Hiking to Wilhelmstal castle

So here’s the new record: we were 2 people. There’s still one step to go, but it’s just simply a completely different event. Well, who cares. I just wanted to hike around Kassel, and I did so.

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Actually I didn’t even expect anyone to turn up, but still I contacted Gabriela, the only one person who had signed up for the event. Then I still got a message from her. It was apparently her first event on CS, although since there are anyway only few events in Kassel, it’s not quite surprising…

There are a few tram lines in Kassel which turn into a railway line after central station. So strange that a tram goes so fast through nature.

After we left Mönchehof, it was mainly grass field. On a really sunny day like today, it was pretty hard to stay there for a long time. Luckily, it didn’t take too long to reach Schäferberg, the nearest village from where it was mainly forest.

A big surprise: this village, Schäferberg, was a former concentration camp. This information was written on the sign in the middle of the village. Indeed, if you look at the buildings there, you can see that they were bizarrely long and low, just as the ones you can see in other concentration camps. I wonder how much people in Kassel knew about this.

We had to go along the highway for a few meters, but then it was a rather peaceful path. Regarding the fact that it was extremely sunny, it was actually really nice to be in the shadow almost all the time.

Since Gabriela didn’t want to walk too much at once, we had a break in Heckershausen first, where I got a pizza in a nearby restaurant, then another one at Wilhelmstal, where there was a castle as well. Despite my initial expectations, there weren’t too many visitors there. This one’s apparently not a huge tourist attraction. There were obviously more people in a nearby lake for swimming.

There was a dramatic turn in the weather after this. Right before we arrived in Weimar, where we were to finish, it started pouring down. Luckily, we found a café nearby quickly, although maybe not that “luckily”, since we found out that there was one train leaving a few minutes later, which we decided to take, and missed. At least the rain had stopped there, but we had to wait for another one for one more hour. I was happy that this didn’t happen on a hike with 50 people…