Hiking from Oestrich-Winkel to Erbach

I very much do impossible things every now and then. And I have to say I really some of those things, like this time.

So this week, I was in Hamburg to participate in a summer camp as a tutor for Japanese high school students staying in Germany for a year. This summer camp is given to them ahead of their year everywhere in Germany to get mentally prepared for the year. Well, the problem was that the programme was from 9am to mostly until 10pm or so, and the tutors had preparations for the next day after 10pm, so that we could go to bed around midnight. In addition, for some reason I found it interesting to go jogging every morning at 6am, which I also did. With all this, I was essentially having a full programme from 6am to midnight everyday for a week. When the summer camp ended on Friday, I went back to Düsseldorf for a night, then I headed to Göttingen, where an old friend of mine was organising his phd party. So I took an early train in the morning and had a party until late in the night. I slept in the university, where the party took place, and got up at 6am to get an ICE to come to today’s hike. As I already said, I loved it, but I also have to admit that I was extremely tired today from the beginning.

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Looking at the train schedules, it looked almost impossible for us to each other at Oestrich-Winkel, but the miracle allowed us to start the hike as planned. The starting point, Oestrich-Winkel is actually the train station exactly in the middle of the two cities Oestrich and Winkel, both of which apparently had cafés or restaurants, but since we were in the middle, there was no possibility for me to get a coffee while waiting for them.

It was only day before yesterday that I organized the hike (I really didn’t have time during the summer camp). And at that time, the weather forecast was saying it would rain. It didn’t. Not only it didn’t rain, it was actually very sunny and hot. I was totally prepared for a rainy day, and there were not many places where we could have been spared of the sunlight.

As a matter of fact, we were walking in the vineyards for a very long time today. It’s a famous area for its white wines. As always, vineyards are really impressive, although this year, since we hiked so much in this area with the 9-euro ticket, it’s starting to be a bit dull these days. If you happen to not have seem much of it, it’s definitely a great place to see it.

Well sunny is one thing, but it’s too sunny these days. It rained a little bit day before yesterday, but other than that it hasn’t rained for weeks now. We could clearly see the effect – there were many fields that turned yellow due to the drought. We had droughts a few years ago as well. This year it’s apparently happening again. Let’s see what kind of traces will be left here….

I’m not really sure how the others were feeling today, but we had breaks everywhere on the way. Was it some sort of telepathy that made the others understand how exhausted I actually was?

Well, this being said, it’s not like I could really feel my exhaustion on the way. It became apparent to me only when we had a break in a restaurant around the middle point. After we ordered food, I had to lie down for a few minutes until the food arrived. As soon as I was done, I had to leave the restaurant to continue sleeping. The food was not even particularly good, by the way.

It was really good that there was nothing really complicated after the break, as I was almost staggering after the break – probably I slept too long. We were sort of suffering in the ever-shining sun.

There was no real ice cream parlour at Erbach, but there was a small Italian pizzeria, where we ordered industrial ice cream. Well, that’s still ice cream. I don’t complain. We then also went to an Indian restaurant after the hike in Bonn. It was almost midnight when I reached home. What a stormy week.