A LESSON FROM THE TRACK

“I can imagine lots of couples do something like that for their 25^thwedding anniversary, why would you go to an exotic Island to relax when you can walk a 430km trail!” The response, sweating sarcasm, from my old sports teacher, at a chance meeting on a 25km training hike. Romantic, sand soaked, sun bathed, blue water- bliss 25-year wedding anniversary celebration options never appeared on our ‘trip advisor’ as we considered the challenge of a long- distance hike. Sifting through alternatives to the heavily trodden El Camino de Santiago and other common trails along the St James Way, something ‘local’ to our roots, jammed with history, culture and nature, not people; an adventurous track less travelled- the Fränkischer Gebirgsweg amounted to our idyllic island.

There was no ‘spiritual wasteland’ or ‘ditch the doldrum’ impetus for the walk, and there will be no ‘come to Jesus’, soul searching, cosmic enlightenment Camino chronicle. “Von nichts, kommt nichts.” From nothing, comes nothing. Perfect German poetical pragmatism from a fellow Nürnberg café patron upon denying herself cream with her apple cake. A truth of the trail, a bona fide bottom line resonating perfectly with our rationale, endorsing our endeavour.

After the initial blisters, boot calibrating, pack aligning and expelling of the excess -(paperback books and unwanted layers), the steady rhythm of ‘walk, eat, read, rest, repeat’, seeped down into the daily. 27 days, 480km. Unlike our Gore-tex gear, we were not impervious to the effects of the trail. Surreptitiously it taught us:

• There is never bad weather, only the wrong clothing and attitude. Regardless of what others might say.
• Planning is totally underrated unless you enjoy an unbearable secondary hike tramping unlimited kilometres around the village looking for food and a bed at the end of each day.
• Detours are VERBOTEN. Stick to the track for full satisfaction.
• Pillows are pathetic in Germany…bring your own option.
• Ignore guidebooks that say, “Use toiletries at accommodation.” Most often there were none.
• Check your rain jacket before you leave your country of origin. A heavy storm along an isolated track does not make for ideal testing conditions.
• Don’t take a laptop. Apparently, there are lighter options.
• Be on the same page as your walking partner about carrying paperback books. You will find them in a post satchel very quickly otherwise.
• To avoid weekends spent hunting and gathering in forests, plan accommodation with food options and a supermarket that is open at least on Saturday mornings. Worst case scenario, sleep near a fuel station that is open on Sundays, you’d be surprised what trail nourishment can be found.
• Carry staples such as Ryvita, avocado, Nutella and cheese, to avoid German austerity measures, whereby restaurants don’t open until 5pm and villages with a dwindling trading shadow provide no food options.
• For the non-vegetarian, a steady Leberkäse (literally translated ‘Liver cheese’), village crawl is recommended. This compulsory butcher stop will assist in lean food times. NB: for fellow vegetarians, see previous point.
• Germans have a penchant for order. Penalties apply where not adhered to – even at breakfast buffets. Don’t go stealing food for morning tea or lunch.
• Hipster coffee aficionados will need to downgrade their expectations and prepare for caffeine ‘entzug’.
• Beware of local tourism spruikers. Every village has a ‘claim to fame’. Whilst some towns are definitely not what they are made out to be, no matter how many breweries the local area boasts, others surprise pleasingly.
• Your travel partner must get the ‘minimalism thing’. Limited clothing offers the bonus of maximum stink. With no laundromats along the track, wash basins provide the best domestic options. Carry merino gear for quick dry times and always offer to walk up front.
• You will walk through many towns from the Middle Ages. Payment systems don’t seem to have caught up and hardcore currency is still the favourite – “Don’t leave home without it”.
• Talk to the locals. They know everything about what you are seeing and more. They are the context, additional content, glue and glitter to the trail. (They particularly love selfies with you and follow up WhatsApp messages).
• Suffering from pack resentment? A rest day will clear it up.
• About rest days….. keep the km’s down. A rest day is not walking 25km without a pack!
• German national park highlights are really well signed, albeit deliver false expectations about the animal life on offer. Be satisfied with seeing a few deer, listening to bird song in the mixed forests and heed the warning of wild pig diggings along the track that dictates your escape from the forest before dusk.
• Audible is your friend, in the talking downtime. Unless you are walking with an extrovert, expecting to talk 24/7 might be unrealistic, and if you are the excuse of some exciting books, might just save you.
• The ‘Keep It Simple Stupid’ principle applies. There’s so much to enjoy and process, don’t jam it full or overestimate your capacity. Less is more on some days.
• Missing kids. It’s inevitable, especially if you are a well- travelled family and they’ve always been in tow. Share often, speak to them when you can, cry when needed, and start shaping your future as empty nesters where applicable.
• Expectations: Have very few and be overwhelmed with the magnificence of the experience.
• Self -Doubt: It’s normal. Have a husband/partner with a plan B and a whole heap of understanding. It’s better than medicine.
• Separation anxiety: Putting down the pack after 480kms is forced detachment from the tangible. The trail ends but your experience with it doesn’t have to. Ease back in slowly and prepare yourself for wardrobe overload!
• Gratitude: Give thanks for scarfs, Elastoplast, good shoes, a comfy pack on most days, hydration bladders, a healthy body, friendly strangers, unexpected discoveries, amazing surroundings, hidden history, awesome opportunity and a majestic Creator.
• In the spirit of ‘walk, eat, read, rest, repeat’ start planning the next one.

 

IN A COFFEE CUP

Moving up to the Drive Thru window, I order my regular soy cappuccino.
“Would you like a Wallfahrt with that? Some Bohemia? A Warsaw Pact? Honey? Bread? Or perhaps Red or White Main Water?”
With no knowledge of the ingredients, I consider the options.

A pinch of Bohemia requires a crash course in Kingdoms, Reichs and Republics, of noblemen and Nazis. Are the Germans, Hungarians and Austrians in or out? Can the Sudeten and Egerland Germans stay or must they go? We’d have to draw some lines around Bavaria, Saxony, Silesia, Austria and Moravia, moving them multiple times over. Ultimately after an age, with a final declaration of surrender to the Czechs and Slovaks everyone gets to go home.

The option of a Wallfahrt comes with a list of considerations and a demand for commitment to a pilgrimage not always comfortable. Purpose, places and paths form the framework for determination. Bombastic baroque delights, jewelled skeletons and effervescent angels await via Volkenroda to Waldsassen. The twelve stations of the cross, quiet Capellas with warm glowing candles along the St James Way, offer up space for contemplation and reflection. Protestant, Catholic, Ecumenical or Unitarian, a shedding of self, a discovery of God, grace and greatness. An ultimate surrender to the Sovereign and realignment with reality.

For a piece of Warsaw Pact, we bite down into Cold War ideology rather than arm up with infantry and ammunition. A ‘red collective counter weight’ for NATO is formed, to determine who’s in the Eastern ‘socialist sandwich’. From the Fichtelgebirge mountains of Schneeberg and Grosser Kornburg, German surveillance bust open secrets, uncover cohorts and collusion, stabilising security in the Western Alliance. Battle lines are drawn as in a game of Risk, with readjustments and the 1989 reunification the final roll of the dice.

To choose ‘Bread’ in this context of offerings requires explanation and is unquestionably unappetizing. Through the Fichtelgebirge, Steinwald and Fränkische Schweiz, along the Fränkische Gebirgsweg, the dark towering, fairy-tale provoking Spruce is the most stumbled over, slipped on and stood under tree. Earning the moniker from its economic metrics; the fast growing, quick harvesting, profit yielding, ‘bread tree’ generated funds for the payment of repartitions, delivered sustainably to the rebuilding efforts of WWII and continues to dominate forestry practice. With the realisation that “Man cannot live by bread alone”, a transition away from monoculture to a ‘multi-culture’ is outlined in the German Forest Act and commemorated on a 50-cent piece. Ultimately confirming that amongst the diversified ecosystem objectives and benefits, forestry is still all about ‘coin’.

A spoonful of honey requires a significant quantity of bees. Amongst the bounteous corn and sugar beet plots, (successfully used for biogas/ biomethane production), and beneath colossal wind turbines, the “Insect Protection Action Programme” is hiding. Along the edges of ploughed fields, in small patches of otherwise farmed and fertilised soil, a government subsidised glad array of corn flowers, yarrow, poppies, sunflowers, daisies, clover, dandelion, and other bright coloured flowers stand boldly beguiling bees. There’s a magic in embracing the classic and ancient, an exit from agricultural hubris to botanical mélange. The benefits of biodiversity if we just, ‘let it bee’.

To wash this all down, there’s the option of Red or White Main. Running over granite in the Fichtelgebirge, straight from the spring at the foot of the all- seeing Ochsenkopf mountain, the White Main water washes clear towards Red. The Red Main, rising in the hills of the Franconian Switzerland Jura mountain range, runs red over clay soil. In a quest for something stronger the two headstreams trickle, meander, then surge downstream, uniting to form the mighty Main, taking all they have seen and heard deep into the Rhein.

Upon careful consideration, contemplation and rumination, I reach out, grab the coffee and realise, “I got all of that in a take away cup”.

 

SIMPLY SLOWLY

Summarizing slow living: ‘You see stuff, hear stuff, learn stuff, connect stuff, appreciate stuff.’ For want of an ideologically saturated, nausea inducing attempt at describing a commonly cliched state of gratitude, mindfulness, contemplation and solace; simple is best. Simple is transparent and simple resonates. It sits well with the territory; the tractors, the old towns, the church turrets, the corn fields, village fountains and the ever – present tabby. Simple is what we have strapped to our backs, stuffed in our mouths and sets the unassuming perimeter for expectation and enjoyment.

Our real time GPS ‘dot’ moves slowly across the map in this crawl from town to town, forest to forest and field to field. As our kilometres are clocked, each path connects places to people, sites to stories, heroes to history and asking to answers. In a challenge not to count down, but to chalk up, we soak in the sun, seek out the locals, smash the unfriendly and sustain from taking shortcuts!

We move through the forests of Frankenwald to the Fichtelgebirge. Though the regions of Thüringen, Oberfranken and Oberpfalz. We cross boarders East and West, skirting Kingdoms, countries and current city lines. The rivers Selbitz, Saale and Eger narrate a past shaped of mills, wealth and toil; of mining, farming, smithing and guild crafts. We pass through the medieval towns of Münchberg, Laubersreuth, Kirchenlamitz and Heidelheim. We conquer the heights of the Waldstein and Kornberg, inhaling views from the top of Großbüchelberg. We light a candle of the faithful at the wood side Fatima chapel, so quietly she listens to prayers unspoken. We pass the Herr Gott Stone, of legendary magic and the granting of wishes. We sit at the Teufel’s Tisch in an invitation to play cards with the devil. We’re introduced to Bockpfeifers (Bagpipers), Napoleon, and the pioneering naturalist Humboldt. We follow ancient way markers through thickets, dark woodlands and medieval fortresses with an era of von Sparneck knights. We hide behind rocks of refuge sheltering gypsies, victims of Wars and the region’s most Wanted. We intersect with the ViaPorta von Volkenroda and the St James Pilgrim Ways, with the long – distance routes of E5 and E6 and develop appetite and appreciation alongside the educational Potato and Carp trails. We walk tracks studded with granite, shale, gneiss, basalt and all manner of geological treasure and meet the ‘porcelain princes’, Hutschenreuther and Rosenthal on roads paved ‘White Gold’.

We walk all of this with boots strapped tight, Band Aids protecting blisters, Autan applied in defence of dreaded ticks and compass bearings confirmed. This slow daily foot march of discovery rapidly assumes a pace of its own. It’s a fast way to form local connections. It’s an expedited journey through time. It’s an accelerated examination of society. It’s a high – speed way to slow down.