Hiking in the Harz

Two weekends ago (so much for me being caught up with this) I ended up going hiking and camping in the Harz mountains. It was kind of by accident, in that I was going to go visit Cologne, but my ride fell through. At what was basically the last possible moment, a friend of mine invited me to hiking with him and some other people. Definitely proof that fate sometimes works in your favor. I feel like I had a much better time than I would have had in Cologne. We will have to see until I go there to actually know for sure. Judging from the amount of pictures that I took on this trip vs. the other trips I have taken, it definitely wins. One of the problems of hiking that canoeing does not have. Your hands are always free, so you take a lot of pictures.

We started out by driving to Wernigerode to buy ourselves a map of the Hiking trails. After that, we went to Ilsenburg, planned our attack, and set off into the woods. We hiked for a while, went to the Ecker Dam and its respective lake, found a hut (they have triangular huts where you can stop and rest,) ate supper, dried off, and went to bed. Also staying within the area, were a group of students from Bielefeld. It was definitely a stroke of luck that we found other students in the area. The majority of hikers and bikers were somewhere about early middle age, the average restaurant goer was about 65 or 70 (I assume that they took the train,) and there were some other adults that has their kids along, but there was almost no one our age.

The next morning, I was the first one up, so I wondered around a little bit and took a bunch of pictures of the lake. After that we climbed The Brocken. At 3,743ft., it is the tallest point in northern Germany. For comparison, Eagle Mountain is 2,301ft. It is kind of weird to climb up it, because everything around you is fairly natural until you get up to the top. There is a train that goes up to the top of it, where there is a museum, some restaurants, a train station and a giant antenna.

It was about 43° when we were at the summit, so we grabbed some warm and expensive food at a restaurant and then continued on our journey back towards Ilsenburg and the car. After being in the city for so long, it was nice to get out to the wilderness again. Also, because Magdeburg is along a river, everything around it is flat for miles around, making it kind of boring after a while. Here are the photos, as promised.







That is the steam from the train from the beginning of our journey

Summer

It is 80° in my room right now. It has been about that warm continuously since last Thursday (the fourth.) I feel that, even though we are still ten days shy of the official start date, I am safe in referring to the weather as summer without any repercussions from the weather gods. I kind of feel as though the weather felt bad after giving us so much rain and cold in April and May, and now it is trying to make it up to us. I am fine with nice weather, but I am definitely going to welcome the coming cold and rain. To clarify what I mean by "cold," the forecast says that the high will be just above 70° tomorrow. I am excited.

To celebrate this nice weather, last weekend, I was at the local beach for a combined seven or eight hours or so. This week, I think that I have spent part of the evening in the park just north of campus every day. In short, life here is very difficult and I am barely able to put up with it all.

How am I able to spend so much time loafing around, you ask? That has a very simple explanation, and it is one that is seldom used in the United States. I am assuming that my teachers are doing about the same thing that I am doing, meaning that I have a fairly minimal amount of homework. Since we have the summers off, I can't imagine that this comes up that often at home.

For those of you I have talked to you recently, you assumed that I was going to Cologne. This is what I thought until this morning when I called the person that I was going to carpool with and he told me that he wasn't able to pick me up. So, instead of traveling, Derrick and I hung out in a café for a few hours. Across from the café was a book store. For some reason, I decided that I wanted to buy a mystery novel, so that is what I did. Rather than trying to pick out a good mystery among the shelf, I just went with an author that I already know is good, Ian Rankin. I assume that a translation of his work will be just as good as one in English. The one that I bought isn't one that I have read before, but I assume that it should be good. I have decided that, in oder to improve my language skills, I will read at least one chapter a day. I have previously promised myself that I would do a similar thing with Anne Frank. As you can imagine, her diary has been sitting under a postcard and my capo, unmoved for about 6 weeks, at the very least. However, if my previous experience with John Rebus is any indicator, I shouldn't have any problems fufilling that promise. Also, I assume that John Rebus doesn't have to deal with nazis or the holocaust, which should make slightly less depressing to read.

In other news, time has been speeding along faster than seems possible. For instance, it is now June 11th, meaning that I have only seven more weeks left. Holy cow. I doubt that there is enough time for me to do everything in Europe that I would like to before I leave, but we will see. I will be damned if I am not going to give it a good run for its money. Or my money, since that is more accurate. Things that are currently on the travel plan: Hamburg, Cologne, the Black Forest, Prague, Vienna, and Munich. I am also planning on heading up to Husum to try to find some old family graves. I haven't looked into this at all, and it seems like a pipe dream, but it couldn't hurt to try. Also, it is a stone's throw from the North Sea, so I could spend some time on the coast, even if I can't find anything familial.

disclaimer: I finally switched my computer into German yesterday. That means that I no longer have an english language spell check installed on my computer. I am fairly certain that I spelled everything correctly, but I might have missed something. I apologize for that and blame it on the fact that learning German is doing terrible things to my English. I promise I will try to learn how to speak our language again once I return to my native soil.

To fulfill my promise of always having a picture, this is the tree outside my window. The top picture is from Easter Sunday, when I first noticed it having any green on it. The bottom picture if from today.

-Marc