the good people of Vogelsberg
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This post is about a 14km walk from Ulrichstein to Dirlammen. Angie hosts me, I get lost in a forest, and then Sabine hosts me.
This post is about a 14km walk from Ulrichstein to Dirlammen. Angie hosts me, I get lost in a forest, and then Sabine hosts me.
One thing I like to do in the countryside is camp on a farm. I look for the characteristically long barn buildings on GoogleMaps (satellite imagery enabled), and then I go there and ask if I can put my tent in the barn. Beats sleeping outside, especially in the rain.
Angie’s place
The night before it worked out slightly differently than I thought it would.
“Hello, my name is Christoph,” I said to a lady in a door where I had just rung the bell, “I am trying to walk back to my home in Bad Nenndorf, and I was wondering if I could please put my tent in your barn and sleep there?”
She looked at me for a second, then she told me she’d be right back and disappeared.
“No space in the barn,” she said when she came back, and my heart sank for a second. Then she added: “But I have a guest room!”
And so I ended up in a room in Angie’s farmhouse. Dinner was at seven. Her husband, two kids, and her mom were all living there.
In the morning everyone was gone except for Angie’s mom. Her name was Beatrix, and she was a delight to talk to. We enjoyed our tea and conversation until it was almost time for lunch, which was when I finally got going.
getting lost
An hour later it was raining again. Two hours later the rain had intensified, as I was walking around in a wind turbine farm on a hill.
And then I got lost in a forest. It was the same old story: the paved road turned into a gravel road, the gravel road turned into a muddy forest path, the muddy forest path turned into tractor tracks, and then the tractor tracks disappeared, and there was only tall grass and forest around me.
People had been telling me about wolves in the area. Also, my feet were wet. The latter seemed the more pressing of my problems.
Sabine’s place
It took some effort and a lot of cursing to get the Caboose out of the forest and back on a path through the fields. There was a herd of young bulls who were all staring at me, then running away, then stopping and staring at me again, then coming closer, then running away again to stare a bit more.
My feet went smack-smack-smack in my wet shoes.
An hour later, I was again in a warm apartment, and I had it all to myself. Sabine, who had been walking her gigantic dog Karlsson in the fields, had run into me and decided, after hearing about what I was doing, to put me up at her place.
“We have an empty apartment, and I love having guests over!” she said.
When I told her how nice she was and how nice Angie had been the day before, she laughed and said: “This is the Vogelsberg region!”
pictures
the walk from Ulrichstein to Dirlammen.:
Angie’s farm
my room in Angie’s farm
kittehs
kitteh
with Beatrix
cows
Manu’s fast food stall in Ulrichstein
Manu in her fast food stall
fries and coke in Ulrichstein
wind turbine
the way through the forest near Ulrichstein
thoroughly wet
wind turbine farm near Ulrichstein
not all of them were moving
lost in a forest near Dirlammen
young bulls
the road to Dirlammen
my apartment in Sabine’s house