swathe
By loading the map, you agree to Google's privacy policy.
Learn more
This post is about a 17km walk from Burghausen to Altötting. I start walking in light rain and make my way through a forest to Alois’ farm.
I ended up staying three days in Burghausen. They were hot and lazy days. Every morning the weather report would predict thunderstorms, and every day all day the sky would feel heavy as if it was going to rain soon.
Sometimes there really was a little thunderstorm. But it was never the real deal. And the heat stayed the same, and the heaviness of the sky stayed the same as well.
leaving the longest castle
That was until this morning. During the night the temperature dropped, the sky turned grey, and it started raining in a constant drizzle.
I pulled the Caboose up a steep incline, then through the little town, and then past a forest. The rain stopped at some point, though from the look of the clouds it never seemed to be very far.
One time I passed a village that had a stereotypical depiction of a black person on its coat of arms. When I asked two school girls what it meant they told me that the village was called Mehringen, which might come from the archaic term Mohr (moor).
I had lunch in the parking lot of a sporting ground next to a forest. I ate a bread roll with an avocado, and I drank tea with nabat from a Persian store in Linz. Then I walked through the woods. Just like in the case of the forest road a few days earlier, here, too, the path through the woods was almost perfectly straight. The more I looked at it, the more it felt like a swathe rather than a road.
China
I arrived at a farm in the early evening. There was a sign for a dance school next to the building. I rang the bell, and a lady appeared. She looked as if I had disturbed her dance class. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb your dance class, I said. Well, she said with a shrug.
When I tried my luck again at another house a few steps further down the road, an old lady opened the door. I am a wanderer, I said, can I pitch my tent in your yard by any chance? A few minutes later, her husband Alois was showing me a spot for the tent.
“So where did you start walking?” He asked me. China, I answered, and he gave me a blank stare.
pictures
the walk from Burghausen to Altötting:
underpass in Burghausen
chemical plant near Burghausen
coat of arms of Mehringen
pilgrim route
I sit on a forest path
moss
which way, Western man?
forest near Altötting
dance school near Altötting
camp near Altötting