Up here, it is easy to think you’ve seen a shape in the mist, and often you will have, but it will have been your own, and it’s called a Brocken Spectre. The Brocken is mist-shrouded and cloud-wrapped for a staggering 300 days in the year One of his scenes is of Walpurgisnacht, (Walpurgis Night, 30 th April) when witches meet on Brocken to hold revels with their gods, and there are still bonfires lit on the mountain to this day. There’s a long tradition of witches up here, perpetuated by Goethe who described the Brocken as a centre of witchcraft revelry in his Faust.
Bare, barren, windswept and once the site of a Soviet listening post (this was East Germany not so long ago), it is mist-shrouded and cloud-wrapped for a staggering 300 days in the year, and it is this which has given rise to so many of its legends. Around the mountain’s base are pretty towns such as Osterode, Wernigerode and Goslar, which have a fairytale feel to them, particularly in the snow.īut the top of the mountain is a different matter. At 1,141 metres this round-shouldered beast is hardly an alpine peak, but it does have winter skiing, and it also has a wonderful old steam railway that runs scheduled services, winter and summer, up and down the mountain and across from one side to the other. The Brocken is the highest peak in the Harz Mountains, effectively the only mountain range in northern Germany (although it also has a foot in the east). The climbers amongst you will know of the Brocken Spectre, but few will know where it originates.
0 kommentar(er)
