dates. Some of the kids were hardly 17 years old. |
Bob: Retrieving our car, we drove back to town, rested a bit, and then (very slowly and stiffly!) walked a couple of blocks to the center of the town for a handicrafts show. There were many nice things on display, but we limited ourselves to buying a birthday card for my sister Lois and a little wooden Christmas angel from the Erzgebirge region we had visited on Wanderung 2. The angel had the green wings with white polka dots that would fit in with our current collection, and she was playing a concertina that reminded me quite a bit of my brother Terry. Then we hobbled back to our pension, had a light supper, and put our feet up for the rest of the evening. |
Monika: Our car was were we left it, and we even could get it out. Once back at the Hotel, I repaired to the balcony to enjoy the rest of the beautiful day and start writing. After a while we felt up to more walking and headed down to the Kurzentrum where there was a craft show. Of course, we stopped at an open bakery first to provision ourselves for Abendessen. It was interesting to see a German craftshow, which had some of the same items you would see at an American - jewelry, embroidery, etc - but also some different items, more woodwork for instance. And indeed we found wooden items from the Erzgebirge and had to buy an angel playing the concertina to add to our Christmas orchestra. After that we walked slowly home, had our evening meal with the rolls from the bakery, put our feet up, and moved only when absolutely necessary. |
| Prolog | Germany Map | Cruise Map | Epilog |
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