Pyrene
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This post is about a 14km walk from Riedlingen to Hundersingen. I bathe in the Danube, see a Celtic dig, and get saved from a thunderstorm.
What a morning! I crawled out of my tent, brushed my teeth, took my underwear off, and hopped in the Danube.
morning swim
The river was cold and clear, and it wasn’t very deep at all. I sat down in it, and when I looked around I noticed that there were lots of tiny fish in the water.
It was strange to think that I had seen this very same river carry ships full of river tourists just a few months earlier.
Celts
I walked for about two hours, then I arrived at the Heuneburg excavation site. There, on an advantageous location on a hilltop, close to the river, remnants of a fortified settlement had been discovered in the early 19th century. They turned out to be Celtic, and because they were so old and so large and so close to the source of the Danube, some archaeologists figured that they might actually be the ruins of the ancient city of Pyrene.
This would mean that this hilltop was in fact the first historically mentioned settlement north of the Alps.
Damn.
storm incoming
I walked around on the plateau for a while, looked at the reconstructed Celtic buildings and the town wall, and I did what I often do: I picked a flower and put it in my notebook. It felt more “real” than all the photos I could ever take.
Then I walked on to the next village. It had been raining on and off all day, but now there seemed to be a thunderstorm brewing in the distance.
When I got to the village and noticed a multipurpose hall with an overhanging roof I decided to sit under it. Maybe I could wait out the storm there, I thought. Or maybe even camp.
patchwork
About an hour later I was sitting at Christina and Christian’s dinner table. They were a patchwork family with five kids and a cat, and they had decided to give me dinner, beer, and a place to sleep.
We were having pasta and talking about the kids’ favorite animals (3x cat, 1x snake, 1x horse/unicorn) when the storm descended upon the village. It came with thunder and lightning and gusts of wind that bent some of the smaller trees outside.
I thought of the possibility of me still sitting under that overhanging roof outside and I shuddered. Then I took another serving of pasta.
pictures
the walk from Riedlingen to Hundersingen:
The Longest Way in the Danube
I sit where I have bathed.
roller
Heuneburg grave mounds
Heuneburg from a distance
the foundations of the gate to Heuneburg
reconstructed Celtic house in Heuneburg
reconstructed town wall of Heuneburg
Heuneburg exhibition
medieval fortress ruins Baumburg
I was going to wait out the rain in front of the Buwenburghalle
dinner at Christina’s and Christian’s place