Who imagined that after yesterday's rain one of the most beautiful days of the whole trip was waiting for me?
There is nothing better than positive surprises.
The day's schedule provides indeed a wonderful route, for once completely according to my taste:
Length: 19 km, Ascent | Descent: 720 m | 860 m, Hiking time: 5 h 25 min
The breakfast matter
Surprisingly I am early awake, so I need to look for an outdoor restaurant for my breakfast, because my room offers nothing of the sort. On the way down, I meet two sporty-looking gentlemen apparently belonging to a group of hikers from Italy. They step out of the elevator in front of me and head for a rich breakfast buffet.
Well, I tell myself that my intentions were sincere, but as we know, the devil is full of deceit. Everything indicates that my karma has led me to exactly this breakfast room with exactly this wonderful breakfast buffet. There are no coincidences, certainly not such, so the will of the universe must be satisfied.
And so I am sitting with a guilty conscience in front of my plate, next to coffee and orange juice, while the lady in charge nods to me and wishes me bon appétit.
I am sure that some stupid thing will happen to me today. As the saying goes, God punishes straight away.
Pilgrimage routes
The tour leads from Einsiedeln on an old pilgrim path over the Chatzenstrick to the high moor of Rothenthurm and over the Raten to the Aegerisee.
That's what the Guide promises, but I don't know if it's a pilgrimage trail, but there is a network of such trails, most of them related to the Way of St. James, crisscrossing Switzerland.
In the end, if God and the muscles have collaborated, you reach Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. Many years ago also one of my hiking dreams, but since the Camino de Santiago has experienced a tremendous hype, with millions of pilgrims, especially on the section crossing northern Spain, I abandoned it.
If you want to get informed with some very entertaining and funny experiences, it might be best to read the million seller by Hape Kerkeling Ich bin dann mal weg.
Hape Kerkeling, Germany's most versatile TV entertainer, walked to the tomb of St. James - over 600 kilometers through Spain to Santiago de Compostela - and experienced the purifying power of the pilgrimage. An extraordinary book full of wit, wisdom and warmth, an honest account of the search for God and oneself and the inestimable value of walking.
It's a sunny June morning when Hape Kerkeling finally conquers his inner swine and sets off from St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port. Six weeks lie ahead of him, alone with himself and his eleven-kilo backpack. He marches over the snow-covered peaks of the Pyrenees, through the Basque Country, Navarre and Rioja to Galicia to the tomb of St. James - a destination for believers from all over the world for over a thousand years. After 35 days, he reaches his destination exhausted - quite purified and at peace with himself.
Across the Katzenstrick
One always wonders about strange names and descriptions. Katzenstrick? Cat rope? I can't imagine anything by this name, neither regarding cat nor rope, but anyway, the hill to be climbed is called Katzenstrick.
Shortly after Einsiedeln, the path leads between meadows towards a wooded slope, while cowbells accompany the cheerful hiker. The sky is as blue as it can be, a few cute clouds are stuck somewhere in the north, it is getting warm for the first time. Time for a change of clothes, now shorts and T-shirts are back.
I can't help but walk slowly as the scent of freshly mown grass drifts around my nose, only the occasional rattle of a tractor breaking the morning silence. Passing several farms, I climb up the Katzenstrick, a few children overtake me laughing. Apparently they judge my gait as that of a frail old geezer.
Well, they are not that wrong.
A special school
One of the buildings at the top seems to be a school. The children are welcomed by two adults, apparently they go to school here. It is called CasaVitura and seems to be something quite special. Curious as I am, I ask the two gentlemen, obviously teachers, a little more about this establishment.
It provides an alternative education to the elementary school, initially with a kindergarten and an primary school. Later, an senior school will also be established. The purpose is to strengthen the children's abilities by increasing their thirst for knowledge, their joy of discovery and their enthusiasm through natural learning.
Natural learning is competence-oriented, self-organized, done without strict timetables and renounces homework and grades. In an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust, the children learn to make decisions themselves and to solve tasks in a self-effective manner. The mixed-age learning group meets the need to learn from each other and promotes social interaction. Each child's background is respected. CasaVitura is committed to peaceful coexistence and is politically and denominationally neutral (see link above).
Impressed by the pedagogical approach and the seriousness and conviction of the two teachers, I am still discussing after half an hour, apparently having forgotten that the way ahead is long also today.
The Rothenturm Hochmoor - Paradise saved
From Katzenstrick, a wide path leads down into the valley, where the most famous high moor in Switzerland is located. On the valley floor, you have to cross the main road and the railroad and finally pass a horse stud farm to reach the high moor.
Mother and foal are curious, step cautiously closer, sniff the strange guy and turn away again, quite unimpressed, as it seems to me.
I remember the eighties, the highly emotional confrontation between the army and its mostly right-wing naysayers and the landscape conservationists who supported the initiative. Today, as many social parameters have changed, it is hard to imagine that the army wanted to build a tank training area on this still untouched high moor.
A tank training area! Of all things!
Those who know me are aware of my aversion to the military, but even less militant compatriots were unable to accept the hare-brained and even then completely unrealistic idea. And so the popular initiative to protect the moorlands at that time led to an unexpected success, a first writing on the wall that pointed to future developments in society.
The moor is allowed to be crossed, but not in its specially protected core zone. Nevertheless, the hiker gets a limited but no less impressive insight into the wild plant landscape. It offers a protected habitat not only for plants but also for animals.
I quote from the following Link:
In seasonal changes, the trough-shaped high valley plays with colors. In spring, it adorns itself with a purple veil of flour primroses. Lemon, sail and pearl butterflies make its summer dress flutter colorfully. On cool autumn mornings it wears a diadem of dewdrops. And in winter, rays of sunshine often caress its white blanket, while in the lowlands the fog weighs down. Mountain pines, spruces, copses, floodplains and the Biber flowing in meanders enhance the charm of the landscape.
Not the only one for once
It is now getting hot, for the first time in days the sweat runs from my brow. On the ascent to the Raten no one can be seen, apart from the obligatory cows. The further up I get, the average number of people per square meter increases rapidly.
Crowds of people are on the road, the barbecue areas are fully occupied, children screaming, dogs barking, smoke, smell of sausages and other things. Very nice. There are no more free seats on the numerous benches along the route, but I enjoy the company. Some strange looks follow me, I feel the questions, the assumptions. I don't care.
Sometimes the path is dead straight, then suddenly I'm alone again in the open countryside until the hum of an e-bike, popularly known as a "Stromer," startles me. I will be careful not to reveal my opinion on these vehicles. Trouble would certainly be mine.
Sometimes you just have to be patient, especially when the break is long overdue and there is no bench or anything comparable in sight. However, what then appears in the shade of a tree in front of a small cottage is about the state of the art in terms of resting places for tired hikers.
It almost seems to me as if the universe has more highlights in store in addition to the tricked-out free breakfast. That's fine with me, but I don't quite trust the story. In any case I commit myself now to an extended rest, stretch the legs, look around, no human soul far and wide to which I could have offered a seat beside me.
In memory of Patrick Leigh Fermor
When you hike among streams and meadows and woods like I do, at some point the name Patrick Leigh Fermor and his hike through ancient Europe in 1933 emerges. It is, so to speak, the archetypal hiking bible, books that every hiker should definitely read. In my Laos books it was already mentioned.
And what a hike it was.
Fermor was just 18 years old when he decided 1933 to walk across Europe. He took a ship to the top of Holland and walked off, destination Istanbul, at that time called Constantinople. One needs to imagine that in this year the old Europe still existed, the Europe before the disastrous war that was to break out a few years later. The signs of the coming catastrophe cannot be overlooked, and so he walks through countries whose expiration date had already been written.
But not only that. At that time, there was neither suitable hiking equipment nor trails, let alone signposts. The young man had to find his way, but that didn't bother him in the least. All along the way he wrote diary, only to lose it somewhere in the south, forcing him to reactivate the notes out of his memory.
The acclaimed travel writer's youthful journey - as an 18-year-old - across XNUMXs Europe by foot began in A Time of Gifts, which covered the author's exacting journey from the Lowlands as far as Hungary. Picking up from the very spot on a bridge across the Danube where his readers last saw him, we travel on with him across the great Hungarian Plain on horseback, and over the Romanian border to Transylvania. The trip was an exploration of a continent which was already showing signs of the holocaust which was to come. Although frequently praised for his lyrical writing, Fermor's account also provides a coherent understanding of the dramatic events then unfolding in Middle Europe. But the delight remains in travelling with him in his picaresque journey past remote castles, mountain villages, monasteries and towering ranges.
In the second part of his travelogue, Patrick Leigh Fermor takes the reader back into a strange, fascinating world that has now disappeared. We meet him again in Budapest in 1934, where he goes to balls and coffee houses. On a borrowed horse, he crosses the Hungarian lowlands with their shepherds and draw wells, lingers on estates where time ceases to exist, and then moves on to the Transylvanian Carpathians and the Iron Gate, the end of Central Europe.
The subsequent life of Fermor is interesting. In the 2nd World War I he fought on the side of Greece and is revered as a national hero to this day. He lived almost all his life in Crete and died 2011 almost a hundred years old.
A very recommendable hiking literature, a great reading experience.
Forests and sometimes water
I'm glad that after all the sunlit meadows and slopes, it's off into the forest now. It's like diving into another world, a quiet, simple world that offers nothing but peace and energy. Or am I just imagining that you automatically breathe deeply, your chest expands, your breath becomes shallower, your spirit awakens anew? The romantic love of the Germans for their forests has contributed a lot to their culture, why this is so there of all places I don't know.
However, if you think of England, for example, where the once dense forests have disappeared except for a pitiful remnant, you really start thinking. Does the relationship to the forests originate in the culture of a country? Or the other way around?
As mentioned before, hiking gives you time to think. I occasionally doubt whether the relevant results are valuable in each case.
Towards the Ägerisee
Tomorrow I'm taking an one-day break, my dear Aunt Hildy is going to be buried. So I have to go home tonight and will continue the trail the day after tomorrow from Meierskappel. The section from Unterägeri to Meierskappel will be missing in my travel report, but I will try to include some information even if I have not experienced or hiked it myself.
The initial plan called for spending tonight at the Hinterwiden farm, on a bed of straw. No idea what brought me to this rather hare-brained idea, probably a better distribution of the stages from Unterägeri to Lucerne. Eventually, almost at today's destination, there lies a stately farm, probably Hinterwiden. Maybe I missed something after all.
Anyway, the path across the hilly landscape over the Raten, the Gottschalkenberg and the Brusthöchi, alternately through dense forest, then again along meadows smelling of hay, or the farms where the farmers are busy making up for the lost rainy time of last week. There is a roar at every corner, tractors and machines whose names are not familiar to me, but which are contributing significantly to the increase in efficiency.
I have rarely hiked in such a happy mood. Once again the thought arises, as it did before on long bus trips, that it may never end.
But then at the horizon, Lake Aegeri appears, from afar a harmless pond whose surface reflects the bright blue of the sky. Unterägeri comes closer, one of the paradises for wealthy expats, one of those typical Swiss tax havens.
A look at the SBB app shows that the next bus to Zug leaves in half an hour. So I hurry down the steep asphalt roads to the village, and indeed, I arrive at the bus stop just as the bus pulls in.
And then I'm back, at least temporarily, in the world and feel strangely inadequate, almost out of place. But that's how it probably has to be ...
Matching Song: The Parting Gifts - Keep Walking
And here the trip doesn't go any further for once, but see for yourself ...
