Tag der Steige – official hiking event of the city of Essen

Last year, there was this thing called Tag der Steige, which was the official inauguration of the Baldeneysteig, which is a hiking track that goes around the Baldeneysee. I was aware of this track, because someone had told me that the city of Essen had created it some years ago. Apparently it was so successful last year that they decided to repeat the event. This year, however, it was pretty much in the middle of Essen, which made it look really bad. Still, I thought it might be a nice experience, as there are not so many official hiking events around here.

We thought the distance of 26 km would hole people away, but as it turned out, there were more than 50 people in the Telegram group. Maybe they thought it’s easy enough because it was flat, or maybe they thought it’s just such an important opportunity to join an official hike. I don’t know. Anyway, it was one of few events where all the organizers joined, even though our expectations were extremely low.

There were multiple tracks. We took the longest one with 26 km, but the others were more like for families with small kids (I guess…). If I remember correctly, it was the same last year, but the tracks were similar to each other. This year, they were also fairly different from each other, and frankly all of them looked quite boring.

On top of our very low expectations, we obviously got the same problem again: Our train from Düsseldorf got cancelled. Fortunately, we got another one around quarter an hour later, which was in a miserable state after the football fans left the train in Düsseldorf. Then, it took forever for the tram to come. In the end, there was a delay of over 30min. As the hike had to finish by 6pm, we basically had to start immediately.

At least we had enough time to take a group photo before we started. There were actually people who were waiting elsewhere, and quite some people who didn’t want to be on the photo, so you see maybe only half the participants here.

We got a card at the beginning, which is used to collect stamps along the way. Some people wanted to go to the toilet, because they couldn’t use the horrible toilet on the train. Others just started walking. The group was far apart at this point, already. Well, there were also a lot of people anyway, so we just had to walk along with other people.

It was a wonderful weather today. I have to say the city of Essen was very lucky in this regard. Just the right temperature, and clear blue sky the whole day. It was maybe somewhat windy, but not quite so much that it would have mattered.

As I had already stated, I didn’t have particularly high expectations, but it was far below my expectations: we were basically walking on the asphalt all the time (at least in the first half). It may have been somewhat interesting to see the industrial artifacts, but otherwise I can hardly call it a hike. I should have brought my bicycle or inline skates.

By the time we reached the first checkpoint, we were only a few people. Some people were far in front of us, others far behind. The story of the day over and over again.

The hiking trail crossed quite a few cemeteries. I remember the hikes long time ago where we crossed cemeteries. I was told that it’s not very respectful. Here we are today it was even done by the city of Essen.

At one point we were walking up a Halde, which is a slag heap you can find everywhere in the Ruhr area. Some of them are really nice. Today’s one was one of the ugliest around here. No idea how they decided to make a route through this one. Besides the track looked like they were just trying to make it a bit longer. Really, what a fail.

I guess the city of Essen simply tried to get as many sponsors as possible, which was the reason why there were a lot of cafés restaurants along the way. Where we had a break, there was a food truck. It was at least a beautiful area. I also got an apple juice. It felt a little bit like vacation.

After the break, things got drastically better: There were a lot more green areas, and it felt a bit like we were hiking in some areas. For some reason, there were clearly less people in the nature. Maybe people gave up earlier because it was so boring, so did for example Davy. Well, he would have probably not enjoyed it anyway even in this nature.

Towards the end, somehow I found many people from our group again. We then finished together, and had beer on the spot. I have to say, in the end it was a nice event, even though the hike was totally boring. We then went to an Asian restaurant and went back home. It became a full day event, and I’m really fully satisfied. Not to forget: There was matcha ice cream in the Asian restaurant!