Querweg photo dump 1: Freiburg to Buchenbach

Freiburg to Bodensee mission accomplished! Elias and I followed the Querweg for seven of our eight hiking days, then decided to veer completely off in Steisslingen to hike our way to Ueberlingen rather than taking a ferry from Wallhausen. In total, we hiked ~200 km, 3,780 height meters up and 3,660 down, over mountains, past lakes and waterfalls, through the Wutach gorge, up to multiple ruins on steep volcanic crags, through woods and fields and towns small and large, plus some boring bits and one day with clouds of mosquitoes so ravenous that we dropped 7 km and two ruins from our route in order to avoid them. 

Tuesday May 17:

We started late morning from our apartment on Admiral Spee Strasse (~ AHD-meer-ahl Shpay SHTRAH-ssuh, or as Komoot calls it, Admiral speeee straaaasss). Before we left, I changed the Komoot language settings from British English to American English; the street name pronunciations are slightly better, but now the voice sounds vaguely depressed most of the time. "You have left the tour [sigh]," it says disappointedly, before telling us [sigh] to look at the map [sigh] or connect to the internet to adjust the route. Komoot still mixes up the directions "left," "right," and "straight," but I've honed my sense of when to trust it and when not to.

Since Elias wouldn't be coming back to Freiburg after this trek, we approached the start of the Querweg somewhat circuitously, doing a loop through the Altstadt to revisit places he didn't have particularly nostalgic memories of from 2009, then headed up the Schlossberg. 

The first noteworthy sight of our trip was one of the twelve stations of the Bananen Passion. Seriously. Bananas hanging from a tree. Apparently the art installation was vandalized just three days after it was installed--which sounds suspiciously well timed, in terms of stones being rolled away from tomb entrances and such. I couldn't get the free online Badische Zeitung registration to work in order to read the full story on this dastardly destruction, but here's the link in case you'd like to try. In the meantime, here's a video about the banana fabrication. Frankly, I'm disappointed that the bananas are fake, since I thought the ones hanging from a tree were supposed to be a commentary on the temporary nature of art.

Looking in the direction opposite the bananas, we saw our last close up view of the Freiburg Muenster. We continued to have distant views well into our second day of hiking. 

Past the bananas, higher up on the hill, we passed a mindful stretching class in the woods...

...as well as a calisthenics trail. E paused to obey the signs:

The Querweg is extremely well marked with blazes: a diamond, half white, half red, on a field of yellow.

We paused at St. Ottilien for some mediocre Kuchen. Carly came out of the backpack for--I confess--the first and only time so far on this trip, in order to greet a local chicken.

Elias, longtime collector of shiny things, was great at spotting interesting beetles.

I photographed this sign because Komoot told us to turn onto Ess Tea when-DELL-in ouegg. The British accent would have said WEEG instead of ouegg, so I considered this an improvement.  

We meandered our way down the hill to the flat Dreisam valley, which we followed past Stegen... 

...past--Warning--chickens at play...

...took a banana break near a lovely lone-hill-on-a-flat-spot...

...then continued into Buchenbach. May is stork nesting season. 

We took a right at the goats...

...and finally landed in Buchenbach, where we checked out the inside of the church St. Blasius (built 1898-1901)...

...and checked into our hotel, which was right on the Querweg. This was the view from our window:

After dinner, we walked to the next village to meet Stefan at the train station; walked back to the hotel to hang out for a bit; walked back to the train station to send Stefan off; and then walked back to the hotel for the night--which is how a 14-mile day becomes an 18-mile day.

 Ta da!