The First Road Trip of the Year: Walsrode and Hildesheim in the Snow

In my New Year’s post, I mentioned that I may have a road trip report for you soon and here it is. Because on Sunday, when 2026 was only four days old, I went on the first road trip of the year.

Though this particular trip was still planned in 2025. For you see, I have a toy collector pal named Michael. He lives about 150 kilometers away in a village near Hildesheim. I wanted to buy some Masters of the Universe Classics figures from him, so we agreed that I’d come to pick them up on Sunday, January 4.

Of course, at the time the weather was nice and clear and there was no snow. But then, it started to snow on Friday afternoon and just kept going intermittently through Friday night and Saturday. And according to the weather report, the snow would stick around at least until following weekend. What is more, North Germany is having veritable snow storm this weekend that’s so dangerous that people are being urged to stay at home if possible, though we didn’t know that at the time. Nonetheless, we agree to wait what the weather and traffic conditions would be like on Sunday and then I would decide whether to drive to Hildesheim on Sunday or reschedule.

On Sunday morning, I woke up, looked out of the front door and saw that not only was the snow that had fallen on Friday and Saturday was still there, but that there was even more of it, which had fallen overnight. I guess we had about ten to fifteen centimeters of snow, which is a lot by North German standards. And indeed, North Germany got the brunt of the current snowfall, which is very unusual.

On Friday and Saturday, the snowfall had caused lots of traffic accidents in North Germany and several Autobahnen and Bundesstraßen were clogged with traffic or closed altogether as a result. So I checked the traffic reports and saw that while several train and bus services had been cancelled because of the snow, the streets were clear. I deliberated for a few moments – Do I really want to drive in the snow? Though it would be a lovely road trip. – and then decided, “Screw it! I’ll go.”

Now Autobahnen and Bundesstraßen have priority, when clearing the roads with snow ploughs (and the snow is mostly cleared during the night). Besides, my car has a four-wheel drive, if necessary. So I messaged Michael that I’m coming to pick up the figures and embarked on my road trip to Hildesheim.

Of course, more snow had fallen overnight. So I looked out of the front door and wondered whether to shovel the driveway before leaving. Cause in Germany, you are required to remove snow from your driveway, the path to your front door and the sidewalk, lest someone slip and fall. However, clearing the driveway would take time and there would only be more snow. Besides, it was Sunday and there would be no mail delivery, I wasn’t expcting visitors and no one would have any reason to walk up to my front door. So I decided to shovel the driveway on Monday morning, if necessary.

Autobahn A1 and A27   

Pretty much any road trip starts on Autobahn A1 and this one was no different. So I drove onto Autobahn A1 in direction Hamburg. This early on a Sunday morning, there was little traffic and I made it through the construction zone at the Weser Bridge without any problems.

Autobahn A1 is one of the major North South routes not just for Germany, but for all of Europe (the other Autobahn A7 which we will visit later). Therefore large parts of it, including the entire stretch between junction Stuhr and Hamburg, have three lanes in both directions. The part of the A1 that runs through Bremen also has an automatic traffic control system. And on Sunday morning, that automatic traffic control system not only set the speed limit to a low eighty kilometers per hour, probably to account for the still falling snow, but also closed the entire left lane. Which wasn’t much of a problem, because there wasn’t a lot of traffic and you couldn’t go very fast anyway, so you didn’t need to use the left lane.

On the radio, they announced that there has been an accident at the exit Posthausen, well beyond where I was going, so I assumed they wanted to keep the left lane free for emergency vehicles and also because the accident likely was on the left lane. However, I later realised that they had also closed the left lane, because it hadn’t yet been fully cleared and was full of partially frozen sludge, which is dangerous to drive on.

At intersection Bremer Kreuz, I changed onto Autobahn A27 in direction Hannover. The A27 is a two-lane Autobahn and wasn’t overly busy, because there was no truck traffic on a Sunday. The A27 connects the harbours of Bremerhaven and Cuxhaven with the rest of Germany and Europe, so there are usually a lot of trucks there.

For the first twenty kilometers or so, the A27 was also clear. You couldn’t go 150 kilometers per hour – or rather, you could, but it wouldn’t be wise, given the conditions – but you could safely go 120 kilometers per hour. However, once I passed Verden, which is the only town of note on this stretch of the A27 (the A27 is a very boring Autobahn was little of interest on either side), not only did the snowfall intensify, but the left lane was also not clear, but covered in partially frozen sludge. It was not closed as the left lane of the A1 back in Bremen, mostly because there is no automatic traffic control system here, but changing onto the left lane was dangerous, so I didn’t do it. Which was okay, until I ended up behind a car pulling a trailer going about 80 kilometers an hour. So I trundled along behind the car with the trailer, going much slower than I usually would.

At exit Langwedel I saw a police car going in the opposite direction with its sirens on. It was headed for a car that was standing hard shoulder with its front pointed in the wrong direction. I have no idea if the driver got the lanes mixed up and accidentally drove down the exit rather than the entry ramp and stopped on the hard shoulder to avoid becoming what we call a “Geisterfahrer” (ghost driver) in Germany, i.e. someone who’s driving on the Autobahn in the wrong direction, or whether the car slipped on the icy surface and ended up in the wrong direction. At any rate, that looked as if a much more serious accident had been narrowly avoided.

Before setting out, I had considered that I could perhaps go to visit one of the castles in the area around Hildesheim, after picking up my action figures. Or maybe I could even go to the Harz mountains, the western edge of which is only about fifty kilometers south of Hildesheim. The Harz mountains are the northernmost part of Germany, where skiing is possible, and they’re known to be particularly lovely in the winter.

However, as I trundled through the snow after the car with the trailer at 80 kilometers per hour, I realised that the whole idea was a folly. If the snow was already causing problems on the A27, how much worse would the situation in the Harz mountains be? As for the castles, I could visit those some other time.  And the Harz mountains would be worth a daytrip on their own, though not while it was snowing.

Later, I heard on the radio that the traffic situation in the Harz mountains was terrible, that all parking lots were full, because it seemed that half of North Germany had decided to go to the Harz mountains, enjoy the snow and maybe go skiing or sledding. Which is good for the Harz mountains and the people there, because last year there was a documentary on TV that tourism in the Harz region is down, largely because skiing is no longer reliably possible every winter due to climate change, and that many small towns are dying. And though holidays in Germany are supposedly booming, those people aren’t going to the Harz mountains or the Black Forest, at least not during the summer.

The Walsrode Bismarck Tower 

But even though the Harz mountains and the castles around Hildesheim were out, there were still sights to see on route. So I left the A27 at the exit Walsrode West for a pit stop.

Walsrode is a town at the edge of the Lüneburg Heath nature park. It has an abbey that’s more than a thousand years old, the supposedly largest bird park in the world and the writer Hermann Löns lived there for a while. Hermann Löns is often called the Poet of the Heath, because he is famous for his poems, stories and novels set in the Lüneburg Heath, though he neither was from the Lüneburg Heath (he was from Western Prussia, now Poland) nor did he die there (he died in WWI in France). But he loved the Lüneburg Heath and the Lüneburg Heath loved him in return and there are still a lot of monuments dedicated to Hermann Löns in the region.

However, I did not put in a pit stop at Walsrode to visit the abbey or the bird park or a monument to Hermann Löns. Now, I was here to visit a monument to another much venerated figure from the Second German Empire, namely the Walsrode Bismarck Tower.

I have written about the Second German Empire’s tendency to engage in nation building via putting monuments on mountain tops before. The Bismarck Towers are one example of this. Count Otto von Bismarck, prime minister of Prussia and later chancellor of the Second German Empire from 1871 to 1890, was much venerated as the uniter of Germany, which is also why there are a lot of monuments dedicated to him all over the place. Pretty much every larger city in Germany has a Bismarck statue somewhere – Bremen’s depicts Bismarck on horseback and stands next to the cathedral. Hamburg has a giant Bismarck statue which holds a giant sword and stands on a pedestal held up by muscular naked young men who are supposed to represent the various German states, but it’s kind of obvious that the artist just liked depicting naked muscular men and that this is a very gay Bismarck monument. Hamburg’s Bismarck monument is badly neglected, half hidden by trees and covered in graffiti and some people would like to see it gone altogether, because they view Bismarck as a promoter of colonialism. That’s not quite true – Bismarck was sceptical of colonialism and would have preferred to focus on Germany, but Emperor Wilhelm II and some wealthy merchants wanted colonies, so Bismarck yielded. Also, whether you like Bismarck or not, he is an important part of our history and we shouldn’t just throw out history we don’t like. Besides, the Hamburg Bismarck monument is interesting from an artistic POV, so it should absolutely be restored.

And then there are the Bismarck Towers. Once upon a time, there were 243 Bismarck Towers all over Germany, neighbouring countries and even overseas. 173 of them survive, 146 of them in present-day Germany. Here is a website, which has information and photos of all of them, both surviving and destroyed.

North Germany never had all that many Bismarck Towers, probably because we lack the mountain tops to put them on top of. And of the few we had, many were destroyed over the years. The closest surviving Bismarck Tower to me is actually the one in Walsrode, which I had planned to visit for a while now. Because I find Bismarck Towers and the quasi-religious veneration of Count Otto von Bismarck they represent fascinating. Many Bismarck Towers were even topped with a metal bowl for lighting fires in memory of Bismarck, though these fire bowls are mostly gone now, even from the surviving towers.

According to Google Maps, the Walsrode Bismarck Tower was supposed to be on the edge of town. So I parked on the parking lot of a supermarket. Opposite the supermarket a path should lead to the Bismarck Tower, at least in theory. For in practice, there was no path. Nor was there any signpost, but then there rarely are signposts for Bismarck Towers, because many towns that have one find them kind of embarassing.

Finally, I did discover the path. It was a narrow steep path behind a bus stop that led a slope into a small forest at the edge of town. I briefly hesitated – after all, it was snowy and the path might be slippery – then I made my way up the slope and maybe 50 meters through the small forest, until I got to the Bismarck Tower.

As Bismarck Towers go, the Walsrode tower is fairly small, only nine meters tall. Many other Bismarck Towers are much taller and double as observation towers. Since Walsrode is at the edge of the Lüneburg Heath, the tower was built from glacial erratics, which are plentiful in the Lüneburg Heath. The stones surrounding the tower are glacial erratics as well.

The Walsrode Bismarck Tower was completed in 1911 and financed by the owner of a local munitions factory. Most Bismarck Towers were built by private individuals or sometimes associations that really loved Count von Bismarck. These towers were not an official state project, but an expression of private veneration of Bismarck. Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine anybody loving any politician so much that they would invest a lot of their own money to build monuments to them.

Like many Bismarck Towers, the Walsrode Tower originally had a fire bowl on top, which was apparently lit for special occasions until 1925. However, the fire bowl has long been lost, probably fallen victim to WWII metal collections. But otherwise, the Walsrode Bismarck Tower is in good condition and has clearly been restored at some point in the past 114 years. Many Bismarck Towers have fallen into disrepair, sometimes due to neglect and sometimes as a ploy of the respective town to get rid of an unwanted monument. “Oh, but the tower is so badly damaged, it poses a danger to the public. So you see, we need to tear it down.” So kudos to the town of Walsrode for taking such good care of their Bismarck Tower.

For more information about the Walsrode Bismarck Tower, go here.

Whenever I go on a road trip, I like to take a few action figures along for impromptu toy photography. And since it was a frosty day, I took along a forsty action figure, namely the Masters of the Universe Classics Icer, a fairly obscure Evil Warrior who only appeared in a single not very good episode of the Filmation cartoon. He’s basically Ice Man of the X-Men, only evil. Though he does make for a great action figure.

So enjoy these photos of Icer taken at the Walsrode Bismarck Tower:

Bonus: The Hildesheim Bismarck Tower on Gallows Hill

I have actually visited one other of the 146 surviving Bismarck Towers in Germany, namely the one in Hildesheim, i.e. the very city where I was headed on Sunday,

However, I visited the Hildesheim Bismarck Tower not this Sunday, but sometime last November. But since we’re on the subject of Bismarck Towers, I thought it would be fitting to share some photos of the Hildesheim Bismarck Tower.

The Hildesheim Bismarck Tower is located on a hill called Galgenberg (Gallows Hill) on the south-eastern edge of the city approx. 172 meters above sea level (which is about as high as it gets here). And yes, the reason for the name is exactly what you think. In days of old, this was the execution site for the city of Hildesheim.

By the late nineteenth century, the old gallows was long gone and what was left was a hill with an excellent view of the city. So an association of local citizens decided that this would be an excellent location to put a Bismarck Tower, which is not morbid at all, and started soliciting donations. They chose the design “Götterdämmerung” by architect Wilhelm Kreis, which was the most popular design for Bismarck Towers, since more than forty Bismarck Towers were based on this design. Wilhelm Kreis’ work as an architect and professor of architecture spans four regimes (the Second German Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich and postwar West Germany) and his work cann be seen all over Germany. Even if you have never heard of Wilhelm Kreis before, if you live in Germany, you have seen his work. Among other things, Kreis also designed several other Bismarck Towers that did not follow the “Götterdämmerung” template and is probably responsible for more Bismarck Towers than anybody else aside from Otto von Bismarck himself. Wilhelm Kreis was also the one who came up with the idea of putting a fire bowl on top of the towers.

When I visited the Hildesheim Bismarck Tower last November, I drove up Gallows Hill, parked my car and walked the rest of the way through a small forest. The Hildesheim Bismarck Tower sits in the middle of a clearing. At twenty meters, it’s more than twice as tall as the Walsrode Tower and doubles as an observation tower with a supposedly great view of Hildesheim, when open. Alas, the Hildesheim Bismarck Tower was closed for renovations, when I visited, but at least the city is taking care of it.

Once again, the Hildesheim Bismarck Tower has lost its fire bowl. According to this website, the fire bowl was initially supposed to hold a gas fire, but that was considered not impressive enough, so they used peet soaked in petroleum instead. Because the tower is sitting in a clearing in a small forest with trees relatively nearby, there was some concern about sparks accidentally causing wildfires. The fire was lit for Bismarck’s birthday every year up to 1918. Here is an artist’s impression of what a “Götterdämmerung” type Bismarck Tower looks like, when the fire is lit. It’s pretty cool and I would love to see a Bismarck Tower lit up. Tecklenburg’s Bismarck Tower, which is not a “Götterdämmerung” design but has a fire bowl, was supposedly lit up by student fraternities from nearby Münster University well into the 1970s. The Tecklenburg Bismarck Tower is definitely on my list of places to visit, because it’s not that far away.

Autobahn A7

After my pit stop to visit the Walsrode Bismarck Tower, I headed back onto Autobahn A27 for the last few kilometers, until it meets Autobahn A7 at the junction Walsrode. For even though all the direction signs on the A27 give Hannover as a destination, the Autobahn doesn’t actually go all the way to Hannover (which confused the heck out of me that first time I drove that route many years ago), but ends in Walsrode, where it merges with Autobahn A7. Autobahn A7 is Germany’s longest Autobahn, running from the Danish to the Austrian border, and the other major North South route for Germany and all of Europe.

I headed south on the A7 towards Hannover. The A7 gets unpleasant beyond Göttingen, when you hit the infamous Kassel Mountains (for more about that curious relic of Nazi Autobahn planning, see this post). But between Hamburg and Hildesheim, the A7 is a pleasantly broad and recently repaved Autobahn with three lanes in each direction.

Whenever I’m on the A7 headed towards Hannover and beyond, I usually put in a pitstop at Autohof Schwarmstedt, which has an American style diner as well as a bakery café operated by Bakery Vatter, a chain based in Celle. Bakery Vatter is usually where I stop to have coffee, breakfast or a piece of cake depending on the time of day. And normally, I would have stopped at Bakery Vatter for breakfast. However, my pit stop in Walsrode had taken up time and because of the weather conditions, my progress was slower than usual. And since I didn’t want to keep Michael waiting, I decided to skip breakfast at Bakery Vatter. In retrospect, that probably wasn’t such a great idea, since it meant that I was running on water and a banana I’d had at home.

On the other hand, the snowfall intensified again by the time I reached Hannover. Once again, Hannover’s automatic traffic control system closed the not fully cleared left lane for traffic and left only the right and middle lane open. Which would normally be fine, except that you still had drivers who stayed on the middle lane (which you’re not supposed to do, even if all three lanes are open) rather than return to the right lane, even though they were going fairly slowly and not overtaking anybody. At one point, I passed a snow plough that was in the process of clearing the left lane. Meanwhile, in the opposite direction, there were three snow ploughs driving next to each other clearing the Autobahn with a long line of cars piled up behind the slow-moving snow ploughs. Still better than the alternative.

The A7 bypasses Hannover in a fairly wide arc and you can’t see anything of the actual city from the Autobahn except for the central distribution warehouse of the Rossmann drugstore chain, which is headquartered in Hannover, and the marl quarries and cement factories on the edge of the city. The marl quarries and cement factories have been there for as long as I can remember and the first image that comes to mind when I think of Hannover is a marl quarry, since I’ve driven past the city far more often than through it.

I left the A7 at the exit Hildesheim-Drispenstedt in the middle of a construction zone where they are expanding the A7 to have three lane in both directions on the Hannover-Göttingen leg. Though I didn’t head into the city itself, but towards one of the villages scattered around Hildesheim.

Toys and the Wooziness Strikes Again

The snowfall had mostly subsided by now, but the country roads hadn’t been cleared yet. Once I reached the village, I saw plenty of people out and about, shovelling their driveways and the sidewalks, taking their dogs for a walk or pulling kids on sleds. The smaller streets had not been cleared at all, so I drove very slowly and carefully and finally made it to Michael’s place.

We went to his toy room, chatted for a while about the sort of things toy collectors chat about and I got my figures. You can see some photos I took on my dining room table further below.

While we were standing around and chatting, I noticed that I was starting to feel woozy. Now I have had occasional issues with low lood pressure since my teens and they have become more frequent again of late. Due to the timing, I suspect they’re partly hormone related, but they’re also linked to the weather. Though the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything that morning except for a banana, because I skipped breakfast at Bakery Vatter, didn’t help either.

Since this is an issue I have been dealing with intermittently for forty years, I know what to do when it strikes. Find a place to sit down (or lie down, when at home), drink something and eat something sugary or in the summer also something salty. So I said good-bye to Michael, so I could go back to my car, sit down and have a piece of chocolate and a gulp of water.

However, we hadn’t yet handled the payment, so I got out my wallet, counted out the money and the wooziness got notably worse. So I said, “I’m sorry, but my low blood pressure is acting up and I really need to sit down somewhere.” So I ended up sitting in what turned out to be the kitchen of Michael’s Mom (it’s a multigenerational household. They’re fairly common in Germany, particularly in rural areas). The kitchen was about as old as mine, which is saying something.

Michael asked if I needed to eat or drink anything and I said, “A glass of water and something with sugar would be nice.” So I had a glass of water and another banana. A bit later, Michael’s mother showed up and was surprised to find a stranger in her kitchen. I explained that I’d been buying some figures of Michael and that I wasn’t feeling well.

These episodes of wooziness usually subside after a couple of minutes and so I felt notably better after sitting down, drinking some water and having a banana. I thanked Michael, took my figures and said good-bye.

Lunch in Hildesheim

Once I was back at my car, I debated what to do next. It was lunchtime by now, so my priority was finding someplace to eat, especially considering the attack of wooziness I had just experienced.

There aren’t really any restaurants in that small village – I think they have a döner shop, but that’s all – so the best course of action was driving into Hildesheim, where there are plenty of restaurants. By now, I had also abandoned any plans of maybe visiting one of the castles in the area, so Hildesheim it was.

Hildesheim is a city of approximately 100000 inhabitants and one of the oldest cities in North Germany. The area around Hildesheim has been inhabited since at least 5700 BC – and indeed they dug up remnants of a settlement from 5700 BC on the edge of the very village I had just visited.

The current city grew around a Christian chapel (more on that later) that has existed at least since the day of Charlesmagne. His son and successor Louis the Pious turned the chapel into a bishop’s seat and chapel and city grew and developed from there. Hildesheim still is a bishop’s seat today and this gentleman is the current bishop, latest in a line of bishop’s strecthing back to 815 AD.

Nowadays, Hildesheim is famous for having multiple churches dating back to the early Middle Ages, two of which are considered UNESCO World Heritage sites (more on that later) as well as what is probably the best museum of ancient history in North Germany.

I parked my car in a public parking lot in the city center with lots of restaurants in the vicinity.  I chose a Vietnamese cum Sushi restaurant called Quan Cuoi. Vietnamese/Sushi restaurants is a common combination in Germany, because the vast majority of Asian restaurants in Germany, whether they advertise themselves as Chinese, Thai, Sushi places or fusion restaurants, are actually run by Vietnamese people. In the 1970s and early 1980s, West Germany received an influx of refugees who had fled Vietnam following the end of the Vietnam war, while East Germany received an influx of contract workers from the now Socialist brother state Vietnam in the 1980s. As a result, there are a lot of people of Vietnamese descent in Germany and quite a few of them went into the restaurant business.

Whenever I go to one of those Vietnames cum Sushi places, I usually order Vietnamese dishes, because they are usually better. And so I has summer rolls as a starter and a bowl of rice noodles with spring rolls and assorted greens as a main course. As a drink, I had homemade limeade. Back when my Dad worked in Singapore in 1982/83 and my Mom and I visited him during the school holidays, limeade was pretty much my go-to drink. At the time, you couldn’t get limeade in Germany at all, but now it’s a staple on Asian restaurant menus and I usually order it for old times’ sake and because I still like it more than forty years later.

Both dishes were very good. With summer rolls, the rice paper wrappers can sometimes get tough, but these were just right. The rice noodle bowl was good as well and the spring rolls were not so hot that they scorch your mouth.

After lunch, I had a Vietnamese coffee with sweetened condensed milk, because a) I like it and b) a jolt of caffeine and sweetened milk seemed like a good idea to keep me awake and my blood pressure up following my earlier attack of wooziness.

St. Mary’s Cathedral in the Snow

After lunch, I felt much refreshed. It was still early in the afternoon and I was in the vicinity of St. Mary’s Cathedral, one of the two UNESCO World Heritage churches in Hildesheim. What is more, I had passed another large church on my way to the parking lot and assumed it was the other UNESCO World Heritage church St. Michael’s. Now I have visited both churches before, but that was twenty years ago or so, so it’s certainly time for another visit.

St. Mary’s Cathedral is Hildesheim’s oldest church and also the site that the city grew around. It began as a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary in 815 AD. In 872 AD, the chapel was expanded to a pre-Romanesque cathedral, parts of which still stand today.

I love that some unknown person gave Bishop Bernward a snowball and a little snowman buddy.

As for why Bishop Bernward received a statue outside in the Cathedral Square, Bishop Bernward traveled to Rome and was very impressed by the eternal city. So he decided that Hildesheim should be more like Rome. He initiated the expansion of the Cathedral and the building of St. Michael’s Church, the other UNESCO World Heritage church in Hildesheim.

One of the sights in Rome that impressed Bishop Bernward were the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius. Indeed, those columns impressed Bernward so much that he decided he wanted one of those for Hildesheim. And thus he had the Christ Column made, which tells the story of Jesus Christ.

Because the Christ Column is such a unique piece of art, it is part of the reason why St. Mary’s Cathedral is a UNESCO World Heritage site. So Bishop Bernward is directly responsible for the fact that Hildesheim has two UNESCO World Heritage sites, since he initiated the construction of St. Michael’s Church. The Christ Column also narrowly escaped destruction several times, because various subsequent bishops and rulers wanted to melt it down to recycle all that juicy bronze.

Because I visited Hildesheim during the twelve days of Christmas, St. Mary’s Cathedral still had a beautiful nativity set up.

You’ll notice that the inside of St. Mary’s Cathedral is rather plain for such an old church. There is a reason for this, because Hildesheim, though of little military significance, was heavily bombed in the last few months of World War 2 and much of the medieval city center was destroyed and St. Mary’s Cathedral was badly damaged. Much of the current cathedral does not actually date from the early Middle Ages, but is only about seventy years old. The Christ Column and the other treasures of the Cathedral survived, because they had been evacuated and stored elsewhere. Old photographs show that the interior was a lot more elaborate before 1945, but the reconstruction was kept deliberately plain, supposedly because that’s what the original Pre-Romanesque interiors would have looked like. Coincidentally, plainer interiors also very much matched the zeitgeist of the 1950s.

One of the parts of St. Mary’s Cathedral that survived WWII is the crypt which dates from 872 AD. I didn’t take any photos down there, but inside the crypt there is a medieval Madonna and a golden reliquary. The tombs of the bishops of Hildesheim are also down there, but that part was closed off, because one former Bishop (this one) was found to have sexually abused children and another (this one) was not particularly interested in investigating sexual abuse allegations against priests in his diocese or against his predecessor. One survivor of the abuse by Bishop Janssen demanded that his remains be removed from the crypt, but the church apparently isn’t sure what to do about the remains of Bishop Janssen, so they just closed off the area with the bishops’ tombs altogether, which seems like a shitty compromise. They should just remove the remains of Bishop Janssen and bury them elsewhere, preferably anonymously. Or they could also put a large memorial plaque above Bishop Janssen’s tomb, stating that “This piece of shit abused children.”

St. Mary’s Cathedral is also famous for its mythical thousand-year-old rose bush. According to legend, Louis the Pious, son of Charlesmagne and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, was travelling through the region now called Hildesheimer Börde with his entourage, when he lost a valuable reliquary. When Louis the Pious and his entourage returned to retrieve the lost reliquary, they found it entangled in the branches of a rose bush that was blooming out of season, which they took for a sign to build a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary right there. In another version of the legend, Louis the Pious got lost in the woods during a hunt and couldn’t find his entourage again, so he dropped to his knees and started praying. He then fell asleep in the woods and when he awoke, he found the reliquary he always carried with him hanging from the branches of a rose bush that was blooming out of season. Shortly thereafter, his entourage found him and the grateful Louis the Pious vowed to build a chapel in the place of his deliverance.

The truth of those legends is questionable at the very least, but there is a rose bush growing inside the cloister of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Hildesheim and it is very old, though nowadays, it’s believed that the rose bush is “only” seven hundred years old rather than a thousand. The rose bush also survived the air raid which destroyed much of the cathedral and started blooming again under the rubble in the late spring and summer of 1945, which the locals took for yet another miracle associated with this rose bush.

My Mom BTW was deeply disappointed by the thousand-year-old rose bush at Hildesheim Cathedral, when she visited it as a kid during a school trip. “It’s not even a proper rose, just a dog rose”, she told me, “Besides, I’m pretty sure they just planted a new bush after the old one was destroyed in the war.”

That said, the fact that the thousand-year-old rose bush of Hildesheim is a dog rose is the very reason why it has survived for so long, because dog roses can get hundreds of years old. And it survived the WWII bombing, because the roots were unharmed under the rubble and started sprouting new branches.

Since St. Mary’s is also the seat of the Bishop of Hildesheim, it is surrounded by other buildings and very much its own district. There are administrative buildings, a library, a museum, a school and the cloister among others, all surrounding the cathedral. Some of them are quite old and impressive in their own right.

The Holy Cross Church

After my visit to St. Mary’s Cathedral, I planned to visit the other UNESCO World Heritage church in Hildesheims, St. Michael’s. I had a passed an old, Romanesque church on my way to the parking lot, so I headed there, only to realise that that church was not St. Michael’s at all, but the Holy Cross Church. Because of its history, Hildesheim is blessed with a lot of very old churches.

The Holy Cross Church began as a defensive gatehouse to protect St. Mary’s Cathedral from hostile forces. After a wall was built around the Cathedral, the old gatehouse was turned into a church sometime in the 11th century. It was rebuilt and expanded over the centuries, but the interior is still a original Romanesque church, though the facade is baroque.

A Surfeit of Churches

By the time I emerged from the Holy Cross Church, it was a quarter past three. The sun currently sets at half past four, so if I wanted to make most of the way home before dark, I should leave Hildesheim now.

So I decided that I would visit St. Michael’s, the other UNESCO World Heritage church, some other time. As I made my way back to where I’d parked my car, I also saw the tower of yet another church looming over some buildings.

This church isn’t St. Michael’s, the UNESCO World Heritage site either, but St. Andrew’s Church. St. Andrew’s Church dates back to 1022 AD, though the current incarnation dates from the 14th century. St. Andrew’s has the highest tower of all churches not just in Hildesheim, but in all of Lower Saxony. It’s a whopping 114,5 meters tall.

St. Andrew’s wasn’t far away either, but I didn’t visit it, because I wanted to get going, so I could make it home before dark. Though I really need to visit Hildesheim again some other time to visit St. Michael’s and St. Andrew’s as well as the other medieval inner city churches of Hildesheim St. Bernward, St. Godehard, St. Jakobi, St. Lamberti and St. Magdalene. Even with the Catholic and Lutheran church splitting these medieval churches between them, Hildesheim is still so abundantly blessed with churches to the point that some of them are no longer actively used as churches at all, but have been turned into museums or concert halls.

Parking Woes and the Road Home

I returned to the public lot where I’d parked my car and paid for my ticket. But when I tried to leave the lot, I got an unpleasant surprise, because the machine wouldn’t recognise my ticket nor would it open the barrier to let me out.

There was an emergency button on the ticket machine, so I pressed that button and someone answered. I explained my problem – I paid for the ticket, but the machine doesn’t recognise it. The person on the other end asked how much I had paid, so she could check her records. I said, “Five Euros fifty” [which is quite hefty, considering I had parked there for only two hours or so] and the lady on the other end opened the barrier for me.

I made my way back to Autobahn A7 and headed homewards. It had stopped snowing by now, the temperature was slightly above freezing and the Autobahn was clear. It was also remarkably full for a Sunday afternoon. There were a lot of cars with roof racks and it finally dawned on me that these were daytrippers and skiers from Hamburg or Hannover or somewhere inbetween, returning from a day in the snowy Harz Mountains.

By the time I passed Hannover, it was four PM, so I wouldn’t make it home before dark after all. I was awake and alert, at least for now, but I didn’t know whether that would be the case for the rest of the trip. And after changing onto Autobahn A27, there wouldn’t be a good place to stop, because the lone service station on the A27, service station Goldbach, closes very early. Last year, when I tried to stop there on a Sunday afternoon in November, it was already closed by five PM. What is more, there are hardly any parking lots left on the Bremen-Walsrode leg of the A27 either, because service station Goldbach supposedly has sufficient parking space, so they demolished several smaller parking lots along the route. Never mind that it’s safer to have several smaller parking lots available, in case you suddenly get tired while driving and need to stop and rest for a few minutes. Or if there’s heavy rain or snowfall and you want to wait it out in the safety of a parking lot.

However, Autohof Schwarmstedt was right ahead and Bakery Vatter makes a great stop for coffee and cake. They close at five PM, so there was still time for a pit stop.  So I exited the A7 at Schwarmstedt, parked my car and went to Bakery Vatter.

I had planned to have some coffee and cake, but it turned out that there was no longer any cake available, because they were already preparing to shut down for the evening. So I ordered a latte macchiato and bought a box of Bakery Vatter‘s tasty coffee cookies to take home. I didn’t take a photo either, because I only had a coffee, which isn’t very exciting to look at.

By the time I left Bakery Vatter and Autohof Schwarmstedt, it was mostly dark outside, though there was still a sliver of lighter sky visible in the West.

At junction Walsrode, I changed back onto Autobahn A27, which was also much clearer than in the morning. I made good progress, too, but that was about to change.

Take the Long Way Home

For on the radio, I kept hearing that there was a traffic jam on Autobahn A1 before the construction zone on the bridge across the river Weser. Now this isn’t particularly unusual – there’s always a traffic jam before the construction zone in both directions, which is a massive pain in the backside for those of us living in and around Bremen. However, on a Sunday late afternoon, the traffic jam normally isn’t so bad that it rates a mention in the traffic report on the radio and you can usually drive through the construction zone with only minor delays.

Since I’m local, I of course know all the detours to avoid the contruction zone and drive home via country roads instead. And normally, I wouldn’t even have hesitated to choose this option. However, it was dark and still snowing intermittently and I had no idea what the condition of the smaller country roads was like. So in this case, it might be safer to stay on the Autobahn and endure the traffic jam. On the other hand, the construction zone at the Weser bridge on the A1 is incredibly accident prone. In 2025 alone, there were more than three hundred accidents on the stretch of the A1 between junction Stuhr and intersection Bremer Kreuz with 56 people injured and two dead. Most of the accidents happen in northbound direction, because junction Stuhr is confusing even to locals, and involve trucks crashing into other trucks. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the southbound direction is safe, particularly in difficult weather conditions. And the last thing I need is getting flattened by a truck.

So I left Autobahn A27 at the exit Langwedel. I crossed the river Weser at the weir in Intschede, a narrow single lane crossing that is less busy than the bridge in Achim-Uesen or the Bremen inner city bridges. I was a tad worried about the conditions at the weir Intschede due to the weather, but the single lane was clear and also well lit.

After crossing the river Weser, I made my way home via the towns of Thedinghausen and Syke and several small villages. I did stop once more in Thedinghausen to refuel my car, cursing that a tax increase for 2026 as well as Trump starting a war with Venezuela had made fuel much more expensive.

Note that this is a route I know very well, because I have had to take it to avoid the ever-present traffic jam on the A1 several times. That’s also why I felt safe taking this route even in the dark and with intermittent snowfall. If I hadn’t known this route so well, it would have been dangerous given the weather conditions, because the roads are curvy, lined by trees and not very wide. Even as it was, I drove slower than I usually would.

I made it home at roughly a quarter to six PM, only to find to my surprised that my driveway and the path to the front door were completely free of snow. Of course, the snow had melted away somewhat during the day, but not enough to be completely gone from the one place where you really want it to be gone. No, someone had shovelled the driveway and the path to house and it definitely wasn’t me.

So I called up my neighbour Vladimir, who had shovelled the driveway for me very early in the morning the day before, and asked him whether he had cleared the driveway again. He said yes and also noted that he had used some salt. Now I normally don’t use salt, but I’m certainly not looking a gift horse or gift snow-free driveway in the mouth. So I thanked Vladimir.

New Arrivals and Fun with Action Figures 

Then I made dinner and took some quick dining table shots of my new action figures.

First up is Webstor, the spider-like Evil Warrior, who often serves as a spy or thief for Skeletor, though he has also been known to operate independently.

Even though his media appearances were rather limited, Webstor has long been one of the most popular members of Skeletor’s crew.

I do have the Masterverse Webstor, who’s also a great figure, but since Webstor is the representative of an Eternian species, there can be more than one.

For some reason, both my Masterverse and Classics Webstor have their loincloth glued on slightly askew. I have no idea why I ended up with two Webstors with their loinclothes askew.

Next up, we have Man-e-Faces, the Eternian actor turned Heroic Warrior, who can display three different faces – man, monster and robot – via a mechanism in his helmet. This Classics Man-e-Faces also comes with a bunch of dark red spare weapons, a reference to a special edition of the figure from the vintage toyline that came with additional weapons.

For many years, it remained a mystery why Man-e-Faces, who is after all an actor first and warrior second, came with an extra arsenal of weaponry that would have been more appropriate to a character like Man-at-Arms.

As explained here, the answer lies with the obscure figure that has now known as Wun-Dar. The character now known as Wun-Dar originated with a mailaway promotion in 1982/1983, where you had to send in proof of purchase of three figures to get one for free. This figure was a brown-haired repaint of He-Man with black boots and no armour. He also came with a selection of weapons from the Castle Grayskull Weapons Rack recast in reddish brown plastic. A mother wrote an angry letter to Mattel that the mailaway figure was disappointing (and joke’s on her, considering how expensive vintage examples of this mailaway figure are these days), so the promotion was discontinued, the remaining brown-haired He-Man repaints were given as promotional items or donated and the remaining stock of reddish brown weapons were packaged as a special promotional offer with the next upcoming figure to be released, which happened to be Man-e-Faces.

Next up, we have the Sorceress of Grayskull. There were two versions of the Sorceress of Grayskull released in the Classics line (theoretically three, since they also made a Filmation version). One in her traditional white, blue and orange outfit and one that was dressed all in white and has translucent wings. The all-white version of the Sorceress is known as the Temple of Darkness Sorceress, since she appeared all dressed in white in the vintage mini-comic Temple of Darkness. The mini-comics occasionally feature off-beat colouration, because they were often drawn when the look of the characters had not yet been finalised.

I have the Temple of Darkness Sorceress and she is a beautiful figure, but now I have the Sorceress in her more traditional colours as well:

Of course, the Sorceress comes with Zoar, even though that’s theoretically incorrect, because the Sorceress transforms into the falcon Zoar, whenever she must leave Castle Grayskull.

As for why there are two Zoars, the red and blue Zoar is the one that came with this Sorceress, while the white Zoar came with the Temple of Darkness Sorceress. There also is a red and orange Zoar that came with the Classics Teela. In short, there are several Zoars in the Classics toyline plus Screech, the evil counterpart to Zoar, and Glorybird, a pink Zoar repaint that is the pet of She-Ra’s good friends the Star Sisters. But while there are a lot of birds in the Classics toyline, not all of them came with bird perches. For the orange Zoar that came with Teela and the white Zoar that came with the Temple of Darkness Sorceress don’t have a perch, so mine sit on the rim of a shot glass.

While I was chatting with Michael, I chanced to mention this. Michael said, “Wait a minute, I have a spare Classics bird perch somewhere,” and gave it to me, so now I only have one perchless bird.

“Mother, why do we have two Zoars? Also, aren’t you Zoar? So who are these birds?”

“Teela, my dear, the white Zoar is the bird form of my predecessor Kuduk Ungol. And the Zoar with the blue wings is the bird form of Veena, the first Sorceress of Grayskull.”

“So is every single bird hanging out at Castle Grayskull a former Sorceress? Cause that’s really weird and creepy. Also, while I agreed to become the next Sorceress of Grayskull, I will definitely not turn into a bird, cause that’s weird.”

“The alternative would be a snake, a bat or a ram, child. So really, turning into a bird is not so bad at all.”

“I’m still not doing it, Mother.”

***

Finally, we have the Masters of the Universe Classics version of Shadow Weaver, which was actually the first action figure of the character ever produced. I have the Masterverse version of Shadow Weaver and now I have the Classics version as well.

The Masters of the Universe Classics Shadow Weaver comes with a wand, a hover stand and the Eldritch Book of Spells which she used in the She-Ra: Princess of Power cartoon. The Classics line occasionally issued magical characters with grimoires – Eldor and Orko also came with spell books – which are always fun accessories. Shadow Weaver can also hold the Eldritch Book of Spells quite well.

I did not get the Masterverse Shadow Weaver from the shelf for a comparison photo, but one thing that struck me is that the robe of the Classics Shadow Weaver is much darker and closer to burgundy than the fuchsia robe she wears in the Filmation cartoon and also in her Masterverse incarnation.

Another thing that’s notable is that while Shadow Weaver’s hands are light green in the Filmation cartoon and also on the Masterverse figure, the Classics Shadow Weaver has light blue hands. Which gave me the idea that the Classics Shadow Weaver could also represent a completely different character. For as we learned in the Masters of the Universe Revolution prequel comics, Shadow Weaver’s burgundy/fuchsia hooded robe isn’t just her personal fashion sense, but actually the garb worn by the priestesses of Ha’vok, one of the Eternian (and apparently Etherian) gods.

We meet three priestesses of Ha’vok in the Revolution prequel comics, hanging out in the toy version of the Fright Zone and foretelling the future to curious visitors. Two of these priestesses are murdered by the third, who finally lowers her hood to reveal that she is none other than Saryn, mother of Keldor/Skeletor and High Priestess of Ha’vok and the most deserving winner of the 2024 Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents.

Saryn is Gar and therefore has blue skin, so the Classics Shadow Weaver will make a good stand-in for Saryn of Anwat Gar, especially since it is unlikely that Mattel will ever make a proper version, since they don’t seem to be interested in making fairly obscure characters.

So I got my Keldor figure from the shelf and while the blue of his skin is a lot brighter than the hands of the priestess of Ha’vok, it does work. But see for yourself.

“Mother? Is that really you? I… I thought you were dead.”

“Well, I got better. You know how it is.”

“But… Hordak, he… he killed you. I was there. I saw it.”

“Oh please, you didn’t think that I would allow Hordak of all people to get the upper hand. Honestly, why did I ever sleep with that boorish Miro, when all I got out of it is an idiot son like you?”

***

“Halt! You shall not enter Castle Grayskull, Saryn of Anwat Gar.”

“Yes, I know you won’t let me in. Too blue, too Gar and too devoted to Ha’vok. But you will have to let my son in, for the blood of Grayskull flows in his veins.”

“Skeletor? Forget it! He tries to break into the Castle all the time and my champion and I have always stopped him. Also, you are responsible for unleashing Skeletor onto the world, Saryn, for you are a terrible mother.”

“Takes one to know one, Teela-na. Or are you really going to condemn me for handing off my baby to his father, when you did the exact same thing?”

“We are not the same and my situation was completely different.”

“Well, yes, cause I certainly hope you had more fun with your strapping young guardsman than I had with that tedious Miro. Honestly, that man had no idea what to do. I had to show him everything. That girl he married, Princess Amelia, should be grateful to me that I broke her husband in. But really, Teela-na, a guardsman? When as Sorceress, you could have nabbed yourself a prince or a king?”

“You disgust me.”

“Yes, I tend to have that effect on people.”

***

Finally, here are all four new arrivals battling it out for a box of Bakery Vatter‘s famous coffee cookies:

“Begone, Evil Ones. Thou shalt not take the Cookies of Grayskull.”

“Cookies of Grayskull, Sorceress? Really?”

“I spent all day baking them and I’m not handing them over to those thieves without a fight.”

***

And that’s it for the first road trip of 2026. There will be more to come, though I’m currently snowed in.