Down and Up to Treseburg

We wrapped up our great big, very full day by driving down through a series of mountains towns, including one with a couple caves, one of which purports to have a cave bear skeleton in it, until we came to Treseburg. Treseburg is a village, since incorporated into the much larger Thale, that sits at the confluence of the Bode and Luppbode Rivers. It's the gateway to the famous Bodetal Hike, and is also on the route of several other heavily traveled trails, most famous of them the Hexensteig, the Witches' Way.

There was a castle up on the hill above the village at one point, you can hike (a really steep climb it looks like) up from the road to the ruins. Didn't do it, but might. The town expanded when mining for iron and copper began in the Fifteenth Century, but the mines closed in the Nineteenth. There are some very impressive looking Jugendstile/ Art Nouveau mansions on the bank of the Bode.

Something I didn't know when we visited: it was the site of the murder of nine unarmed Hitler Youth Volkssturm by American troops from the 19th Infantry Regiment, First Infantry Division on April 19.

Not a happy way to end the post, so I'll just add, we ate dinner in the village. I had local fish (trout) and I'm not a fish eater, but it was really good.

edit: the unit implicated in the killings mentioned above was the 18th Regiment, First ID, not the nineteenth.Read more