Wernigerode & Braunschweig – Exploring Some More of Lower Saxony & Saxony-Anhalt

Our base for the second half of our holiday in Germany was the Lower Saxony town of Hildesheim and whilst the town had a good bit of history and culture of its own to explore, its location also provided a great opportunity for some easy day trips elsewhere. One day, whilst I headed off to Hamburg (read about that in a couple of weeks), the rest of the group headed to the town of Wolfenbüttle which is known for having the largest collection of timber framed buildings in Germany and is somewhere I’d like to check out in future based on their reviews. However, we also did two day trips as a full group, one to the nearby city of Baunschweig and another to the town of Wernigerode in neighbouring Saxony-Anhalt.

Hildesheim – The Town With a 1,000 Year Old Rosebush

Having travelled from Dresden via Berlin by way of DB Intercity and ICE services, the Lower-Saxony town of Hildesheim was our base for the second part of our holiday. Located to the south-east of Hannover, Hildesheim was founded more than 1200 years ago, however, was unfortunately heavily bombed during the closing months of World War 2 with much of the city being destroyed. Following the end of the war, the city was rebuilt, with key buildings being restored to their historical conditional and as a result Hildesheim has been home to a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1985.

BER-HIL DB ICE – 1st Class

Our arrival into Berlin Haupbahnhof (Hbf) had been by way of a slightly delayed DB Intercity service which had dropped us off in the depths of the station’s low-level platforms. For the second leg of the journey, we’d be travelling on a DB Intercity Express (ICE) service from Berlin to Hildesheim, the town in Lower Saxony that would be our base for the second half of our holiday. So, with around 45 minutes until our next train was scheduled to depart we made our way upstairs to the entry level of the five-tier station ready to get on with the second part of our travel day.

DRE-BER DB Intercity – 1st Class

Midway through our holiday in Germany, having spent a week based in Dresden and exploring both this fabulous city and some of the surrounding area, it was time to move to the location that would be our base for the second half of the holiday. Getting from Saxony to Lower Saxony would require us to catch two trains, the first of which would take us from Dresden to the German capital, Berlin. And so, around 40 minutes before our train departed, we arrived at Dresden Haupbahnhof for the last time this trip ready to catch the DB Intercity service towards Berlin.

Dresden – Florence on the Elbe – Part 2

This is the second of two blogs covering our time based in the city of Dresden, with part one pausing just before lunch on our third day exploring the city. That morning, we had visited Dresden’s beautiful Frauenkirche before jumping back on the sightseeing bus tour round to the Lingnerschloss, one of the trio of Schlosses that sit high above the north bank of the Elbe out towards the Blaues Wunder brücke.

PRG-DRE České dráhy EuroCity ‘Canopus’ 1st Class

Having had a great day exploring the city of Prague, it was time to head back to our base in Dresden and so we were back at Praha Hlavní Nádraží (Prague Main Station) ready to catch a train back across the border. As with the journey to Prague, this service would be operated by České dráhy (Czech Railways) as a EuroCity service, however instead of running to Berlin like many of the Prague to Dresden services do, this one would instead run to Zurich overnight as the ‘Canopus’ sleeper train. Whilst the journey overnight to Zurich takes over 14.5 hours, our journey to Dresden would take around two and a half hours, with us due to arrive at 2059.