Hiking around Königswinter!

Hardly a day goes by without a headline talking about the extravagant infection numbers. Indeed, the current numbers totally dwarf the ones that we had been seeing until the end of 2021. Already until then we never properly knew what’s right and what’s wrong, but right now as the mortality rate rapidly falls, things are super complicated, especially event organisers like me. While the ethical aspect can be probably fully understood only years later, there’s one thing that has definitely got better: the clarity of the corona decrees. Even though no one talks about it, the legislative body must have worked a lot to create more clarity, and at least right now I know what’s right and wrong from the legal point of view. With this in mind, I could still safely organize an event today.

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Well this being said, things should still not be exaggerated, especially such a group should not become too large anyway. Today, however, I was getting scared when the number of participants started skyrocketing in the last days. We were about to reach 100 on FB and there were more than 60 in the WhatsApp group (which is still far smaller than the legal maximum of 750, though). To make sure that there’s no ambiguity, I made sure that people do not travel together – I simply skipped the correct connection and appeared directly at Königswinter, where I had breakfast with a few other people.

One great thing about this group is the fact that the participants do not really need a leader, since I distribute the trail beforehand and encourage others to actively download an app that would allow them to navigate autonomously. So while I was checking everyone’s vaccine status (which again took a few minutes like last time), people could start hiking on their own. Brilliant!

It’s been at least 3 times that we visited the Drachenfels castle, which is often the whole reason why people go to Königswinter in the first place. Usually we take a long tour to avoid steep paths, but this time I took a almost straight path to Petersberg, mainly because I didn’t want to make an overly long hike in winter. This part turned to be actually super hard for many of the participants, as they were not well prepared after a long break over Christmas, and also because it’s generally more difficult to do such a hike in winter.

Today, I hoped that people would stop wherever they want. One such point was this above mentioned Petersberg, since there’s a great view over the Rhine and there’s a beer garden. Today, unfortunately, the view was not quite as impressive as there was a thick fog, and the beer garden was closed. As I went ahead, apparently everyone followed me.

But still my strategy seemed to have worked: some time later, we were maybe a group of 10 people. There must have been small groups starting to form on the way. While it was legally anyway fine to be a large group, a smaller group is of course even better.

There were a few restaurants on the way. For some reason, except for the one in Drachenfels all of them were closed. Nevertheless we had a break in front of one of them. In order to avoid forming a large crowd, I made the break relatively short and continued.

There’s this one section that Komoot says doesn’t exist. This time Komoot was apparently right – it’s a protected area so don’t try to go there.

After a relatively short hike today, even though many struggled anyway, we arrived at Drachenfels. As I said above, the view was not very clear, but maybe we should appreciate the luck that it didn’t rain today at all.

Usually we have a long break at Drachenfels, but today we decided to go back to the train station right away. Well, I could get an ice cream afterwards so I have nothing to complain about :).