Goslar and Bad Harshafen
Please remember that I am posting these a week after experiencing and writing them! I can only post when in my hotel and having access to wifi, and right now I am missing a lovely sunny day to post these now!! I also have to transfer the photos from my tablet to my laptop, organize them so I know which ones are to go in which blog post (and which ones I won't use). So it's quite a process. It was easier 4 years ago when we were in Ireland, for example, as I just used any rainy time to work on it!! The weather here is sunnier!
Okay, here goes, with the last bits of what we did before arriving in Bielefeld last week.

On Monday (May 26th) we waved a fond farewell to Quedlinburg and our beautiful guesthouse, drove north passed the Brocken once again, and rounded the northern flanks of the Harz to the walled town of Goslar, 

Part of the fortifications of Goslar

Approaching another town gate

the very first town inside West Germany during the Cold War. Goslar, still part of the Harz region, also has many half-timbered buildings, 

and a large emperor’s palace,

Emperor Heinrich's Palace

an 11th century chapel, which contains the heart of Emperor Heinrich (Henry) III (because he apparently loved the town so much). Goslar got very wealthy in the Middle Ages due to the very rich silver and copper mines in the area, and the town square has numerous mansions.

The chapel with the Emperor Heinrich's heart

Pig on fountain in market square

Fountain in market square, with wealthy mine-owner's or merchant's mansion in background

Another mansion, with restaurant below being where we had wonderful waffle with fresh strawberries and whipped cream!

We walked around the oldest part of the town (noting the site of the old Jewish neighborhood--there was one in Quedlinburg, too), stopped into a church with fascinating and non-Christian medieval decorations,

Multi-gender (beards and breasts) mer-people carved onto the pulpit

There were numerous "green men" carved into the pulpit also. The larger image to your right is a lovely carving of the visit of Mary and her cousin Elizabeth, the Visitation.

Large quartz crystal set into a polished tree trunk with a pewter seashell attached. This was in front in the church. 

ate lunch in the markt-platz, and got back on the road for our next overnight destination: Bad Karlshafen (Bad=thermal baths, so the word indicates a spa. Though I cannot tell you how many times we have giggled/chuckled over the spa town names. One is actually Bad Sascha. How many times can YOU say it as a reprimand, as if Sascha were your dog, before the joke gets old? Apparently Don and I can drag out a joke like this for a long time).  

We chose Bad Karshafen from the Lonely Planet Guidebook as a spa town that was smaller than the one just north-east of it, in the old GDR, Bad Harzburg. Our only real reason was that there were simply too many places to choose from to stay in the larger town, and not enough of them had good ratings from Trip Advisor, and we didn’t want to spend the kind of money they were asking for the nice places. So sue us. This is how we make decisions. Pretty much our whole adult lives.

The cool thing about this part of the trip was NOT Bad Karshafen, which turned out to be a pretty enough little town, on the very lovely Wesser River; what was the wonderful part was the drive there. Not only did we end up on small country roads (thank God for the GPS provided in the rental car!!) that wound up and down and around and aound, but we wound up at a Wesser River crossing that turned out to be a one-car ferry, operated by one man and an overhead cable (which is a very good thing, because without the cable, the current was strong enough that the ferry would have ended up far downstream every time it left shore). The setting was entirely rural and quiet, and the only technology in sight that that had been created in the last, oh, 100 years, was the fancy engineering in the new-model VW car we were driving. It cost all of 3.50 euros (about $4.75) and was worth every penny, being one of the highlights of our trip so far. I know, we’re easily amused and delighted, but we seriously felt just like the hobbits when they were leaving the Shire, except, of course, we weren’t being chased by Nazgul  (and thank all the gods in heaven for that). Here are a series of pictures of us approaching the river crossing, from the moment we realized that we had just driven, not to a bridge, but to the river itself, to where we are in the middle of the river.

The river crossing on the GPS

The ferry beginning to come closer

And from the middle of the peaceful river.

The Wesser River from the middle of the ferry while crossing it.

When we got to Bad Harshafen, we decided to sit beside the Wesser for—and after—supper

This riverboat seemed to be offer a dinner cruise and was loading a band.

It's easy to see how easily this can flood the town.

From the middle of the Wesser River bridge

instead of going swimming and lounging in the naturally warm, heavily—naturally—salted spa pools, thinking that perhaps we—or at least I—would visit the pools this morning. Alas, it was pouring rain this morning, and the experience lost its appeal. So we instead set out for Bielefeld this morning after breakfast, which included the standard German hotel buffet of yogurts, fruit, multiple kinds of sausage and other kind of disgusting meat products, cereals, wonderful breads –the northern Europeans REALLY know how to make breads, hearty, brown, healthy and wonderful-tasting breads—and, wonder of wonders, smoked salmon on both tomato slices and on hard-boiled eggs. After tasting this latter culinary delight, I wondered, “Why has it not occurred to anyone I know to place slices of smoked salmon on hard-boiled eggs (with apologies to those to whom it HAS occurred)?” This is a dish I am going to replicate at home as soon as I am home.

Oh, I can’t forget, especially because yesterday was our Memorial Day: there are markings in Bad Karshafen that indicate the height of the Wesser River during various floods, going back to the mid-1700s. Some of those heights were incredible, as they clearly would have covered at least the ground floors of every building we were seeing, and would have drowned many people if the floods came suddenly and without warning. One of those very destructive floods took place in 1943, when British bombers destroyed the large dam upstream.  Here’s a link if you want to read about that bombing mission: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chastise

There is a discussion in that article on the bunker-busting bombs that were used by the allies in the next town on our itinerary: Bielefeld, to its almost complete annihilation. These bombs were developed because they did not require accuracy to wreak destruction; they caused local earthquake-like results, and thus bombers could drop bombs NEAR a bridge or viaduct, and it would shake apart that target.

Because we skipped the spa pools, we arrived in Bielefeld too early to actually get into our room, of course. The very nice reception people loaned us umbrellas and we walked on the pedestrian mall until the magnificent aromas wafting from a café/restaurant drove us—me—inside for lunch. This was a lovely old-fashioned tea-room, with quiches, sandwiches, soups, and crepes. The amazing smell turned out to be from the fresh Belgian waffles being cooked on the griddle downstairs; I shall have to avail myself of one of these soon. We had one yesterday in Goslar with fresh strawberries and cream, and it was quite spectacular (note: days later, I tried one of these heavenly-smelling waffles, and alas,  it was nowhere near the amazing experience it had been in Goslar, nor did it live anywhere up to its aroma. Sigh).

Bielefeld was almost completely destroyed by Allied bombing in the last year of the war.  It was an industrial area, but more importantly, there was a railway viaduct that was a major target, as its destruction would stop delivery of war goods in many directions. Here are links to photos and video of the bombing here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeUQKl81aN4

 http://www.baor-locations.org/bielefeldvarious.aspx.html

See, I can’t get away from certain topics, even when I try.

There are still some old buildings here, and Don tells me that some old churches remain.  There is also a British cemetery, as the British had a base here after the war. Good hiking, I hear, on the ridges nearby. But for now, it is raining for a couple of days, and there is a large pile of laundry that needs doing. So reading, writing, and clothes-washing at the laundromat will take up my next couple of days. Sounds like just what I need after running around for the past week. I will rejoin you once I get organized to post about Bielefeld.