Munich to Landshut in four easy stages

There's a Bavarian joke that goes something like this: Kasimir and Beppo are hired by the highway department to paint stripes on a long road. On the first day, they both paint 50 meters. On the second day, Kasimir paints another 50 m, but Beppo only paints 25. On the third day, Kasimir again paints 50, but Beppo paints only 4.5. On the The fourth day, the job manager pulls Beppo aside and says, "Kasimir is painting 50 meters every day, but you're painting less and less. What's going on?" Beppo replies, "well, each day the can of paint is further and further away."

I somehow decided that I should work on connecting my 2023 Donausteig hike to my meanderings around Munich, and that I'd start this summer by hiking as far as Landshut. My original plan was to do this over three days, but then I caught a cold and felt less speedy, so I did it in four instead, with endpoints determined by the availability of train stations so I could take trains home every afternoon. And whaddya know, my hikes got further and further away, just like Beppo's can of paint. So in addition to the miles hiked, I'll note that this adventure also included almost 12 hours going back and forth on trains--which is a lot if you're doing this four days in a row, but tolerable if you're taking time off between days to process a cold.

Prior to hiking to Landshut, I had recorded walking as far north in Munich as the Nordfriedhof U-Bahn stop (although I've walked farther north than that--just not since I've been recording miles). Thus:

Day 1: Hallbergmoos south to Nordfriedhof

Day 2: Hallbermoos north to Freising

Day 3: Landshut south to Moosburg

Day 4: Moosburg south to Freising

The north/south choices were based on travel time: once north of Freising, trains take as much as 20 minutes longer heading south than north (e.g. Steinebach to Moosburg takes 86 minutes, but Moosburg to Steinebach takes 105 minutes). As much as I would have liked to follow the Isar north all the way from Nordfriedhof to triumphantly enter and hang out in beautiful Landshut, I was happy to change the narrative and save myself 20 minutes a day on trains.

Day 1: Hallbergmoos south to Nordfriedhof. To alleviate the monotony, or perhaps because I was feeling a cold coming on and wanted to expend energy while I still had it, I jogged part of the way

Day 2: Hallbermoos north to Freising

More of the same, but with airplanes, a river naturally rerouting itself and reshaping the riverbank as it went, and a Dom.

Happy 1300th birthday, Freising! 

St. Sebastian, judging from the arrows...

https://www.eder-orgelbau.de/restaurierung-renovierung/freising-dom-mari%C3%A4-geburt/

Day 3: Landshut south to Moosburg

S had never been to Landshut, so after I spent a few days sleeping off my cold, S, his bicycle, and I took a train to Landshut together. The city was delightful...

St. Martin's steeple is the 2nd tallest brick structure
in the world without stainless steel supports

Frescoes inside date to ~1500 CE

After visiting the castle grounds, S and I parted ways--he to bike back to Steinebach, and I to walk to Moosburg. The route to Moosburg followed the freeway for a long time. Between Eching and Moosburg, there was little shade on a hot, hot day, and I had forgotten my sun hat. And Moosburg--"the oldest town between Regensburg and Italy" (presumably the current Italian border)--was oddly uninspiring, perhaps because of disastrous fires in 1702 and 1865 and becoming host to the largest prisoner-of-war camp in Nazi Germany during WWII.

Leaving Landshut

Past Eching

The Beaver: Rodent of the Isar

Secrets of Beavers I

Apparently it's a secret that beavers are protected.
Do not shoot them. Spread the word.

Shade!

Long thattaway, long thisaway. TRVTH. At the top of the
hill is the Isar, channeled through a long series of locks.

Day 4: Moosburg south to Freising

After the underwhelming hike from Landshut to Moosburg, I didn't have high hopes for the stretch between Moosburg and Freising--but rolling hills and bucolic landscapes proved me wrong.

iNaturalist says this is a field of potatoes

Following train tracks beats following freeways

Storks are welcome in Thonstetten

Lots of "Moos" and lots of "-ham" in these here parts. From Old English hām to
German heim, the suffix refers to homesteads, as in Birimingham and Nottingham. 

15th-c. pilgrimage church on the outskirts of Langenbach--a nice truffle

View from the truffle. The two Isar nuclear power plants went offline in 2023. Why
make your own nuclear energy when you can buy nuclear energy from France?

At the southern end of Langenbach, I passed this painting, hung on the exterior wall of a house. So many people look at paintings and mutter, "I could have painted that," but they never do. Here, someone did. Kudos.

Blaues Pferd n + 1

Here's Franz Marc's version, which hangs in the Lenbach house:

Blaues Pferd I (1911)

Ta da! ~50 miles and 1,400 ft elevation gain, cuz the Isar flood plain is pretty flat.

Taking the train back and forth was a little tedious, even if the Deutschland Ticket made it cheap, and I suspect the scenery between Landshut and Passau or Deggendorf (where the Isar dumps into the Donau/Danube) doesn't warrant staying in hotels, so it's quite likely that this point-to-point hike has reached its end.

Malerweg Day 6 - Neumann Mühle to Schmilka

When you share a Matrazzenlager in a hut with several other people, one of whom sniffles and coughs and sneezes all night long, you might feel inspired to arise very early and go for a backpack-less walk in the fresh air before breakfast, so I took Carly up the nearby Lorenzstein for a photo shoot.

The drop behind her was precipitous, but Carly didn't bat an eye

Check out the zigs and zags in the rock!

Ta da! 3.75 miles and 500 ft elevation gain before breakfast

After breakfast, it was time to wrap up this six-day hike.

Bark beetle devastation

I took a detour to climb up the Kleinstein--only about 100 feet above the trail, and well worth seeing. 

Y'all. Don't leave TP on the trails. Get a Kula Cloth.

Yep. So very worth it.

From the Kleinstein, I zipped along the trail, eager to see the sights and then get back to Dresden. Eventually I caught up with the very loud quartet of macho men who had also spent the night at the Neumann Mühle and had headed out half an hour before me. I had been intermittently hearing their voices from afar for much of the morning. The trail (here called the "Roßsteig") then headed steeply uphill, so after some polite conversation, I increased my pace and left them in the proverbial dust. 

At the top of the ascent, I made another short but worthwhile detour to enjoy views of the Goldstein.

My next destination on the trail was the Katzenstein. I looked at it from a variety of angles, but couldn't figure out where the cat was supposed to be.

Is that a paw to the left?

Wee shroom

Approaching the top of the hill, I intentionally left the Malerweg one last time. I was very close to the national border and wanted to put a foot into the Czech Republic, so I descended most of the way to Schmilka along a trail enabling that.

Almost at the top

Local maximum. Time to head down.

The border was marked with stones set about 100 m apart. I took a photo of this one in Czechia...

...and also in Deutschland...

...and also in both countries at once.

The descent continued through the Erlsgrund (hold on! Erl? Like Erlkoenig? How did it take me until right now to learn that Erlen means "alder"?).

iNaturalist thinks this nest might have been made by a European wren

When I reached Schmilka, I walked through town (so busy! so vibrant!), hopped on a ferry across the Elbe, and caught a train back to Dresden.

It's a wrap! Looking west down the Elbe.

Ta da! 10 miles, 2,333 ft elevation gain

Ta da! The whole shebang: 96.6 miles, 15,738 ft elevation gain