Harz Mountains

Our walking/train expert guru, Phoebe, organised an overnight stay in the Harz Mountains. We got up early on Saturday morning caught the train south, 3 hours from Berlin to the Harz mountains. We stayed in a village called Wernigerode. 

A quaint little village with lots of Tudor style buildings. After lunch we did a horse and cart trip up to the Schloss (castle). The Schloss is over 900 years old. It still blows our minds to see such old buildings in such amazing conditions! Heaps of snow around, and still heaps on top of the trees. 

Lots of snowball throwing. I got dumped on really well, when Phil and Alan threw a few snowballs above the tree I was standing under and the snow just kept falling and falling, I was a real life snowman! Very funny, until it goes down your back and is really really cold, actually it still is quite funny! There was a lot of laughter from all of us.

We were a total of 12 families.. We all did our own thing and met up at the Youth Hostel in the afternoon. The hostel was still being renovated. The room we were in was very clean, and had comfortable beds and a decent shower. 

On the bottom level they have 2 bowling lanes. We booked it for 2 hours and the kids (ranging from 3 to 14) took turns. They played in teams and had a terrific time. The kids all play really well together, and the older ones help the younger ones. While the adults sat upstairs in the common area and drank lots of beer and wine! I think altogether there were 23 adults and 28 children.