Hiking from Hedemünden to Hann. Münden

Hann. Münden, where is it?

Well, actually I’m currently in Kassel for some volunteer work for three weeks, so I decided to organise hiking sessions directly there. I’m sorry if you come from Düsseldorf and thought it would take place somewhere nearby. It’s still quite nearby but maybe not as close as you may think you could quickly come by train.

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And so we hiked from Hedemünden to Hann. Münden, quite randomly. “Quite randomly” is probably the right expression, because while I looked for a trail in the internet for some time, I couldn’t find one, in which we could have hiked from a descent station to another and have a place to have a descent break.

Anyway, I offered it in the internet. Actually quite some people signed up for the event. I guess it might have been a nice session only if the weather had played with me. It announced rain for the entire day. Just — it didn’t happen. You should know how much I hated the weather forecast.

In the previous evening, there was one person, Daniel, telling me he didn’t have WhatsApp and therefore he’d simply join at the starting point. Except for him, there was no one saying anything in the group. I simply assumed there’d be no one except for me, which would have been perfectly fine, since I’d go hiking anyway. Then, when I arrived at the train station, I got a call from Hubert, who had indeed joined the event on CS, who was looking for me at the train station. Great, at least I was not all alone.

We then found out that Daniel was indeed there. So in total we were 3 people. So it was the smallest group we have ever had so far. Anyway, we started walking.

It’s fairly known that Düsseldorf is in a very flat area (as it is very close to the Netherlands). I expected Kassel to be quite hilly – well it wasn’t quite as hilly as I had expected, although it wasn’t completely flat either. Perfect place for someone like me, who just wants to go out on weekends; probably a bit too easy for a real hiker.

In contrast to Düsseldorf, we can find exotic animals here. Here, you see a feather of red kite (?).

And there were some trees, that lay around. Apparently they were all damaged in the windstorm at the beginning of this year. Maybe the same one that we had in Düsseldorf, where I nearly got killed.

There was a Roman excavation site there. Well, the site itself wasn’t quite spectacular, but it was apparently quite surprising that there were Romans at that time, since the area around Kassel was believed to be deep inside the Germanic area. The area where we were hiking had a permanent Roman station.

Because of the continuous rain of last week, it was quite wet everywhere. But the weather was in fact very nice today; rather cloudy, but we got sun shine every now and then.

Since Daniel and Hubert were both local here, they could tell exactly where we were and how we could go to Hann Münden. Such a weird feeling that the organiser was the one who didn’t know anything.

This was an area that was developed in the first German industrialisation, i.e. in the second half of the 19th century. There were bridges, railways etc. which came from that time. They are not used anymore, so that the original form is still preserved.

Hann Münden is a traditional German city, with a lot of Fachwerk houses. It was a highlight of today’s hike itself. It’s a pity that not many people joined us today.

Well, anyway, this was my very first hike in Kassel. Hopefully there’ll be more people in the coming weeks.