Goslar - Germany

2nd & 3rd August, 2023

This has been the best two days, we’ve had a great time. Day 1 we spent just wandering around the little town and day 2 we spent doing a mine tour. Oh with a detour to Pandora shop along the way.

Check out the cuckoo clock building, I think these little German towns with their very German buildings are getting better and better. Imagine this; sitting in a beautiful town square, with the bells from the cuckoo clock building chiming and the bells are playing a German lullaby and the ladies standing all around the square start singing and humming the lullaby. An awesome moment in time!

The mine museum WOW I really loved the day. I first thought I’d give it a miss, but my beautiful wife read the brochure to me and I sprang to attention. It’s a mine museum where the mining started mining first in 900BC, arrrr the history. Monks diverted a stream so it went down through the mountain and in the mountain they built 4 large wooden water-wheels…..about 6 meter diameter. By directing the water to one side or the other, the wheel could be made go clockwise or anti-clockwise. They used the water-wheels to hoist the ore to the surface. For the boys that may read this blog the ore body was 300kg/Tonne copper.

And the Mine

Excellent storage idea for the men’s work clothing, boots, etc. Every man had his own hanging locker.

Wernigerode

30th and 31st July, 2023

After the big city feel of Berlin it was time to see some of the more beautiful towns in Germany. Berlin is mostly square concrete boxes, with graffiti everywhere…. as..ugly as! We’ve moved to a small city called Wernigerode . All the centre of town is old style German building, WOW beautiful. Our park-up is a short 800m walk into town. The town is a place where Germans come to see the town and when you’re walking around town you get the feel that there isn’t many international visitors.

Over-looking the town is Schloss Wernigerode (castle). We took the yellow tractor-trailer (dressed up to look like a train) up the hill and had a look. The Schloss is a real castle, not like the palaces we have been visiting. Great views over the town and the timber work in the Castle (WOW). The German’s have been great craftsman for forever.

It was also very nice sitting at a coffee shop in the town square watching the town come to life.

We’re going to take a steam train up to the highest peak (Brocken) Elevation = 1,143 meters. It’s a rainy day and we don’t expect to see that much, but looking forward to the steam train. Actually lots of steam trains, couldn’t tell just how many, but there was 3 or so at each station we pulled into. The ride up and back was great, at the top just rain and cloud. But there was a charming restaurant for a hot chocolate and a slice of apple crumble.