Basel to Staufen Day 1 - Weil am Rhein to Kandern

Tuesday June 4, Weil am Rhein to Kandern

Why Basel to Staufen? E and I did a day hike from Freiburg to Staufen in 2022, so by hiking from Basel to Staufen, I'm connecting my long-distance section hikes to a fourth national border (France, Austria, and Italy being the other three).

The first two miles of the day involved walking with S to the conference center, then continuing on to the Basel Bad Bahnhof. My understanding of the 49-Euro Deutschland Ticket is that it not only covers local and regional trains across all of Germany, but also the first train station across the border of neighboring countries. In Basel, that meant the Basel Bad station rather than the main station (although in practice, it might mean the main station--I just didn't bother to find out, since the conference center was so close to Basel Bad).

One train station later, shortly after 8am, I was back in Weil am Rhein, not quite where we had been the previous evening, but close enough.

I headed from the train station to the Vitra Design Museum. The museum didn't open until 10am, but much of the campus is open to the public 24/7.

The acrophobe likes to believe she would have at least tried climbing the Vitra Slide Tower (designed by Carsten Hoeller, 2014), but like the museum, it didn't open until 10am. 

The VitraHaus, which contains Vitra's flagship furniture store, was designed by Herzong & de Meuron in 2010. 

The Vitra Design Museum was Frank Gehry's first European building, designed in 1989.

"Balancing Tools," a sculpture by Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen, 1984.

I left the Vitra campus behind and continued north, catching a few of the 24 sculptures by Tobias Rehberger on the aptly named Rehberger-Weg.

From there it was up into the woods, which eventually spit me out into the hills above Tumringen. Here are two of the zillion photos I took of field-bordering poppies, because field-bordering poppies are hard to resist...  

The first known mention of the Rötteln church on the north edge of Tumringen was in 751; renovated in 1401, it's the oldest church in the region. The decision to move the organ front and center behind the altar wasn't made until 1972.   

The treat of the day was a visit to Burg Roetteln. Even though I've been there before, my internal Rules of Hiking state that if ruins beckon, oblige.

From the ruins, it was into and out of the woods, through the villages Wollbach, Egisholz, and Hammerstein, and then up and down and up and down through the Wolfsschlucht (Wolf Gorge), which reminded me of parts of Kentucky.

By this point, I was 15 miles into what would ultimately be a 19-mile day, and my feet were sore. I was testing out a pair of trail shoes, lighter than my hiking boots, and feeling the treads under foot. So I was glad when I finally entered Kandern, my destination for the day.

First order of business: dragging my weary self into a bakery for a decaf Milchkaffee and Zwetschgenkuchen (plum cake). I was embarrassed to discover I was leaving a trail of Wolfsschlucht mud all over the floor...

Ta da! ~19 miles for the day, 2,350 ft elevation gain.