E6 Weekend: Along the Elbe River from Bleckede to Nieperfitz

Fri. morning we took the train to a little town where some German friends from grad school days met us and then we walked with them for 2 days along the E6, one of the long distance walking trails in Europe. This one goes from Finland to Greece, and Freimut & Christina have decided to walk little bits of it each year in 4-5 day weekends starting at the Danish border to the south of Germany. Where we met them is an out-of-the-way area southeast of Hamburg on the Elbe River. Because the Elbe used to be the border to the DDR (East Germany), it's very quiet and rural, mostly farms growing potatoes, rye, and asparagus and an extensive forest. Friday after getting settled in our pension, we took a ferry across the Elbe and back.  There is still an old East German watchtower.

Watchtower & Stork, Flooded Elbe

When Freimut was a visiting scholar at UT, Austin, we took his German class. in preparation for our year in Marburg. His son Adrian did an exchange with Peter in high school. Freimut and Christina are both Medieval German scholars. He's dean at Augsberg now, and she just retired from working on a lexicon of Medieval German literature. If you type their names (Christine Stöllinger-Löser & Freimut Löser) into Amazon, you'll see an impressive list of books. She's still working a bit, but enjoying not having scheduled days. Very nice to have time with them. They know just about everything about German history, language, and literature. My only regret is that we were busy talking and accidentally walked past some standing stones that we meant to see. By the time we figured out we'd passed them, it would have been 1 km. back to go see them. Oh, well.

Barnyard with Storks Nesting 

We passed so many brick houses with pretty doors.

Brick House

 



Breakfast at our B & B in Neu Darchau

Bakery Van outside our B & B

 

Friday we saw several parties of cyclists, since the path goes right beside the Elbe River, but Saturday our path us through the forest and we only saw 1 person, a mother pushing a baby in a pram, except for some people in a tiny village. It was so quiet. In Nieperfitz walking around on Sat. afternoon, we saw these pigs, sort of a pig version of Scottish hairy coos. There is a movement here to preserve traditional domesticated livestock that have been replaced by more modern versions.

Hairy Pig

We met a kid who was feeding them, passed 1 cyclist, cows, sheep, goats, horses, 2 cars, and a couple walking with a stroller, but other than that, nothing. No shops. A bus stop with no buses except the school bus. We sat beside a pond for an hour and talked. So peaceful. The birch trees and yellow iris were perfectly reflected in the water and only 1 car went by the whole time.

Pond in Neiperfitz

We were very fortunate with the weather. It only started to rain after our picnic dinner (no restaurants open) on Fri. about 8:30 and then Sat. it started to rain when we were only 1 km. away from our pension.

Walking into Neiperfitz in the Rain

We holed up and read while it rained and then had some good weather to explore the village before dinner. No restaurants, but Christina had arranged for dinner at our B & B.  Rich was happy, because he saw lots of birds (eagles, hawks, storks, a yellowhammer) and his heel spur didn't hurt too much.

Sun. we said good-bye. They had one more day of walking. We walked to the next village to meet a little local train. In Lüneburg, instead of taking the first train, we walked around the old town for an hour and a half, peeking in the churches (late Gothic brick and leaning because of the salt underneath) and taking pictures of the old buildings, mills, and boats on the river.

Luneburg

Pretty Door, Luneburg

I could fill a whole photo album with pictures of pretty doors. I love the variety. We finally painted our front door at home blue, but Rich jokes that now we have to decorate it even more.

Yet Another Pretty Door

We changed trains in Ueltzen and got to see the train station in daylight. It was built by the Austrian architect Hundertwasser, who also built an apartment house we saw in Bad Soden. All curves and fanciful colors.

Hundertwasser Train Station, Ueltzen

We got home at 3:00, shopped quickly, and then I made dinner while Rich went to meet Zach's train. On the way to the train station, Rich met a visiting postdoc from Australia from the lab and he came to dinner too. Zach is the Pomona student who is here for a month for summer research.