Hiking from Wuppertal to Haan!

And here comes the old problem: German railway. Who didn’t expect it.

The problem started this week, when there was a range of storms that hit Germany. There was indeed some wind, which made some damages in some places in the North of Germany. Whatever happened behind the scenes, the German railway is like a football player writhing in pain because someone’s small finger scratched their hair. So, this morning, there was hardly any train running. Not surprisingly the RE 13 that we were planning to take was not there anymore, according to the website allegedly replaced by a bus, which, again not so surprisingly, did not exist. After going back and forward for more than half an hour, we took an S-Bahn, which took more than twice as much time to go to Wuppertal Vohwinkel. I’m really glad that it was only Wuppertal Vohwinkel today, which is essentially just one stop away from Düsseldorf by RE.

Since we arrived more than 1 hour later than initially planned, those who made it earlier had already started. In a small group of 5 people we started hiking.

Even though Vohwinkel is very close to Düsseldorf, it’s very rare that we come here, essentially because it’s extremely flat if we go along the Düssel from Vohwinkel. Since it was a wintry weather today, in strong contrast to last week, it was actually the perfect track.

Today, even though it was raining, I didn’t take my umbrella, because it was still quite windy. Shrijal took his umbrella, and at some point he anyway stopped using it. We could also see the effect of the storm on the way.

After a few days of rain, the ground was totally muddy. This is really the area around Düsseldorf, as I had always imagined.

If you know the area very well, you might have thought today’s trail was totally boring. Well, actually we were following the Neanderlandsteig again. That’s one of the longest hiking trails in this region, and so far it was always the best path in the surrounding area. Indeed today’s track was really not as bad as any random path that you might take around here.

There was a hotel on the way, an ostensibly Italian one. Some people decided to have a break outside. At the beginning we were saying that the break wouldn’t become very long. Not so surprisingly, it did. And not so surprisingly, the ones who had a break outside had already left when we were done with our lunch. Still it was super comfortable inside – I was falling asleep.

I’m sure that today’s hike would have been a really good one only the weather had been a little bit better. Well, on the other hand, it could have been much worse if I had chosen a different track for today’s weather. Anyway, an unexpected area with animals right after the break and a mysterious winding path towards the end made a very nice track today.

As expected, the German railway managed to destroy essentially everything: there was no train going back to Düsseldorf. We were forced to go to Solingen first, where the connection was cancelled. We then decided to have an ice cream, and took a bus for Düsseldorf, which took 1h to get there. I’m still so glad that we didn’t go very far today…