In retrospect people tend to see things with rose-colored glasses. If someone had asked me during the hike if I was having fun, I probably could have punched them in the face at times. Now I would say that it was quite an adventure! So I will intentionally avoid the word „torture“.
A mixture of perhaps a little ill-considered planning and a bit more overconfidence had led to the fact that instead of a 50 km hike we had a 66,4 km hike ahead of us – of course also to the enthusiasm of certain other participants. I for myself thought: Well, that’s about 20 km a day, that should be doable! And the last 6 km will be fine as well. After all we’re still young and relatively sporty. (I’m still convinced of the latter, but I’m not so sure about the former after this – experience.) As always, one knows much better in retrospect. But to be honest, it’s also good that you often don’t know what you’re getting into. Who knows if we would have tackled this challenge at all otherwise.
The trip started on Thursday 26th of May and ended two days later on (god bless) a Saturday; the 28th to be precise. After bit of a restless night because of the exitement, Liz and I got up at 8:00 AM, made ourselves ready for leaving the house at 9:00 AM to pick up Lazaro and Calvin at the Darmstadt Central Station at 9:25 AM. After that worked out moderately good we started driving towards the Black Forest. To make it short: Our group started hiking 1 hour late at around 12:00AM. The first day of our hike should have a total of 25 km and we reserved a table for dinner at the camping site for 8:00 PM. Shortly after we started walking, we came across a first cool highlight: A Lost Place baby! What once was the pulmonary sanatorium „Lungenheilanstalt Charlottenhöhe“ turned into a creepy, decaying place that leaves an eerie feeling while passing through. And it apparently has a history of wannabe Ghostbusters visiting the place and annoying the adjacent residents. (Find a german article about that here).
After a while of more hiking and also the overcomeing of many meters of altitude, the first incident happend: One of Calvin’s shoulder straps on his backpack gave up and ripped under the wheight of the multiple cans of pasta with tomato sauce he carried with him. But after a bit of fiddling around with rope and knife, Sam and Calvin managed to repair it. (By the way, the construction lasted the entire hike!).
We arrived at „Camping Rehmühle“ at 7:30 PM and after setting up our tents got ourselves some dinner in the restaurant. After eating we went to the showers to get a nice warm and relaxing shower before going to sleep. Well, I think I can speak for all the guys that it wasn’t particularly relaxing to shower in what felt like 100°C hot water. Shortly after turning on the shower, you were greeted by a steaming, hot beam of lava that turned showering into a hot fun. But at least you didn’t have to sleep in sweaty clothes! We then went to bed in our tents and at first everything felt relatively fine. Still warmed up by the fiery shower it felt like it would be a restful night. And apparently it was for some people.. but not for me and some others. You know these people who can sleep in crowded trains while driving to work? I never understood how they manage to do that. Maybe I am just too paranoid. At least I definetely was while lying in the tent trying to sleep. Our nice but relatively loud tent neighbours seemed to have made it their business to keep their campfire going all night. At least they were still sawing wood into pieces late at night. And it always felt a bit like they did not have their fire under control. In addition to that, a Dutch biker army was stationed next to us, whose members probably celebrated themselves on Father’s Day. Which led to the fact that these pilgrimaged drunk at night back in their group tent, cracked jokes and then fell asleep farting and snoring loudly. So it was really starting to feel like a sawmill… These unpleasant noises paired with a cold night that crept into the sleeping bags of some of us led to only a few hours of sleep that night.
Luckily the hike on the next day was not as long as the first one. But sleep deprivation made it not really easier. However we came across some beautiful landscapes again! That (almost) made up for that rather unrefreshing night. I say almost, because sadly you cannot really make up lost sleep. Anyway, the last few hundred meters have felt a bit like an eternity and by now becaome also kind of painful with blisters emerging in the depths of some of our hiking boots.
But at least the second camping place was much nicer and I immediately felt much safer there, too. And after the first cold night, Alina and Juli booked themselves a „sleeping barrel“, basically a little hobbit-like hut inside of a big barrel. And by now not only me but also Liz and Sam felt like we could need a more restful night than the one before. So we decided to join the two in their barrel that luckily had a bit more space than for two persons only.
Now it was time to get a nice refreshing shower, now for real! So I walked to the showers together with Lazaro. After the sobering realization that there were only two showers in that sanitary facility, we waited, together with another weird, kinda grumpy man in a bathrobe, for Julius and Lukas to finish their shower. When I was my turn to shower I couldn’t wait for the pleasant warm steam of water to run down my body. The more it hurt when I had to find out that somehow THE WARM WATER STOPPED WORKING in my shower! Best it could do was not to emit ice cubes. But at this point I just surrendered and decided not to be upset about it – what would be the point anyway.
After finishing my cold shower we went back to the barrel and waited for the pizzas to arrive which we ordered earlier. They did and they were delicious!! At least for most of us. (Sorry Calvin, that you had to eat your pizza with a jackie-coke topping. Pour boy….. badumtssss). After finishing dinner, we went to bed relatively fast. Most of us were pretty tired so no nice, long evening talks under the stars.
I think adventures like that are also a very humbling experience and should be done every once in a while. After journeys like this I am always even more thankful for simple things like a warm bed at home. This humility already came over me before sleeping in that barrel which was good, because it meant I didn’t have a bad mood the next day from another not-so-recoverable night. But to be fair it was partly my fault to be so naive and think that this time I wouldn’t even need a proper sleeping bag in that barrel as it was heated anyway. In short, I was wrong, it got pretty chilly in there which made me wake up again and led to another round of sleep deprivation. However, still much much better than the first night as I almost slept six hours in a row! So I was pretty thankful for that.
For the last day we decided to drive most of the way back by bus. Blisters, hurting limbs of all kinds and overall fatigue led us to this decision for which I am grateful for as this last hike of another 26 km would have definetely been hell! We decided to walk at least the 3 km (which somehow turned into a frew more again) to the bus stop from where we would start our journey back to our cars. After missing our first bus ( no, I am not angry @Juli & @Alina! Godammit believe me already! ;D ) we got ourselves some nice pieces of cake and waited in front of the bus stop for our ride. The „ride“ was a very small bus, more a shuttle, and speeding through the hills with the german „Schlagermusik“ playing inside of it, turned it into kind of a which’s cauldron with wheels… Whatever, we arrived it Calw after 40 minutes and there waited for our next ride. While some of us, myself included, just rested at the foot of a water fountain next to a cute square surrounded with old half-timbered houses (Fachwerkhäuser), others went on a short sightseeing tour through the town. Shortly after walking back to the bus stop we were greeted by an even smaller bus that was almost too small to carry all of us plus the 4 or 5 people also needing a ride.. Apparently public transport isn’t as well used as in other parts of the country. After the rolling tin can took us back to Schömberg, our starting location, there was only one kilometer left to walk back to our cars!
We finally arrived at the cars and proud of ourselves we had a little picknick in front of them. Everyone in the round then mentioned some things they were grateful for on the journey! A nice exercise which I am already doing almost everyday to train myself in gratefulness. I swear, doing that improves life! After a small recap on our adventure, we parted ways again and drove home.
Gals n guys, nothing „wellnessy“ about that hike but definitely an adventure that was worth it! It was hard, exhausting, fun and we should do something like this again!
See you soon!
