We woke up bright and early and, at least in my case, itching to get outside while it was sunny and we could go on a little bird hunt before breakfast. So we partly retraced our steps from yesterday, when Kirsten and Andrea showed us one of their favorite neighborhood walks, and then veered off to also walk on a trail at the edge of a beautiful wooded area. We had to backtrack a couple of times because we were distracted by a veritable symphony orchestra’s worth of bird songs and because we were determined to find our way back to the stork’s nest that we saw yesterday. We had a lot of fun with the birds–Merlin told us we heard 40 different bird species. We only saw a fraction of these, but we did see the storks on the nest, a Eurasian kestrel (Turmfalke), a European skylark (Feldlerche) and a gorgeous little Yellowhammer (Goldammer). Also plenty of more ordinary critters, including a rook. The biggest teaser was that we could hear a nightingale very close by, but we never did see it.
We were gone for almost 2 hours, and when we got back, Kirsten and Andrea had a lovely breakfast ready for us, and we sat and talked for the rest of the morning on the back deck over coffee/tea, rolls, and delicious things to put ON said rolls. With the exception of a short break during which Kirsten showed me a very promising software solution for building family trees (since he is the family genealogist and has worked with various platforms for years) and then some home movies about some of their incredible hiking and biking vacations, we just kept chatting. Andrea ducked out later so that we could seamlessly segue into lunch (we had asparagus, fresh potatoes, salad, and some more lovely grilled pork). Then it was already time to go–Andrea took us to the train station (which took about half the time it had taken to go by bus!), and we said goodbye with lots of hugs and the promise to meet up again sometime soon.
Then we were off via Vienenburg, which boasts of having the oldest still-exising train station in all of Germany, to Halberstadt, about an hour and a half southwest of Braunschweig. While Braunschweig is in Lower Saxony (the same state Osnabrück is in), Halberstadt is in Saxony-Anhalt, on the other side of the Harz mountains, and in the time between 1947 and 1991 would have been part of East Germany. The Harz used to be cut in two by the German-German border, and as a “mountain range” it is, by Rocky Mountain standards, more like a band of forested hills. But there is plenty of hiking and sometimes, in spite of climate change, still skiing in the winter. Its highest peak, the Brocken (1,141 meters or 3,743 about sea level), is famous in all of Germany, partly because it was supposed to have a witch’s sabbath, featured in Faust, the most famous play the most famous of all German writers, Goethe. We only got to see it in the distance from the train, but we are only about 30 km from now that we are in Halberstadt.
Once we got to the train station in Halberstadt, we took the tram to our hotel, and after taking a few minutes to unpack and settle in a perfectly fine and super clean room with TWO chairs by the desk for us with our TWO computers (not a standard!), we took off for a little preliminary city exploration. Halberstadt is a small town, about 37,000 people today, and its downtown is (not unlike Osnabrück) a patchwork of a few older buildings, including several massive churches, and many more new ones. About 80% of Halberstadt was destroyed in one massive air raid in April of 1945 because a local commandant refused to surrender to the approaching allied forces, and based on what I had read, I actually expected more of the inner city to have been completely destroyed. But while many streets were completely destroyed and then replaced by functional and cheap but ugly apartment buildings quickly erected during East German times, several impressive historic structures are left standing. These including the Cathedral (Dom), and three other nearby churches, as well as several larger administrative buildings from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries and quite a number of Tudor frame homes (Fachwerk). We took some pictures of our first impressions of the historic parts of the town, but more will follow tomorrow, with a focus on what I am really looking for here: the traces of the Jewish community that was eradicated during the Nazi era.
Around 7 pm, we were getting hungry, though, and found a Chinese restaurant with perfectly yummy food (not to mention a cozy spot to sit while a downpour began, two hours earlier than forecast). Eventually, we managed to get back to the hotel in about 15 minutes and got only moderately wet in spite of the continuing rain. We spent a little bit of time on our various blogs and other computery things, and then called it a night.