Malerweg Day 1 - Koenigstein to Pirna

Time to shift to chronological order...

I arrived in Dresden on Friday, and S and I started hiking the Malerweg on Saturday. There's no better way to reset one's circadian clock than to hike for hours on a sunny day.

Our original plan was to start in Pirna and stay overnight in Koenigstein, but it was a holiday weekend, and we couldn't find a hotel room in advance. Because I assumed I'd be jetlagged, we decided to start in Koenigstein and hike clockwise to Pirna, so that by the time we were tuckered out from the hike, we'd have a shorter train ride back to Dresden. Our friend J, leader of the research exchange program in Dresden, joined us for the first eight miles between Koenigstein and Stadt Wehlen.

Koenigstein is the name of both a town on the Elbe and a Medival fortress (with Renaissance and Baroque expansions) located on a plateau above the town.

From the train station, we headed uphill... 

...through woods and past interesting rock formations...

...until we reached the patrol trail below the fortress. Signage indicated that storming the fortress walls would NOT BE TOLERATED.

The views from the patrol trail were expansive. The table mountain on the left in the photo below is Lilienstein; we had multiple views of it throughout the day. 

Because we were below the fortress, we only occasionally had good views of it. We had decided in advance to skip visiting the fortress itself, since we didn't have the time to warrant the admission price.

After hiking halfway around the fortress, we descended from the plateau to the fields below.

Even with binoculars, we we too far away from these huge birds to tell if they were herons or storks. 

Mustard!

The trail took us up another table, Rauenstein, where we encountered the first of what would ultimately be well over a thousand built-in steps leading up and down the Malerweg.

My camera still sucks at showing UP vs. flat...

Carly came out for lunch atop Rauenstein

Post-lunch steps. One of the few photos that captures the UP-ness

Wanderers

Malerweg blazes are marked with an M

J on a relatively flat descent between Rauenstein and Stadt Wehlen

J cut off in Stadt Wehlen to catch a train back to Dresden. S and I still had another 6.7 miles to go. The first direction was, of course, up. Note the cobblestones in the photo; they can be found in places along the entire Malerweg. Since the Elbsandsteingebirge have been a tourist attraction since at least the 18th century, we wondered how long ago the cobblestones had been put in place.

Laundry lines in this part of Saxony tended to sport a lot of black clothes. Fashion? Depression? We couldn't tell...

Bees guard this gate:

When we finally arrived in Pirna, we took a quick look inside the Lutheran town church, St. Marien. A friend recently asked me why I like to scope out German churches so much, given that I'm areligious. As I've posted before, I consider it truffle hunting: like a box of chocolates, you can't tell from the outside if the inside is going to be dark-chocolate Chambord or white-chocolate maple walnut. Churches are usually the most architecturally interesting buildings in town, and admission is usually free (or at least cheap); and they can be filled with art ranging from amusing to spectacular. Also, organs. So here's some of St. Marien:

Ceiling was definitely dark chocolate with fruit liqueur...

Jonah and the whale?

We stopped for refreshment before catching the train back to Dresden. In the photo below, I am pointing at a bucatini noodle, which makes a pretty ingenious compostable straw:

Ta da! 14.65 miles of the day's 18.4 total