diablo

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This post is about a 19km walk from Heldra to Hülfensberg. I wake up in a beautiful old guest house and get lost trying to find a monastery.

I had decided to stay the night in a guesthouse that seemed relatively affordable. Little did I know it was an absolute fucking gem.

the house

A few decades earlier, a local doctor with a love for old buildings had bought the ruins of a farm house. It was from the 1600s, and parts of it had collapsed or were on the verge of collapsing. So the doctor had painstakingly renovated the whole thing and turned it into a guesthouse with an attached restaurant.

And then he had filled it with antiques.

I was the only guest in the morning, and so the caretaker gave me a little tour of the premises. It reminded me of the Flanderhof Mansion in Romania, just without the strange tower.

the plan

It was an easy walk at first. It was windy and rainy, but for some reason I didn’t struggle with it a lot. I – once again – crossed the former inner German border, following a quiet road to the town of Wanfried. Then I left the road and followed a bicycle path along the river Werra.

The day before I had written an email to a Franciscan monastery on top of the Hülfensberg, a mountain that was close by, asking if I could spend the night.

“Just be there before seven in the evening”, the monks had replied.

Sure, I thought, I can do that.

lost

A few hours later I was struggling up a forest path, pulling the Caboose through mud and foliage, with tiny snow flakes landing on my jacket. I was lost, and darkness was falling.

Suddenly I didn’t feel so sure anymore that I would reach the monastery before seven.

And then I did a thing that used to be almost impossible for me: I turned around. I gave up on the forest path that I was on, and I walked back down until I got to a fork in the road. And then I took a different way. I don’t know why this used to be such a difficult thing for me to do. Maybe I needed The Longest Way to learn how to turn around?

enter Tristram

I reached the monastery at 18:55. Darkness had fallen hours earlier, and I could see the silhouettes of trees and grave stones against the night sky. There was a massive church with light shining out of the windows. Snow flakes were falling through the light.

It looked like a cut scene from Diablo.

pictures

the walk from Heldra to Hülfensberg.:

the guesthouse in Heldra

restaurant section of the guesthouse

breakfast area

Dr. Pippart relaxing

upstairs dining area

bedroom of the guesthouse in Heldra

antique cash register

former inner German border near Heldra

the way to walk from Heldra to Hülfensberg

Wanfried

the afternoon sun over the road to Hülfensberg

are all of them looking at me?

tired on the way to Hülfensberg

we got lost in the forest at one point

had to break off some tree branches to get through

the church on Hülfensberg, like a scene from Diablo

in the church on Hülfensberg