April 14 - Eckernfoerde

I learned many interesting tidbits from the radio news broadcasts that probably weren’t important enough for the national evening news. One was the fact that over 1,000 children were injured in accidents with cars in Hamburg every year. The city was going to start a campaign to make auto drivers more aware of this danger and, presumably, more careful. In my experience German drivers will always push the pace of traffic to the posted limit or slightly above that if possible—I was honked at several times when I drove below the limit. Conversely, on these 1 lane streets with obstacles like tree islands and parked cars, the German drivers were also scrupulously polite about taking turns using the single lane to get thru. This consideration of the difficulties of the oncoming drivers did not, however, always extend to bicyclists and pedestrians. We were almost hit once when using a pedestrian crosswalk, but to be fair that happened only happened a single time during six weeks of walking with countless road crossings. In general, the German drivers scrupulously obeyed pedestrian crosswalks and signals. The German pedestrian crosswalk signals, by the way, were much faster and more reliable than the typical “push and wait forever” American versions; the traffic signal would always change within 5 to 10 seconds after we pushed the button, so we did not feel the strong impulse to cross without the light like we do in the U.S. If you’ve ever spent a couple of minutes cooling your heels and taking deep whiffs of exhaust fumes while waiting for one of the infinite delay crosswalk signals in the U.S., you would know what I mean.

Curiously, the radio announcer went on to report that the major age group of children at risk for accidents with cars was the age range of 10 to 14. I expect that those children are old enough to be wandering about unsupervised and yet still young enough to not have sufficient caution around traffic. However, the report also cited collisions with bicycles, partly due to the poor condition of the brakes and controls on the bicycles. In Germany, at least, the parent could be judged partly responsible for the accident if the bicycle was improperly maintained, so part of the accident reduction campaign was to get parents to properly care for their children’s bicycles.

The laugh of the morning was President Bush maintaining that Iraq was NOT like Vietnam. He said he was willing to pour as many troops as necessary into Iraq, just like Lyndon Johnson was in Vietnam. Then he went on to say that people making that comparison (like Senator Ted Kennedy) were really giving aid and support to the enemy—he apparently implied that disagreeing with the war was unpatriotic if not downright treasonable. It’s the same tired old argument Lyndon Johnson used to suppress criticism of the war in Vietnam in the 1960s. In my view, the irony of Bush arguing that Iraq is NOT like Vietnam while using Vietnam style rhetoric was just huge.

The weather was just gorgeous, so we headed off for our walk by way of the bus to Reinbek station, S-Bahn to Hauptbahnhof, a Schleswig-Holstein regional train to Kiel, and a local train to Eckenfoerder. Having checked out the location of the start point in the Information Center when we drove by earlier, we could easily and quickly find out way there from the Bahnhof. A lady there logged us in and sold us two walk booklets that contained 9 walks of distance 11, 11, 17, 7, 15, 22, 11, 20, and 21 kilometers. For these walks we could just choose one and then get a time stamp for when we left and returned in the appropriate places. We were happy to have such a choice of distances, especially the shorter ones, but the only catch was that we had to walk a total of at least 40 kilometers to get a stamp!

We were feeling pretty frisky, so we chose walk #5 of 15 kilometers to start with. The route led from the Information Center down the beach and along the fjord for several kilometers before looping around a forest preserve and returning to town. We were hoping to get some good views of the fjord that proceeds from Eckenfoerder eastward out to the Baltic Sea, and we did in fact get some good views from the bluff on the southern coast of the fjord. The way out was pleasant so long as we were walking the beachside promenade, but when we joined the hiker-biker path alongside Bundesstrasse 76 our enjoyment was diluted by the fairly constant noise and smell of traffic.

Fortunately after a couple of kilometers of that we branched off into a large patch of woods away from the highway, and we could hear the birds singing like crazy—a constant chirping and singing of different species that only happens on some nice spring days. In the woods we met our old friend, trans-European trail “X” and followed it for a while. We figured that “X” must start in Flensburg, head south to Schleswig, cut over to Eckernfoerde, go south to Kiel, follow the coast to Luebeck, and then head south to Aumuehle, Reinbek, and Hamburg. In any case, “X” seemed to be wherever folks had set up scenic walks in Germany, and I think a person would get a very good look at Germany by following it from one end to the other. The only problem is how to do it. Walking would take just forever and some stretches would probably be downright boring. The trick is to find a way to kind of speed thru the boring sections while still being able to enjoy the wooded paths and country lanes. I pondered whether something like a powered skateboard might be the best because you could power thru the boring sections of paved bike paths but then strap the thing over your back to hike the wooded trails. A mountain bike might also work, but I almost think that you would be passing the good sections of the trail too quickly and not savoring them enough. Tis a puzzlement.

We passed an old restaurant named the “Gruene Jaeger” (Green Hunter). It looked nice and cozy and I expect that the food was good, but after checking the prices posted outside, we decided to keep walking and look for someplace a bit cheaper. Checking prices before you go in is a lot easier in Germany because all German restaurants have their menus with prices posted outside. Monika thought it was some kind of law (which we certainly do not have in the U.S.!), but in any case this custom makes it somewhat easier to stay on a limited budget when you are eating out.

In any case, we enjoyed the wooded loop section of the trail and then walked back along the edge of the fjord toward town. Since we were getting a little hungry (2 p.m.), we stopped off for lunch at a restaurant (advertised as a “steak house”) before continuing on a slightly different route back to the beach promenade. The afternoon was turning warm (60s) and folks were already enjoying the beach altho no one was swimming. At one of the shops along the promenade we bought some ice cream cones and licked those as we finished the walk back to the information center and used the time stamp machine to mark our return. We like to walk but we surely try to enjoy ourselves while doing it!

One thing different about this walk was that the control points were a combination of plaques mounted about 15 feet high on trees that we constantly had to be watching for and a punch-like gizmo located at the farthest point of the walk that embossed the number “5” on our start cards. Monika was much better at seeing those plaques than I was; I seemed to have tunnel vision when we walked along and focused too much on what was straight ahead while Monika watched the sides where these things occasionally appeared. But at least I was the one who finally figured out how that punch gizmo worked (you inserted the start card and pushed hard on a red knob), so that salved my pride a bit. We both agreed that the markings for this trail, a roughly 5 inch square yellow patch with a big blue “5” on it, were much better than the inconsistent markings on the Moelln trails. All major intersections on the “5” trail were clearly marked and we didn’t get lost once in the 15 kilometers whereas in Moelln we typically lost our way about twice per walk.

But the best thing of all was that I was still feeling pretty chipper by the end of 15 kilometers. Now Fred could probably get a good laugh at that since he can probably do 15 kilometers before breakfast, but fortunately he is too much a gentleman to do more than smile and maybe chuckle inwardly. For my part, I still seemed to be struggling to get back to the level of 20 kilometers per day that I could do a couple of years back when we walked the C&O Canal. I think part of my success was due to my idea of bringing along sandwiches to eat just before we started our walk. That seemed to give me much more energy in the 3rd hour of walking. Another thing that helped was having the socks made of Cool Max so my feet didn’t get sweaty and blister up the way they did on our first walks in Germany. When each step hurts my endurance seems to decrease dramatically. The success of this walk gave me hope that if I could just keep doing everything right we could finally get back into sufficient shape to do 20 kilometers a day.

We found an Internet café in the Eckenfoerder train station, so we signed on and answered our emails (both of them!) during the 15 minutes before our train was scheduled to depart. This café charged only 75 cents for 15 minutes, which was half the price of the place we had found in Reinbek! Just confirms the old adage that it pays to shop around even if you are in a foreign country! The train trip back was very pleasant. The fields had the light green shades of early spring and when they were brilliantly lit by the afternoon sun it looked just like I imagined Ireland would look, a deep emerald green. We sat in a double seat where we could take our shoes off, put our feet up and really relax as the scenery rolled by. I really think anyone who drives when they can take a train in Germany is really missing the boat (which can be considered either a truism or a badly mixed metaphor, depending on your interpretation). We had taken quite an assortment of these small regional trains by this time, and although some of them were just one step up from trolley cars, they were all safe, comfortable, clean, quiet, efficient, and on time.

So we arrived back in Reinbek rested and ready for a light supper while watching reruns of the earlier episodes of “Berlin, Berlin”. Monika found a cartoon in a magazine she was reading that showed a runner trotting along all alone in the middle of a meadow with a cow and a pig looking on. He looks around and says, “Nobody in front of me, nobody behind me, it looks like everybody else has taken the wrong route!” That just struck close to home for Volksmarchers like us who often seem to be off on a route that no one else is taking—our problem is that for us it is usually the wrong route! Ah well, I just had time to catch up with the journal and download the pictures before heading off to bed.