“Let’s go hiking!” – “Hiking? Really? But that’s boring” – would the teen (and yes, also the tween) in me say. But after years of city sightseeing holidays (that after a while somehow all become the same), entering my 30s and being in a stressful PhD position, it was time for something else. And that’s how I ended up on my first actual, voluntary hiking trip.
Being stressed out by our jobs, we decided on a spontaneous short holiday. But where to go? Since we wanted stress relief, it shouldn’t be far away and be in a calm, ideally somewhat remote place with beautiful nature. Just not too remote – since neither of us owns a car, we needed something reachable by train. And since we wanted to go off-season, the accommodation should offer some leisure time activity opportunities in case of bad weather. We took a deep look at some short-trip websites, and we found the answer to all of our problems: Ilsenburg.
Having grown up in Germany, I was told all my life that the “Harz” has stunningly beautiful nature. These uplands cover parts of the German states Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia, with mount Brocken being the highest elevation of the area (roughly 1100 metres). Ilsenburg is a small, roughly 10.000 inhabitants town in the district of Harz, in Saxony-Anhalt. The town itself has relatively little to offer, but if you go to Ilsenburg looking for shoppings instead of nature you are doing it wrong. Based on the good amount of holiday accommodations and restaurants, there must be quite some people invading the area during the April-October season. We spent 3 nights in Ilsenburg beginning of November, shortly after the end of the season, and thus we were lucky enough to avoid most of the tourists.
On the first day, we tried to conquer the Brocken. The “Heinrich-Heine” hiking path up to the top of the hill (about 12 km) started right behind our hotel. The path indeed is stunningly beautiful. The surrounding seems to change every 1 to 2 km. You walk along a small river, climb over some fallen trees, go from low to steep elevation, pass a fairytale-like forest too surreal to step foot into (seriously, it looked like Narnia), and get some great view across the tale. We felt like being in an adventure which is why we re-named the “Heinrich-Heine” path to “Lord of the Rings” path. Unfortunately we had to turn and go back down to the hotel about 1 km before we reached the top due to bad weather conditions, but that’s how things are up in the mountains.
On the second (and already last) day, we explored Ilsenburg and the closer surrounding a bit. As soon as you reach the border of the town, you walk into nature and have sign-posted hiking paths everywhere. Some of them are a bit tough though and you should be in a reasonably good condition to take them. Ilsenburg itself is lovely (the teen in me would say “boring” though). A cosy little town where time seems to stand still. Just thinking of it takes me out of my all-day-life.
If you are in a low-budget tip, here is an insider tip: visit the (only) local ice cream café and kebap shop. Both are very good: the kebap place offers pizza, pasta, and even has a delivery service if you are too lazy to leave your accommodation after a long hiking trip. The ice-cream café, on the other hand, has a lazy cat that you can cuddle.
