Hiking from Brachbach to Siegen

It’s been seven years hiking around Düsseldorf for me, but there are some areas that we don’t visit very often. Siegen being one of the biggest (?) cities in NRW, we rarely go there. The main reason is because it’s simply very far. Another reason is the line between Cologne and Siegen crosses the border to Rhineland Palatinate, and it was never clear to me what kind of tickets we needed to buy before the DeutschlandTicket got introduced. This time, as Amr wanted to celebrate his birthday, I organized a hike there, especially because he wanted me to do so.

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There was a little bit of doubt about the train connection. Quite surprisingly, we arrived in Brachbach punctually. I was really glad, because given the number of people signing up (30+ today) I really wanted to avoid trouble this morning.

The reason why so many people signed up today was probably because of the weather: After so many rainy days, we finally got a beautiful sunny day, with the temperature reaching something like 25 degrees. Finally summer came. At least for now.

We hiked nearby a few years ago, but it was really the first time that we were going to Siegen. For me it’s a relatively unknown area that I was not particularly looking forward to, simply because I don’t particularly like the Sauerland. As I looked from the train station of Brachbach, however, I have to say I got a much better impression of the area: it was massively green on the mountains. And especially, there are mountains everywhere.

It was a little bit unfortunate that the hike started from Brachbach. The next station, Mudersbach, would have allowed us to start the hike a lot more easily, as it was right next to the nature. This being said, it was only a reasonable amount of time that we spent in the civilization, even though I have to say it was just very ugly around the train station.

As I already said above, there were mountains everywhere, and obviously we started climbing up right from the beginning. But at least compared to the other areas in the Sauerland, the slope was a lot milder, and it was very comfortable, because we were surrounded by nice trees.

At the same time, there were also a lot of fields today. It felt a lot more like Bergisches Land today, with a lot less wild places than in Sauerland, with a lot of agriculture. I really liked it as we also had a great mixture of sun and clouds, with the sunshine falling on us every now and then we were walking in the fields. Whether the sunshine was coming on us or not, the sky was always blue. Such a refreshing day.

We also crossed a few villages, and there were also some bicycles, but generally it was quite empty. Not like in the Ruhr area.

I was planning to have a break near the highway service area, but we decided to have it a little bit earlier, also because we didn’t necessarily want to be right next to the highway. Right before we had a break, there were some missing paths. We didn’t have to  struggle a lot because there were also a lot of alternatives.

Nevertheless, when we were at the service area we stopped to have coffee and some refreshments. It was badly overpriced, but it was still nice to be in a space with air conditioner. It was not that hot today, but hot enough to enjoy a cooler environment.

The second half remained more or less the same: we were walking in forests and fields. There were some confusions on the way, because some paths were missing. That’s something we have to live with whenever we go to sparsely inhabited areas.

When we arrived in Siegen, we obviously went to a nearby ice cream parlor. Then we sat by the riverside, which was not nearly as nice as Amr had described. Anyway, we then went to a Turkish-Iranian restaurant nearby to celebrate Amr’s birthday. Apparently it was a nice discovery for Amr as well. It was a nice place, and Siegen was pretty nice, but I’m still happy that I’m living in Düsseldorf :).