Langos via leipzig: Fairytales and enchantment

For a time we are following the German Fairytale Route. It brought us to Hamelin. Thirty years ago, we brought the girls here. We’ve returned to see what, if anything, we remember. Only the tiny boy Pied Piper statue in the main drag, in truth, but the rest we should have recalled, because it is so charming, with its predominantly 16th and 17th century half timbered homes, beautifully maintained, many gilt with Germanic writing over the lintels which ofttimes tells who lived there, and when.

And, this year, too, we again seem to have all the luck! Not ten minutes after we arrived in town and investigated a gathering outside the Rathouse (Mayoralty) lo and behold! we came upon an open air live play of the Pied Piper tale, performed by local actors, all dressed up with a tale to tell. Just as the play finished, a clock-tower in the main square retold the tale, this time in a peal of carillon bells with mechanical moving figures for the piper, the rats, and children popping in and out of the copper windows. Such a beautiful part of Germany this: rich in fairytales and other treasures.

Fields were blinding bright in canola yellow. The Weser ran full and fast with its fat spring melt. Farms were larger than we remembered, much larger, and far more prosperous, we think. Above the Weser was one of the north’s treasures, the beautiful Schloss Hamelschenburg. While downriver, period spa villages with pink-tiled roofs toppled down its slopes to bask in Sunday’s late afternoon sun.

Strauss was being played on a piano in an indoor café in Bad Karlshafen, echoing out into its tiny square overlooking a lake. So old fashioned, yet so appropriate. On a bed of reeds at the lake’s edge a pair of preening swans awaited the birth of their cygnets. Couples everywhere were promenading around the square in the romantic evening light: soaking it in. An older lady in a floor length white coat over slim white trousers was hugging the arm of a white haired gentleman. They looked Austrian: expensive, elegant, and demanded attention, so we watched and smiled.

There was an open-air opera concert in Bad Gandersheim the following evening, and we were personally invited by an organiser who approached us during our afternoon walk. When we arrived she remembered us and we were granted a kiss of welcome, perfect strangers in a sea of locals. For hours, music filled an outdoor alcove that became a makeshift auditorium, surrounded on three sides by Juliet balconies overflowing with red geranium window boxes under high walls thickly coated in ancient creeping ivy, that absorbed the music as well today as it probably has done for centuries.

All just a couple of hundred metres from the Stellplatz in the centre of the village where our motorhome was parked for the night. It is magical.

On to the lovely town of Goslar, with its tin-mining rich burghur homes clothed in fine charcoal-coloured slate tiles. These ragged-edged rectangular slates are pasted solidly over all exterior top floors and thickly hug roof high dormer windows, and march symmetrically over all the curved roof tops. Not satisfied with spending a fortune on their homes the burghers banded together to build themselves a brightly coloured guildhall in the main square which they decorated with near lifesize statues of beautiful wood carved emperors in bright-coloured clothing.

And lo! at noon, the clock tower windows opened, tin puppets popped out telling the tale of the proud tin-mining history of Goslar all to the tune of old mining songs played out on the carillon. Each clock tower we come to now Bec expects a fairytale reenactment.

Bad Harzburg, the Noosa of the Hartz Mountain region, our next stop, was filled with expensive boulevard cafes, very expensive ladies' dress shops and terribly expensive hotels all clad in smart upmarket white clap boards. The perfect place to see, and be seen. We were the outstanding exhibit in our jeans and sneakers. Not even a patch of white linen or a bit of bling between us. Still we enjoyed it.

Germany is often so under-rated. Folk rarely say: we are off to Germany for our holiday. Yet, rarely have we been more enchanted.