beggar’s kitchen

Posted on August 31, 2023 by Christoph Rehage

the Danube valley

When I finally left the guesthouse I had to put on sunblock again. I walked down to the Danube and got onto the cycle path that ran along its riverbank. This was the Upper Danube Nature Park. People had been telling me about its beauty for a while now.

And they were right.

The Danube was very small at this point, its water dark and clear, and it felt like a mountain river to me. I followed it as it meandered through the valleys and past some tall cliffs, and every once in a while I had to cross it on a bridge.

There were cyclists on the bike path and there were kayakers on the river.

kitchens and donkeys

One time, in a patch of forest, I noticed what looked like a nice place to camp under an overhanging rock. There was a sign next to it saying that this was a “beggar’s kitchen” (Bettelküche), meaning that traveling people, beggars, and merchants used to sleep and sometimes live here.

It also said that they often had carts, and that they either used horses or dogs to pull those carts, or they pulled them themselves.

Uhu, I thought, right.

A little later I ran into Franz and his friends, who were riding a donkey carriage. It felt like a scene out of a different century.

weird monks

When I arrived in Beuron I went straight to the Beuron Archabbey. It was a very large and very famous Benedictine monastery, and I figured that I would find a place to camp there for sure.

But no one answered the door. One time a car pulled up and an old man got out. He ignored me as he went into the abbey.

I asked at a café next. The lady who worked there gave me water and bread, but she didn’t have any good advice either. When I noticed that some people were drinking beer at the nearby fire department, I went there, and they told me to go to some nearby house where people were barbecuing.

In the end I got a nice place to camp next to the house. The owners were a young couple who were into Medieval stuff, and who lived in another town and only came over to do some renovations.

We had some food and some beer, and when it started raining they covered my tent with a large plastic sheet from a Medieval market.