Wadlstrumpf

Monday, June 20, 2022

Querweg photo dump 6: Engen to Hegauhaus

Sunday May 22

The Querweg was to take us past four Burgruine: Hohenhewen, Hohenstoffeln, Mägdeberg, and Hohenkrähen.

Atop Hohenhewen, voracious mosquitoes found us.

This was as close as we got to the top, because the
clouds of mosquitoes were so overwhelming

The mosquitoes sucked and sucked and sucked our blood. We didn't think to take a photo of the five that Elias managed to squash on my shoulder in one fell swoop, but we did capture a two-fer before continuing to flee down the hill.

We fled all the way down into Welschingen, where we took refuge in a Konditorei. Over nourishing Johannisbeerkuchen, we decided that despite all of our planning, sticking to the Querweg wasn't worth the blood loss. We slashed almost four wooded miles from our route to avoid the next mosquito-infested hill. We'd stick to open fields, and consider the the relatively short 9.25-mile day a well-earned Ruhe Tag.

Kuchen makes decision-making easier

We weren't sure why this was the only day of the entire trip when we encountered a bazillion hungry mosquitoes. Perhaps it was the humid weather and the total lack of a breeze. Perhaps mosquitoes consider the hikers in the Hegau tastier than those in the Schwarzwald. Buying bug spray was out of the question, because no bug-spray selling stores are open anywhere in all of Germany on Sundays.

Thus we skipped Hohenstoffeln...

...and cut across a mostly tree-less hill instead...

Still up, up, up, just without the skeeters

...where the bugs hitching rides with us weren't the blood-sucking type.

Hohenstoffeln includes a complex of three castle ruins atop one hill; fans though we are of ruins, we had zero regrets about missing all three.

We eventually rejoined the Querweg as it approached the third set of ruins, Mägdeberg. By this time, the sun had come out, and the wind had picked up...

...and we decided we were so very close to the ruins that we should give it a go.

But as it turned out, the main entrance was closed due to poor trail conditions, and the only way up was a longer trail through (we assumed) mosquito infested woods, so we bailed on Mägdeberg too.

But the Hegau is rife with ruins, and our route took us past another complex, Hohenkrähen, that we learned about thanks to trail signs--it had completely escaped my route-planning radar. As it rose in the distance, Elias and I debated how easy or difficult it would be to raid a fortress built atop a volcanic tower.

When we finally arrived near the base of the hill, we made the detour to climb up, and confirmed that raids must have been very very difficult.

Do goht's uffi / Da geht's hinauf / this way up

Look! The Bodensee! Still a ways away...

Trail signs at Hohenkrähen pointed us to our destination for the evening--Hegauhaus, a restaurant/hotel on the pleateau above Singen, a few miles before the next fortification, Hohentwiel. (When planning our trip, I figured Hohentwiel was grand enough that we should be well rested before ascending.) The trail signs also offered the first mention of Konstanz--the official end of the Querweg.

Hegauhaus offered some great views of the Bodensee.

The storm clouds parted briefly enough that we had a decent view of the Alps in the distance. This turned out to be the only decent view of the Alps on our entire 8-day hike.

Ruhe Tag, but ta-da anyway!

Querweg photo dump 5: Blumberg to Engen

Saturday May 21

We detoured off the Querweg, first to stop by the post office to mail the key back to Schattenmuehle, and second to find breakfast. (Most hotels in Germany include a free breakfast, but our room in Blumberg did not.)

Overall, I found Blumberg a strange place, in ways similar to Kappel, with an emphasis on pavement that makes the area largely empty of plant life. (You can see the downtown-wide black-and-white checkerboard pavement pattern in several of the photos at the end of the previous Querweg post.) Written records date Blumberg's long-gone Schloss (destroyed 1644, demolished 19th century, remains removed 1967), back to ca. 1218, but little architectural evidence remains of Blumberg's medieval origins. The city experienced a 10-fold increase in population between 1935 (pop. 700) and 1942 (pop. 7,000) as forced labor camps were established to extract iron ore from nearby mines. It has the look of having been bombed and rebuilt, yet Blumberg avoided being bombed during the war thanks to its proximity to neutral Switzerland.

Before she went on to co-found the anti-Nazi Weisse Rose movement as a college student in Munich, Sophie Scholl did a six-month civil-service stint at a daycare in Blumberg. Her descriptions of the experience paint a bleak picture.

Nonetheless, the post office in 2022 was nice enough, as was breakfast at the Jim Knoepfle bakery across from the railway museum for the Sauschwaenzlebahn (Pig-Tail Line; the railway route originated as a way to move military supplies through the Black Forest in the late 1800s).

But back to the Querweg. We determined to catch up with the trail far enough west not to miss the Blauer Stein, a nature preserve / volcanic rock formation on the top of a hill.

Our detour to the Blauer Stein

The Blauer Stein is geologic wonder, to be sure, although we were a little disappointed by its relative lack of expansiveness.

Too tiny to build a fortress atop, but geologically interesting nonetheless

Heading down from the hilltop, we appreciated the appreciation for bees...

The Querweg passed through tiny town Riedoeschingen...

...where green energy is a NIMBY effort in at least one yard. The sign below says "Protect nature! No wind energy in the woods!"; click on the image to see preposterously humongous wind turbines depicted on the hills.

Of course, the hills are pretty without humongous turbines, and this is not my back yard. The U.S. is so far behind Germany in green energy, I'd be delighted to have a view of wind turbines back home.

Atop one of the hills, guck mal! (Look here!): who doesn't like regional, organic, pesticide-free grain?

...and happy pollinators and solar farms?

We found a nice view for lunch...

The pointy hills as far as the eye can see are all former volcanic vents. Twelve hundred or so years ago, they offered convenient spots for fortresses, making the Hegau one of the most fortification-dense regions of Germany (380 hilltop fortifications within a 20km radius). Although we were now well beyond the steep mountains of the Schwarzwald, I needn't have worried that we were beyond scenic views. The Alter Post Weg section of the Querweg was one of the most beautiful legs of our entire trip.

From atop a hill, we had our first view of our final destination--Lake Constance.

A first view of the Bodensee (Lake Constance) in the distance!

We kept scanning the horizon for a view of Engen, our destination for the evening, but never saw it until we were almost upon it, since it was always behind one hill or another. At last, after hiking 17 miles, we arrived at our overnight accommodation. An hour's rest later, we headed to the grocery store for fruit for the next day--another long hiking day, and a Sunday, so no opportunities to shop--then walked up to the Altstadt for dinner.

Easy to confuse with a Star of David, a six-pointed star in this context signifies a brewery:

Ta da!

Saturday, June 18, 2022

Visa snafu 2022

You'd think, given all our experience with passport snafus, we'd know how to avoid them by now, but you'd be wrong.

When we arrived in the Munich airport back in April, the passport control officer asked me how long I'd be staying in Germany.

I said, "four months. I know I need to apply for a visa."

USAmericans can enter Germany for 90 days without a visa. Since we'd be staying 30 days beyond that, we had brought a copy of our marriage license and other relevant documents so I could apply for a visa here.

The officer--the professional passport control officer who sits between arriving passengers and their destination and gets to decide, yea or nay, whether to let them enter the country, or at least whether to hassle them, based on how they answer his questions and whether he thinks they and their documents look OK or suspicious--that officer said, "you don't need to apply for a visa. Go to Austria instead."

"Go to Austria?"

"Yes. Go to Austria for a few days before your 90 days are up. Come back with proof that you left the country. That's easier and more pleasant than the visa application process."

Stefan and I both observed to the officer that sometimes people try things like that in the U.S., but we didn't know people did that in Germany.

"Yes, you can do that in Germany. It's easier than applying for a visa," repeated the professional passport control officer who absolutely should not have been telling tourists to sneak around visa regulations, but he was the professional, so who were we to question his advice?

We wouldn't even need to go out of our way to leave Germany: Stefan had a June conference in Les Diablerets, Switzerland, that would get us out of the E.U. a comfortable three weeks before I'd officially need a visa. We planned to get my passport stamped then, if not before.

Thirty-five days after we left the Munich airport, Elias came to visit us in Freiburg. He flew into Zurich, so Stefan and I planned a quick overnight trip to Switzerland on our way to pick him up. We hoped to get my passport stamped, but border control in small town Laufenburg was non-existent on Saturday evening and Sunday morning.

This Laufenburg cat doesn't care about international borders.

No one noticed that we crossed this bridge between
Switzerland (L) and Germany (R) twice.

In early June, 63 days after arriving in Germany, we drove to Les Diablerets. It was a Sunday afternoon, and border control was again non-existent.

On day 68, we started to exhibit Covid symptoms. This is what happens when 150 scientists attend "masks-required" lectures and poster sessions and then eat leisurely meals together, maskless, three times a day in a crowded dining room, five days in a row. Scientists. We are all sheep.

Les Diablerets was right purty while our trip lasted...

Stefan and I skedaddled back to Germany as soon as Covid self-tests confirmed we were sick. This was on a Thursday, and border control between Switzerland and Austria in Bregenz was in full swing--not that cars were actually being stopped, but at least border control officers were present. We pulled our wee 2002 Ford Fiesta over next to the massive 18-wheelers in the parking area, donned our KN94 masks, and daringly leapt across the snaking line of slow-moving traffic in order to enter the customs building and speak with an officer.

I showed the officer my passport and explained why I needed to get it stamped, saying "the passport control officer in the Munich airport told us to do it this way."

He didn't understand what I was asking. He said, "Switzerland is of course not part of the E.U, but Switzerland and Austria are both part of the Schengen Zone, and you may travel freely between Schengen countries."

"Yes," I said, "this is why we deliberately stopped here, at the border. Could you please stamp the passport to show we were outside of Germany?"

"We don't stamp things here. Look at the stamp in your passport..." He flipped to the page that had been stamped at the airport. "This isn't Germany's stamp, this is the Schengen Zone stamp. This stamp means you may travel anywhere in the Schengen Zone for up to 90 days. To be in the Schengen Zone longer than that, you need a visa."

"But the passport officer in Munich said..."

"I appreciate the conundrum; it is very odd indeed. But this is not about Germany's rules, this is about the Schengen Zone. We have no stamps for stamping passports here. You will need a visa."

Well dang.

We arrived home late Thursday evening. Covid had us in a haze on Friday, and it didn't occur to me until midnight Friday that we should have gotten the visa ball rolling before offices closed for the weekend. By 2 a.m., I had confirmed that a quick trip to the U.K. (hooray Brexit?) wouldn't fix this: the 90-day Schengen Zone rule was for a total of 90 days within any 180-day period, and my 90 days were rapidly coming to an end.

I could hear the Munich airport passport control officer cackling evilly at us in my dreams.

Stefan started making phone calls on Monday, and amazingly, Woerthsee city staff and Starnberg county staff came to our rescue. The surprise for both of us was that friendly local city and county employees could intervene in what is usually a long, painstakingly detailed federal approval process. No one said "sorry, you're out of luck"; everyone said "let me see what we can do."*

It took a mere five days and a lighter than expected load of paperwork to acquire the gem of a document shown below. (It would only have taken two days had we not had Covid and had Bavaria not taken yet another day off of work for yet another Catholic holiday.)

Fiktionsbescheinigung obtained on day 76 out of 90!

Instead of a visa, I have a Fiktionsbescheinigung--a fictional license. It's valid only in Germany--so no dashing over to Vienna in July to hear Cecilia Bartoli sing in Rossini's Il Turco in Italia. (Dang. Seriously, dang. So close, and yet so far.) But until we depart in early August, I'm here legally, even without the regular non-fictional visa for which I should have applied two months ago.

________

*I should have remembered this from my 2009 experience getting a visa in Freiburg: within 20 minutes of arriving for my visa appointment, I had a six-month visa with a work permit--even though I had applied only for a three-month visa without permission to work--and the city waived the 65 Euro fee because the staff member I met with didn't want to bother with the paperwork.

Saturday, June 4, 2022

Favorite place

On Wednesday, I walked from Freiburg to Sexau--mostly flat terrain paralleling the train tracks--then up to the Hochburg ruins, and back down on the other side to the Emmendingen train station, where I hopped on a train back to Freiburg.

The Hochburg ruins are one of my favorite places in Germany--a perfect mix of ruinous detail, density, and decay, plus verdant valley views in all directions--so I'm glad to have been able to visit them again. The only thing missing was an 8-year-old with whom to enjoy them.