Good evening from Schierke. 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♂️
Our hotel “Brockenscheideck” is situated on a slight hill at the end of the village with a view of the next hill. Schierke is small and the night was quiet. Not a single car drove past.
Disadvantage of such a quiet and small town: there are only two inns that are open in the evening. And to our dismay, the kitchen at no. 1 was already closed yesterday (at 8pm!) and there was no table available at no. 2. 😳
We briefly checked to see if there was really nothing else available. Then, without further ado, we asked if we could take food with us. Yes, we could.
Next moment of shock: “We don’t have any cutlery! 😱”. Take something from here? Nooo, that’s not possible. But we have a lounge in the hotel, maybe we can at least find coffee spoons 🫣
In the end, we even found a knife, fork and plate, as well as cold drinks. Perfect. We enjoyed our meal and fell into bed satisfied.
Today’s destination: the Wurmberg. Up and down by cable car. A look at the weather radar: sunshine and around -3°, no clouds. That promises great views 🤗
When we arrived at the valley station in Braunlage, however, we were quite astonished. The cable car is closed? The display board says “Closed on 30.12. due to weather conditions” 😳 But today is 31.12. and not as stormy as forecast. Oh dear! Running uphill is out of the question with my damaged knee (yes, that’s also on the agenda for next year). What alternatives do we have? The Brockenbahn was already far too expensive for us when we were planning at home, which is why we chose the Wurmberg. The observation tower in Torfhaus? Yes, but only for a short time. So the Brockenbahn after all? At least it’s a narrow-gauge line with a steam locomotive. That’s nice. 🤔 But €55 per person? 😳 There and back, but still quite a lot of money…. We bit the bullet and booked two tickets from “Drei Annen Hohne”. Now a quick bite to eat at the Christmas market in Braunlage. It’s supposed to be nice, says Google. First of all, we walked past the Christmas market – no wonder, as it only consists of 5 stalls and a children’s carousel. Okay, Google isn’t always right 🤷‍♂️ We couldn’t find anything here, so we decided to eat on the Brocken first. But now the lucky cents we had found were well-disposed towards us. On the way to the station, we passed Kukki’s pea soup from the goulash cannon. That’s what we do! And it was perfect, a large portion with knacker or bockwurst and really tasty! I took a tin of it straight home with me. 😀
But now on to the station. We had to wait a while there, then the locomotive with the beautiful old carriages arrived.
We sat outside on one of the rear carriages to get a good view of the locomotive for our pictures on the bends. Which worked out really well. Luck was with us 💪😄
See for yourself how impressive the journey was.
The further we got towards the Brocken summit, the windier, but also whiter and, above all, icier it became. The hiking trails were so icy that they were freezing.
Once we reached the top, a real storm awaited us 😳 We had to brace ourselves and hold on to our hats! But what a great view and again with great clouds between the mountains, the sun above and a bright blue sky. According to the app, it was supposed to be just -2°, but the wind made it feel like an icy -10° *bibber*
Marco took a few pictures with the 360° camera, which we’ll share with you later.
We warmed up in the tourist hall with coffee and cake.
The last trip of the day and of the year on the Brockenbahn, this time with a diesel locomotive, brought us back down quickly as the sun set.
We briefly thought about where we could get something to eat. We found what we were looking for in Braunlage in a small snack bar, where we quickly grabbed a burger and chips. That worked out well yesterday. 😋

Conclusion: We read so many negative reviews about the Harz narrow-gauge railroad beforehand. And there’s certainly some truth in that if it’s too crowded. But we were lucky enough to catch a relatively empty train. Besides, it didn’t keep us in our seats anyway and we spent the whole time standing outside admiring the landscape. Expensive fun, but it was great. If you’re ever here and don’t get to the Wurmberg, then you have to give yourself the full Harz experience. And that includes the Brocken. Well, if you’ve been to the Carpathians before, it’s more of a crumb! 🤭