A few additional photos of Quedlinburg, along with a few more comments, also written last week.

Gorgeous decorations on wealthy person's house in Quedlinburg

Many homes in this part of Germany had the traditional Eastern/Central European blessing over the door, either inside or outside: the initials CBM stand for Caspar, Balthazar and Melchior, the traditional names given to the 3 Magi.  On Epiphany (the 12th Day of Christmas on the Western calendar, also called "Little Christmas"), people bless their homes with ritual, a part of which is writing the initials over the door and adding in the year, like this: 2+C+0+B+1+M+4 (for this year), with the crosses in between the letters and numbers. This house was one of two we spotted where the late medieval owners had carved the initials of the Magi into the main timber over the door and ground-floor windows. Most houses in Quedlinburg had also carved in the names of the husband and wife who lived there in a particular year (we couldn't figure out if it was the year the house was built, or something else). The wife's full, maiden, name was always given, rather than her married name. This, it seemed to us, was extremely helpful in knowing who they both were and discovering the lineage of both of them and of the house.    

My favorite fairytale, witchy-looking roofline.

A skinny house tucked onto another, along a steep lane.

Street in Quedlinburg

Most buildings there were NOT as tilted as this one!!

Quedlinburg has almost 1400 buildings that show their half-timbered architecture, and has seemingly a few hundred places to eat (including cute fresh waffle houses, numerous cheesecake bakeries and cafes, and restaurants), all with chairs and tables outside. (As I noted here a few years ago, Europeans have the delightful practice of providing blankets for the outside tables, which allows people to use the outside café spaces even when the weather is not-so-warm. Of course, the high proportion of smokers, who must use the outside tables if they wish to indulge, also may push this. Although, thankfully, the proportion of Germans who smoke does not seem to be anywhere near the proportion of Parisians, which I noted on Facebook this past January).

The town feted all of its adult, child and teen athletic teams the first evening we were there, with a small festival in the central market square, 

Festival honoring town athletes, in front of the ancient Rathaus, town hall.

and a parade of the athletes, accompanied by their high-school-aged marching band. Each evening-at least on the weekends- there are multiple guides in medieval dress giving walking tours (only in German, unfortunately) of the town’s many architectural and other treasures. Virtually no one speaks any English, other than the nice people at the Tourist Information office, who sold us an English walking guide, which was very helpful. Also speaking English was our wonderful host, Dagmar, who provided us with the most romantic, lovely room in her exquisitely restored home/inn. Dagmar was originally from Frankfurt, but moved to Quedlinburg about 16 years ago in order to help restore the artistic and architectural treasures, and ended up buying the building and restoring it. When East and West Germany reunified, Quedlinburg was pretty run down, although it had been a tourist destination for the East Germans. Much money has been poured into the town, to help restore its houses and churches and town buildings, and it is simply adorable. I don’t know how else to describe it.

Q-burg is referred to as the “Cradle of our nation.” See my comments in my first post on Q-burg on how the Nazis used both of these aspects (“cradle…” and Empire) for their own mythologies.

Another view of the festival, to give you another glimpse of the town square. The statue of Roland, and the eagle set in the ground, are both right in to front of the town hall.

We spent Saturday walking around (having seen the castle the evening before upon our arrival), and happily exhausted ourselves on the cobblestones. Oh, by the way, if you plan on every visiting old towns like this in Europe, wear FLAT shoes!!!! Cobblestones are ankle-death-traps if you wear heels!!