Day 13 December 4th Quedlinburg

Another day, another town, another train journey & another Christmas market!  We were on 

not such a charismatic train

a provided tour of the nearby town of Quedlinburg today.  It was a dry and brighter day and we breakfasted and took the local train at about 1000 to the town with a 30 minute journey.  After coming out of the station we were met by our guide who conducted a 90 

"alms houses" equivalent

minute tour of the important aspects of life and culture in the town.  Most of the old architecture is half timbered from the medieval period (it is a unesco world heritage  site) and the 

redundant church

video shows a square of which

last supper painting

there were several (over 2000 similar houses).  We went to a redundant church now used as a community/function building.  It has in the altar screen an unusual picture of the last supper in that Jesus and the disciples are sitting round the table and 

town crier's house

not in a straight line. We carried on and found the building previously occupied by the town crier.  If you magnify the picture you can see a 

21stC half timbered house

carving of a bugle (used by him) in the far right of the beam above the ground floor windows.  We were also shown a 21st century half timbered house which had recently been constructed to keep in the same spirit of the rest of the town.  We were then left near the Christmas market to have a look round and have some lunch.  The market had a good array of stalls selling mainly seasonal food and 

giant mobile in the market

drink.  There was a giant revolving "mobile" which included a nativity scene as part of its display.  We wandered through the stalls and some more streets before requiring sustenance at a good looking, well 


best strudel so far

occupied café.  We ordered a hot chocolate and an apple strudel each which were the best strudels experienced so far.  The interesting thing about the hot chocolate was that it had floating on it a hot chilli.  We were

unaware of this at the start and it made drinking it very lively at times but most of the drink was very acceptable.  We came out of the café, looked at some more streets and returned to the market square. A school group was singing carols which added to the atmosphere.  We strolled through more streets to find

Quedlinburg castle

the castle which although it was not too ancient was being worked on.  It was now 

the road train

time to slowly make our way back to the train station and as we did so the road train came past us which some of our party had used.  We all arrived back at the station and returned to Wernigerode in the late afternoon.  We relaxed and eventually went to the local Christmas market at 1930 but it was closing down by then but we managed to find a hotdog to eat and gluhwein to drink to sustain us.