Hiking around Essen Steele and Christmas market

First of all: When you plan a hike, don’t take a random one from Komoot – you never know how good it is. Sometimes it’s just horrible, just so horrible that you might think they posted it on purpose. It’s obviously not just a problem of Komoot. Everywhere in the internet you can find those horrible hikes. Today, Hilal fell apparently right into it, and I was not careful enough to see that 60% asphalt is just not normal. Yes, today’s hike was a massive 60% asphalt.

In this regard, we were maybe a little bit lucky because the weather forecast was pretty horrible and not many people signed up. As a matter of fact, the weather was not so bad in the end, but I’m just glad that not many people joined.

As I already said, I didn’t know what the hike was going to be like, so when we arrived in Steele and started the hike, I was expecting to hike in the nature. As we went and went to see still only asphalt, I was still thinking we just hadn’t left the city yet. It was only when we were walking along the Ruhr that I started realizing that the rest of the day was not going to be better.

And even though we were going on a concrete road all the time, it was not easy at all: the path was over flooded, which is often the case along the Ruhr. I think the only good thing was the fact that there were not so many cyclists for this reason, because I know that in this section of the Ruhr and on this side there are a huge number of cyclists.

There was a super short stretch of nature after we crossed the Ruhr. It looked a little bit like we were hiking there, even though it lasted maybe only a few min.

On top of the fact that we were walking on a concrete road all the time, we were also walking in a city and farmland, so that the wind was coming directly to us, which made it extremely difficult to find a place for a break.

It was when we had already finished three quarter of the hike that there was a café on the map, which was closed. Then we made a huge detour to go to another café, which was also closed. But this one was in a Christian kindergarten or something, and somehow we could enter the building, so we simply stayed there and had lunch. There were some people coming and going, and they all looked at us a bit weirdly (which I can understand), but no one complained about it.

We went through more cities, industrial area and farmland and reached Steele Christmas market in the end. Some new people left us in that moment, and I thought they were just fed up with today’s hike. But the rest of us had a good time there. There was also a karaoke stage, and usually people sing totally out of tune, but this time it was a young girl who was singing actually pretty ok (I mean, of course out of tune but it was not quite as painful since it was just a child).

After our Glühwein, we moved around the Christmas market. It was a small one, and it was pretty nice as it was not overfilled with tourists like elsewhere. There was also some exposition of historical landscape of Steele.

At the train station, we bumped into the ones that had left us when we reached the Christmas market. We somehow decided to go to the Christmas market in Essen. Actually during the hike I had very little contact with them, but we ended up having a really good time in Essen together. Pity that Hilal and I couldn’t spend so much time there.

Anyway, at the end of the day, we all had a great time at the two Christmas markets, so that it made up for the 60% asphalt which had let me down. And with this, the year ended with positive vibes. It was yet another successful year, and I very much look forward to the adventures next year! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!