We hadn’t got far from Wernigerode when I first noticed them, the two furtive-looking men with their telephoto lenses lurking in the shrubbery. As we trundled past, they turned and fled for their cars. A couple of miles uphill, through a set of squealing, climbing curves, and there they were again. Same procedure as before: lurk, point, snap and run.
I knew that my destination, the Brocken, had a history of spying, but happily these guys were a far more innocent kind of snooper: train enthusiasts, going from one vantage point to the next to pap a vintage starlet. A blustering, clanking, steamie, built in the 1950s and still going strong.
I too have a soft spot for old steam trains, particularly a narrow gauge one like this Harz Mountain Railway, which chunters up for 90 minutes through forest-lined valleys to the highest point in northern Germany, toot-tooting all the way.
Half a century ago, during the time of the GDR, the Brocken, with its 1,141-metre purview over much of what was then West Germany, was a high security spy station for the communist Ossis to eavesdrop on the decadent Wessis below.
These days, Brocken mountain is the star of Harz National Park, whose forests and medieval Unesco-listed towns attract hikers and wildlife enthusiasts (lynx have been reintroduced here in recent years), as well as trainspotters. But I’d come for another reason.
Way before the GDR made the mountain a no-go area, it had its own legendary tradition which also served to keep mortals well away. The Brocken was supposedly the annual gathering place of witches for Walpurgisnacht, when they would zoom in from afar on broomsticks to have a massive knees-up on the mountaintop. The devil would choose the most beautiful of them for his bride; the last one to arrive would be chopped up and eaten.
Back in the Middle Ages, being labelled a witch meant being blamed for every kind of disease, famine and natural disaster. It regularly ended with an innocent villager being burnt at the stake.
These days, however, we know that disease, famine and natural disasters have other causes. So, today’s witches have been re-cast in a cuddlier – sometimes sexier – mode. Today’s Walpurgisnacht, celebrated every year at the end of April, has become an excuse for a massive costume party, both up on the mountain and down in the villages. It’s a bit like a Venetian masquerade, intoxicating, exhilarating, spectacular – but with a far greater chance of wind and rain.
Wernigerode, where my train journey to the top started, is witchery HQ. The half-timbered town is dominated by a fairy-tale castle, and on the cobbled main square is a 15th-century town hall girdled with five-pointed stars for protection against the devil, and crowned by roof conicals like witches’ hats.
Every café seems to offer hexenkaffee – witches’ coffee – or teufelskuss – devil’s kiss cocktails with vodka and chilli. I liked the pedestrian crossings: a horned red devil for stop, and a green flying witch for go. Very un-Teutonic.
There are other destinations in the foothills of the Harz which also cash in on all this witchery. Thale, deeper into the former eastern republic, is a nondescript town under the lee of impressive cliffs, where to ride a cable car to the top is to enter a modern fantasia of a witch’s village, very recently built around an original Hexentanzplatz, or “witches’ dancing place”.
This is primarily a family attraction, with witch tour guides and upside-down houses, but it also has the 120-year-old Walpurgishalle, a wooden hall that looks to have stepped out of Nordic mythology.
The big Walpurgisnacht party up here attracts 7,000 guests on the night of 30 April, and its witches’ musical, Walpurga, plays to around 70,000 visitors a year in its open-air amphitheatre.
Then there’s Goslar, another half-timbered town in the foothills, the final stop on my initiation into Germany’s bewitchery. In the former west, Goslar too hosts a Walpurgisnacht.
This town is richer, wonkier and more culturally diverse than Wernigerode, and it owes much of its flourish to the patronage of the 11th-century Holy Roman Emperor Heinrich III, who so loved the place that he came to stay in the palace 22 times, which must have been a burden on the locals.
Goslar’s wonderful state of preservation, combined with plenty of options for shopping, eating and mountain hiking, means it doesn’t feel the need to jump on the broomstick-bandwagon.
It’s a Unesco World Heritage Site three times over, for its quantity of old houses, its thousand-year-old mines, and its ancient water system. For a town like this, the annual Walpurgisnacht is just a passing fancy. So, in the brewpub on Goslar’s main square I had to settle for a “hell” (light) beer – no Devil’s Kiss here.
Getting there
British Airways flies from the UK to Hanover, from which Goslar is an hour’s train journey away and has onward rail services to Wernigerode and Thale.
Where to stay
A-Rosa Gothisches Haus in Wernigerode has B&B doubles from €135 (£116) and Hotel Alte Münze in Goslar from €136 (£118) . The writer was a guest of the German National Tourist Office (germany.travel) and Harz Tourism (harzinfo.de).