You are well advised to plan shorter stages. The organism needs intervals in which it doesn't have to go to the limit (which I don't do anyway), where it can recover and recharge its battery. If you forget this simple truth, you will regret it.
Today is one of those stages. Ascent and descent are harmless, the distance just right.
The travel guide agrees:
It's a leisurely ride over the rolling hills of the Freiburg Mittelland. Shady sections in the forest and open paved sections in villages alternate. A nature experience is the confluence of the Saane and Sense.
Length 15 km; rise | descent 280 m | 240m; Hiking time 3 hours
However, in my case, I doubt the indicated duration. I expect 6 or more hours. We'll see ...
Multi Options World
Anyway, the Hotel Bahnhof stays back in Murten, a last look at the little town, I will come back sometime, with more time and leisure. But will I?
It fits, doesn't it - we live in a multi-option era. There are always and everywhere an infinite number of options. Instead of Murten, I might as well travel to the Engadine or Basel or wherever. I might also do something completely different. Travel (where to?). Listen to music (but what?). Reading (but what?).
So much remains a pious wish.
We are children in the playroom, unable to make a choice because of all the toys. The toy train or rather the puzzle I have started yesterday? Playing with Barbie and Ken or trying on the new Halloween costume?
Anyway, the castle tower waves to me (maybe it recognized my doubts), I wave back. Behind it the Jura, the Mont Vully, I also greet them one last time, it was nice with you.
But then the path leads uphill, along lush meadows. With little effort and a light head, I move forward, past ugly industrial buildings, then again along the edge of a dark green slope.
Occasionally, a group of e-bike-savvy gentlemen rushes by. Their outfit is impeccable, colorful and fashionable, not at all in keeping with their rather advanced age. They nod at me, almost pityingly it seems, so much arrogance in a single glance.
A little further ahead, they finally recognize the beauty of the landscape, jump off the bike, take a quick picture or two, and then they have to move on quickly. Some unknown destination must be waiting for them, but perhaps - and that would be nice for them - the way is the goal for them, too.
Just like me.
Nomadic genes
Sometimes, in the morning before setting off, when I look with anticipation at the hours and kilometers ahead, I wonder about the appeal I feel again today. This desire to go on and on, hour after hour, kilometer after kilometer, while the world passes serenely by. That's how I imagine our ancestors, on their way to somewhere/nowhere, following their prey, no home, no fixed location, just the endless road ahead of them, and nothing else.
Perhaps it is something ancient, a nomadic remnant of these ancestors that has survived the millennia and activated something in me that has been lying dormant.
In the past, tribes went after wild animals to hunt them or migrated from one place to another when food became scarce. The nomadism is a traditional way of life and economy where groups of people live together as migratory peoples. They are not sedentary and stay in one place for at least a few days but no more than 20 years. (from Study Smarter)
Is there such a thing as a nomadic gene?
I would be grateful for that.
A farm tractor churns up the already battered earth, the dust swirls, the engine roars, the driver stoically draws his straight lines, I stand still. What is being added to the soil here? In the course of the last few years, one has become suspicious. Are they pesticides or other toxic additives?
You wonder, and really don't want to know.
Nature knows no mercy. Life and death are close by. The eternal life cycle. Becoming and perishing. Just like the trees. Some survive, others, perhaps the neighbors, die.
I know it and yet I feel strangely sad when I see the withered remains of a once proud tree. They seem to wave to each other, the dead tree leans towards the still living one, as if to remind it of its future fate.
Under the apple tree
The day is hot and cloudless. I reach Liebisdorf, looking forward to a coffee in the local restaurant, but it's closed.
The architecture of the houses and stables now corresponds more and more to the well-known Bernese style. They radiate something, something cozy, warm, something like a touch of comfort in this cold world.
In the Emmental house, a wide, fanned-out roof covers the living quarters, the threshing floor and the stable. The expansive canopy (Ründe) protects the facade, but allows little light to the rooms on the upper floor. The often central entrance leads past two parlors to the kitchen. This longitudinal division makes it possible to be inhabited by two families. The type of house in the Emmental is a post-and-beam construction, built mainly of wood. The house is a multipurpose building. [from "Regionaltypische Gebäude in der Schweiz“]
The village seems to be deserted, nobody far and wide, a ghost town.
Where are the inhabitants? Is it a typical dormitory village, where people just sleep and spend the rest of the day away from home? It looks like it. These villages are definitely not among my favorites. Everything making a village livable is missing here, be it just children's voices, teenagers on tuned scooters, stores or restaurants and strollers on the street. Chattering women at the front door.
This is how I imagine a lifeless ghost town, like Consonno in Lombardy.
No wall, no bench at the roadside, no fountain to see, but I'm nonetheless hungry and want to have my well-deserved lunch somewhere in the shade. An apple tree, still full of ripe fruit, catches my eye. I sweep a piece of ground free of rotting fruit and sit down in the grass.
After all, I'm not completely alone beneath my apple tree, nearby a few cows have settled in the shade while they calmly and relaxedly chew their grass for the umpteenth time. I feel close to them, almost related, if only by the common goal of sitting or lying in the shade in peace and eating something.
The Auried nature reserve
Sometimes you get surprises. One of them is the famous Auried nature reserve.
On the way to Laupen, which is fast approaching, I suddenly find myself at a hedge concealing a special bijou. It must be a protected area, but only a search on the Internet provides information.
Whenever I encounter something like this, I am strangely moved. The mere fact that the municipalities or the canton or the state is spending money, a lot of money, to preserve a piece of nature, produces feelings of happiness and, for a moment, the conviction that perhaps not all is lost after all. As long as someone feels responsible for providing a home for frogs and other creatures, there is hope.
As dusk falls, whole hordes of small, green squawkers gather at the ponds of the Auried. They are male tree frogs, which in spring - until around midnight - call loudly with distended bellows for females willing to mate.
One of the largest tree frog populations in Switzerland has its home in the Auried. The frog species, which has become very rare today, appreciates the well-sunlit waters in the former gravel mining area as spawning grounds. The wet meadows with individual trees serve as their summer habitat. But other amphibians, wading birds, dragonflies and other invertebrates also feel at home in the structurally rich landscape. To ensure that this remains the case in the future, Pro Natura is allowing Scottish Highland cattle to graze in the area to combat scrub encroachment. In addition, the areas are kept open with additional maintenance measures.
Not far from Auried, and already close to Laupen, the Saane and the Sense merge, and so the poor Sense ceases to exist. At the confluence children are playing, enjoying the hot late summer weather.
The Gasthof Bären in Laupen seems to be from another era, a long gone one, and if proof is needed, a glance at my room will suffice. It might well have been in the last century or the century before last, horse-drawn carriages passing by outside, the men wearing stiff hats, the women long skirts. It is tiny, has neither toilet nor shower nor washbasin.
But what the heck - I like it anyway.
At the regulars' table
Before dinner, I indulge in the usual highly deserved beer. The landlady puts me at a round table in the garden restaurant, but no sooner have I taken the first sip than a lady in her prime is standing in front of the table asking if she may sit down.
In a short time, a hearty conversation ensues, only interrupted by other elderly people also joining us. Oops, have I landed at a regulars' table here? My discreet question is answered positively. It is indeed the regulars' table of these folks meeting here every Thursday. My shy question, whether I should clear the place, is laughingly rejected. Maybe the strange foreign guy might bring some variety into the round.
And so the evening is fun and supported by more alcohol than I might like. Tomorrow is a long stage ahead, a hangover is the last thing I wish.
But as mentioned, variety is a must, I am willingly accepted into the familiar circle and am confronted with the first coupling attempt after just under one hour. Besides, they consider whether they might complete the last stage in Ticino together.
Well then, what can happen to me?
In any case, it's pitch black when I finally get my dinner and, due to the darkness or my drunkenness, it's pretty hard to make out the food. But it is definitely tasty, whatever it might be ...
Matching song: Inspiral Carpets—Two Worlds collide
And here the trail continues ... to Bern, the federal capital
