On a sunny day the view from the Hercules monument is spectacular. Photo (cc) flickr user andreasmarx

Once upon a time I had a friend, another fresh-off-the plane American ex-pat au pairing in Germany, who wanted to see the fairy tale road.  The Brothers Grimm, you see, had travelled all over Germany collecting local yarns and inspiration for the fairy tales that would make them famous worldwide.  The places where they had lived, worked, and visited comprise the fairy tale road.

The clock that, just maybe, had turned Cinderella’s coach into a pumpkin when it struck twelve and the city where the pied piper had played, she told me, were on the 600 kilometer route that runs from Hanau to Hamburg.  So one rainy Sunday morning we got up at 6 am, bought a Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket, and got on a regional train to Kassel, one of the most popular stops along the fairy tale road.

The German countryside really is the stuff of fairy tales, Brothers Grimm or not.  The Black Forest, the Alps, and the quaint old half-timber villages make it easy to imagine Snow White and those dwarves living in the forest, Cinderella cleaning the floors of her snotty step-siblings posh city house, or a cat in boots strutting down narrow cobblestone streets.  Then again, to a stranger in a new country, just about everything is enchanting.

The city of Kassel isn’t known for being exceptionally beautiful, but who can blame the place?  Ninety percent of the city was bombed during World War II, and reconstruction was done as quickly and pragmatically as possible afterward.  The gems that remain are just outside of the city: Wilhelmshöhe Castle, Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe, and the Hercules Monument from which, my companion told me, we would be able to see all the way to the former DDR.  That is, if the weather played along.

It didn’t.  In Kassel and we walked from the train station to the park through almost-empty streets.  (It being early on a rainy Sunday morning, most folks were still in bed.)  The walk was further than we’d estimated, and after over an hour, we finally reached the Bergpark (mountain park).  My friend, intrepid tourist that she was, was determined to hike to the Hercules Monument on the park’s highest point.  We had forgotten to bring breadcrumbs, but we had raincoats to keep out the drizzle, so into the park we went.

The Hercules Monument perches atop a small octagonal structure that is also open to tourists. Photo (cc) flickr user andreasmarx

We passed a lake where a lone white swan floated peacefully, its bright white feathers a rebellion against the grey weather and the artificial ruins that dabbed the landscape behind it.  We walked through forested areas and passed wrought-iron bridges built purely for aesthetic purposes.  We found boulders, more artificial ruins, fountains, and tiny lakes whose discovery make you feel as if you’ve  just been told an exciting secret.  Wilhelmshöhe Castle seemed almost drab in comparison to the park landscape that my imagination was populating with the characters of every fairy tale I’d ever read.

Then we began the ascent, climbing large stone stairs lined with roughly cut stone walls.  Up and up and up and up we walked, the weather still grim (or was it Grimm?), and it didn’t feel like the Hercules monument towering above us was getting any closer.  We stopped to rest several times, and finally, panting hard, calves burning, we reached Hercules and stopped to look down at what, if it hadn’t been overcast and foggy, would have been a spectacular view.  Later, I found out that we’d climbed 550 meters on that hike.

Potentially beautiful as that view may have been, the rain eventually started to get heavier, and we trudged back down the mountain, this time ignoring the meadows and bridges and ruins that had inspired and enchanted us on arrival.  We took a tram back to the train station, grabbed a snack, and hopped back on the train for Frankfurt.

And then, of course, we lived happily ever after.