Hiking to Venlo!

After yesterday’s my 30th birthday party, at 9:30am. I was lying in my bed, completely dead. I got up, helped Perle to clear up the dishwasher, and went back to bed. All the others (there were some people staying over at my place after the party) looked okay. I felt so stupid that I was lying while others were cleaning up my apartment.

At 11:30am, we were standing in front of Düsseldorf Hbf. A couple of minutes later, we went towards the platform. Then it was announced that the platform had changed. We moved to the announced platform. The train did not come. Apparently they announced a wrong platform. I was having a truly thrilling beginning of my 30th birthday.

One hour later, the train indeed came this time, even though they sent us everywhere again. It did not matter a lot in my case, as I was asleep pretty much all the time. I was feeling somewhat better when we arrived at Kaldenkirchen, the last station in Germany before entering the Netherlands.

Some people were already waiting for us there, drinking beer. I must say the city center of Kaldenkirchen looked also quite attractive. It’s really a pity that this is the last station in Germany, since we might start from this city but it’s not very likely that we would ever finish there.

Because of my birthday, I wanted to do a special hike, even if going to Venlo is not particularly spectacular. Regardless of how special it was this time, we have already walked from Kaldenkirchen to Venlo, although we went exactly in the opposite direction last time when we left the city. After that success, I was rather afraid of organizing a less interesting one. But I must say, the weather was particularly promising. It looked like spring started today, exactly on my birthday. And also accordingly, there were quite some people, clearly more than 50.

I wasn’t feeling very well while walking, but still I walked, silently. It appeared to me like torture to have to smile at everyone who wished me a happy birthday. I was just walking.

In contrast to last time, there was no sign or what so ever at the border. What a disappointment. Anyway since we started very late today, we decided to have a break there, also because there was a restaurant nearby. It was the first time that the weather was so good that it made me want to have a nap for some time, although I had a good reason to do so anyway…

After lunch, there were some people going quite slowly, so I decided to walk slowly myself too so that they would not get lost. I knew that most of the people were way ahead of us, but I thought they would wait for us to take a group picture. They didn’t, mainly because some of them had to go back to Düsseldorf early, which was not surprising considering the starting time. In the end, on my 30th birthday, I was not on the group photo. I hope today was not the omen of what my life will look like in the coming 10 years…

We were quite looking forward to going to an ice cream parlor after the hike, where we were last time. It was closed, but not closed the entire day. It was closed just 15 min before we arrived. Another moment to hate German railway. Anyway, we managed to go back home. And it wasn’t quite over when we were back, since we still had to finish the stuff from yesterday.

The trail can be downloaded from this link (kml-format) or this link (gpx-format)