This isn’t your simple boring trail. This was a PREMIUM trail.
Said so on the signs, on Alltrails, and online… so it must be true, right? Right!
What does a “premium” trail mean, you may ask? Well, dear reader, that’s a very astute question! I’m so glad you asked. You see… I have no idea.
Was fun, though.
Kika, visiting in from Poland, and I had come up with a plan – a day of hiking, then a day of hot springs. We perused the options for hikes, and found this absolutely lovely gem of a hike fairly close to Stuttgart – at least, easily accessible by train, which was the key. The adventure was a double-header, thanks to that – not only was it a hike-adventure into the woods, but it was also a train-adventure, giving me one more piece of exposure to this weird European thing called “safe and reliable public transportation”.
I’d gotten slightly used to major rail lines by this point, of course, but the local trains were a different beast – as was navigating them. Thankfully Kika was along for the ride to help me out, and we safely charted our way from Stuttgart, out into the wildlands of Bad Urach. It was a near-thing, with a very closely-caught train, but we made it none-the-less, and soon enough were setting boots to gravel and heading up the trail.
It was gorgeous. Good views, excellent walking, and a mystical quality that’s completely lacking from North American trails.
Not that trails in the States aren’t magical, but… this is different. The trails and views of the Pacific Northwest are the raw power of nature – Rock golems and mountain giants. The trails of Bad Urach were mystical, speaking of the fey, kobolds, and long-lost memories. I mean, just look at the staircase with a waterfall running down it, or the constructed pools and ruins of ancient huts. A castle, lying in rubble, up on a nearby hill. It’s a story of natured tamed, and nature resurgent.
Wednesday, 24-July-2024, through Monday, 29-July-2024
Coming from Zermatt, Stuttgart was about as different as you could get.
No mountains soaring above the skyline, warmer air, and cars all around – it was lovely, but definitely a slight shock to the system as I stepped off the train and started to get my bearings. Thankfully the first part of the walk to my hostel was through a park, which was a nice reminder of the mountains and hills I’d just spent a week exploring… it tempered the abruptness nicely, and I was quite grateful for it.
Now, the walk to the hotel… well, I’d get to know that walk quite well over the next few days, and it never got any less steep over that time. Carrying all my bags, it was definitely more of an effort than I’d expected – challenging even after all the time at elevation I’d spent hiking.
Still, though, Stuttgart was lovely and incredibly welcoming. Murals, green spaces, bustling people and delicious food, I couldn’t complain about any of it. And speaking of food, lets dive right in!
Bistro Einstein – A lovely cafe, which served my lovely favorite – Schnitzel! Simple, efficient, and delicious.
Lib-room – A fun cafe right on a school campus, from what I could tell. Simple and tasty; not something I’d say is a must-visit, but… good, with some nice vegetarian options
Restaurant Tauberquelle – A really fun regional restaurant, with great local options. Kinda touristy… but that’s not a bad thing when you’re a tourist!
Manufactum Brot & Butter – Excellent breakfast, but a bit slow… which was a problem, since it meant we very nearly missed our train since paying took so long! Also, the only spot that credit cards had trouble… yeah, great food, but there was a blood price to pay.
Wasserfallhütte – This is so European… similar to Zermatt, at the top of a hike by a waterfall there’s a small restaurant serving coffee and cakes, ice cream and souvenirs. Ridiculous, but also kind of awesome.
Bäckerhaus Veit – Nice snack after a hike… simple and easy!
Ragazzi – Delicious pizza! This place was a fun adventure; took a bit of getting there, and then they were out of pizza… which feels weird, but okay… but then they found some extra dough and were able to make two final pizzas, we got the last two! Ignore all the people who came in afterward, who also got pizza… Hey, you know what? If it’s true, then cool. If it was a gimmick, then also cool!
Petra’s – Out in Baden-Baden, near the Friedrichsbad hot springs… delicious Cesar salad, excellent coffee… what more could we want?
Cafe König – I was in (or right next to, I guess) the Black Forest. How could I not get Black Forest Cake? Turns out – really hard to find. Which seems strange, but it was later in the day so… maybe that’s normal? I don’t know, but Cafe König had it, and had excellent iced lattes, so I was happy.
Poffers – Ohh. Emm. Gee. Getting a seat here was a challenge, and then getting service was an equal epic. The food was glorious, but seriously. Needed a reservation, couldn’t get it in person, had to go online to a quite circuitous reservation system, then wait for 20min AFTER the reservation time, THEN wait 20min for service… seriously, we used google translate on the German menus, figured out what we wanted, and had a solid long chat before the waitress even showed up to offer us English menus. Great food, but holy crap.
Taraba
Udo Snack
Now, those especially astute readers of mine may have noticed something in the above list that hasn’t really been seen before, except maybe in Iceland and France… I wrote in the plural. That’s not an accident, but a fun extra part from Stuttgart!
You see, dear readers, I wasn’t adventuring alone in Germany! Instead, in a switch up from History, Poland and the United States combined forces and invaded Germany together – my friend Kika came to visit from Warsaw! I picked her up from the airport on Thursday morning, and she flew home on Sunday evening, so I had a buddy to explore and adventure with! Definitely a nice change of pace – Details of our adventures will be their own posts, of course, but the change of pace was very nice… between family visiting in France, and a friend with me in Germany, it was an absolutely excellent way to ease into settling into a more static and social life in Ireland.
I also mentioned that Stuttgart had a lot of murals – I’ll separate them out, here, for simplicity:
With a melancholy sigh, I watched the mountains of Zermatt recede behind me, as the bus pulled away from the cog railway station in Täsch.
Doing so, of course, quickly gave me a whole nice helping of vertigo… so I quickly returned my gaze to the road ahead of the bus as it careened around the steep roads and hairpin turns that would bring us down to Visp. The rest of the cog railway was still out, after the flash floods of May, and I was on the second leg of four legs of this adventure.
A train, to a bus, to a train, to another train. That was my charted course. Frankly, I was a little anxious… but less than I had been in Marseille when I first embarked on a significantly complex train journey. I’d gotten used to it, a little bit at least, and this trip had much more generous layovers than the previous had. I’d figured out the app pretty well, and was able to sit back and enjoy the journey.
I grabbed a (slightly sad) sandwich and pretzel in Zurich. I napped, I reviewed photos, and I read when the train was stable enough to avoid motion sickness.
I enjoyed the views out the window, and soon enough found myself transferring into Germany. It was a simple series of train rides, frankly, and there’s not much to say about them. It worked well, and I heartily endorse Swiss and Germany trains.
