We arrived in Quedlinburg yesterday evening. This is when we noticed that we had booked a really large apartment for the night, what a nice surprise! It might actually be larger than our apartment at home. It also took us a long time to realize that we are now in a part of Germany that was east of the Iron Curtain. That was something that we did not pay attention to when we planned the trip and neither did we notice it when we crossed the Iron Curtain on our way from Goslar yesterday.
Quedlinburg: How Well do You Remember Your School German?
We have noticed several times during our trip that it is not always possible to communicate in English. In Reims, we used Google Translate to communicate with our host and there have been other occasions afterward as well. Here in Quedlinburg, it happened again, our host didn’t speak English. What else can you do in that situation than attempt to communicate in German? And, surprising us both, it actually worked and I was able to both understand and – it seemed – make myself understood to our host. I didn’t even know that I remembered a few words still. Well, it was a mix of German with English, Swedish and even Slovak. Doesn’t everyone understand the word “Dobre”?
Quedlinburg: An Evening of Exploration
As we arrived quite late the sun had already started to set when we headed out the door. What we did was to walk up towards the castle. Yes, we walked up yet another hill to reach a castle. Just as we have done previously in towns such as Saarburg and Vianden. This time, however, it started to get dark and when we reached the castle it was lit up. This, of course, made it difficult to take good photos, but it did do a lot for the view. The view of both the castle itself and the town made the effort to get there worth it.
After heading down from the castle, we started to look for somewhere to eat dinner. As the time was already nearing 9 pm, we were a bit worried that most places would no longer be serving food. Once we reached the main square, those thoughts were confirmed. Most restaurants seemed to have closed and it was only a few hotels still serving food. We did, however, not give up and continued a bit further. Eventually, we found a Thai-Vietnamese restaurant. There were no guests in the place, but we asked and they were still opened. That was something we were happy about and we were even happier after a nice meal. During this trip we have enjoyed all sorts of international cuisine, but we haven’t had any typically German food yet. Go figure.
Quedlinburg: A Morning Walk
This morning we decided to take a morning walk before leaving this lovely town. We wanted to see what the narrow alleys and impressive buildings in this lovely town look like during the day as well. It was just a short walk of around 20 minutes, the sun was shining and there were already a lot of people up and awake. This might well be the prettiest of all the towns we have visited this far on our journey.
It is now time to continue even further north, next stop is Stade in northern Germany. That will be our last night in Germany before continuing to Denmark and later on Sweden.
Join us on the road through Europe here!
