Hike from Grellingen to Waldeck

A friend and I decided to hike from Grellingen to Meltingen, following a stream through the valley between the hills. We were greeted with wind and misty rain as we stepped off the train in Grellingen, but set off with our hoods up. Within about 10 minutes the rain had blown away and the sun was peeking through the clouds. It remained cloudy with occasional glimpses of sun for most of the hike, and thankfully the rain did not return. The temperature was a little chilly, but very comfortable for a hike.

The trail wound back and forth across the stream with many sturdy moss covered bridges along the way. The ground was covered with bärlauch (bear's leek- seen carpeting the ground along the right side of the trail in the first photo). This is a garlic flavored green that can be used in salads (like chives) or cooking (I had bärlauch ravioli once), and the air smelled faintly of garlic where it grew thickest, and when the sun shone on it. There were also numerous little white and yellow spring flowers dotting the ground, though the trees are just barely budding. Moss coated everything, and ferns and vines of ivy draped many of the old stonework and trees, a testament to the eternal dampness of the valley.







We wandered along the trail snapping many photographs - it was such a pretty day for it! We even got to explore a little cave we saw along the way. It didn't go back very far, but we thought it might have been a good cave to stay in if you didn't have a house, though it was a bit damp. There was a raised area in back that would have worked for a sleeping platform, and an area off to the side in the front that would have been perfect for a fire. Across the stream there was another cave for your friends, which you can see in the photo, though we didn't explore that one. The stream was a bit too high at that point to try getting across, and there was no convenient bridge.


Somewhere along the way we lost the trail to Meltingen, and with some help from my friend's GPS, we eventually ended up in Waldeck, where we caught a Post bus back to Grellingen with only a few minutes wait for the train back to Basel. We'd like to try this hike again, and figure out where we made the wrong turn off the trail to Meltingen!

Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

A friend of mine got a group of five people together to take advantage of a special discount travel ticket, five for the price of three or something like that. She wanted to go to Freiburg for some shopping.

When we got there we split into two groups, two of us who had definite shopping in mind, and the other three, who were content to wander. The three of us had a nice relaxing day, enjoying the spring flowers and pleasant weather and the sights of Freiburg. It is still a little chilly out, but mild enough that the cherry trees are blooming and crocuses and daffodils are popping out.

There is a good variety of stores, all located conveniently around the town center. I'm sure there are some farther out as well, but we didn't venture much beyond the main shopping area as we were on foot. I finally managed to find a new pair of good walking shoes, which I have been looking for since before we moved here in August. The ones I have are quite worn out.

This is the bottom part of the clocktower/city gate seen in the previous photograph, there was a McDonald's just to the right, in part of the old building. To the right of that, there was this old art deco building seen in the next photograph, with a Burger King in the bottom floor. Needless to say, we didn't have any interest in eating at either one. Instead we had a very tasty lunch of vegetable salad and pasta with black truffle at an Italian trattoria we saw on the way into town from the bus station. It was the first time I have ever had black truffle, and it was quite tasty.


In our wanders, we passed by these two cathedrals. Many of these older churches that we have seen are at least partly enveloped in scaffolding, which unfortunately detracts somewhat from their appearance.

Strasbourg, France

Strasbourg is a pretty little city, wreathed with canals, and was very cold the weekend we were there. The center of town is dominated by the towering gothic Cathèdrale Notre Dame de Strasbourg, built over a period of 400 years or so and never completed. The stone carvings on the outside and the stained glass are well worth a visit. You can see the tower in the background of this photo.

We arrived early Saturday, meeting our friends at the train station, and made our way to the hotel to check in. Then we headed out to wander around the city center and find a place to eat lunch. We decided on crepes, and the little restaurant we found specialized in them. They were absolutely delicious! No surprise there, we have found the food in France to be the tastiest in Europe so far. Unfortunately I didn't make note of the name of the restaurant, but it is not too far from the cathedral.

After lunch, we headed to the Salon des Vins des Vignerons Indépendants for which we had free tickets. It was huge! I think there were over 600 different tasting stations, and people were routinely walking out towing dollies with crates of wine. We ended up with only two bottles of red wine, a bottle of cognac, but everyone had fun tasting and comparing. I think we made it through less than a quarter of the stands. You could definitely see why wine is one of the biggest businesses in France.

Sunday we went to the Musées de la Ville de Strasbourg in the Palais Rohan. There are a number of museums in this former Archbishop's Palace, and we spent the morning roaming through them, staying in out of the cold. We happened upon an exhibit of Albrecht Dürer's prints that was a temporary exhibit, quite a special treat, then wandered through a number of the other museums. The Musée des Arts Décoratifs was interesting, as many of the rooms had been furnished according to records for when the archbishop was in residence, and using period furniture whenever possible. Photographs were not allowed, unfortunately.

We will most likely be making another trip to Strasbourg in the future, as we did not make it out to the intriguing Musée Les Secrets du Chocolate, or the castle of Fleckenstein.

Here are some photos from around the town, and of the cathedral.

Looking up the street at the front of the cathedral. This is a truly massive building, photos just don't do it justice.







Detail of the front, you can see little beasties cavorting amongst the saintly figures.



View of the back, where you can see the flying buttresses.








Gargoyles along the side of the cathedral.



Sun through the stained glass windows inside the cathedral.




View up one of the canals in Petite France, a neighborhood in Strasbourg.

Fasnacht!

Chienbäse, or the burning parade at Liestal Fasnacht.

This fiery event could and would never be able to be held in the U.S. Or at least I have never heard of such a thing happening. They parade huge burning objects through the town for a couple of hours. No ropes or barriers, just firemen standing around to douse the helmets and hats of the people carrying the big torches, and the crowd when they got too hot!

A group of around 10 or so of MrB's colleagues got together to go to this. It was nice to go with people who knew where they were going, though if you just followed the crowd, there was no doubt where the event was happening. The people were packed so thick that you could barely move along the sides of the road. We stayed back about 3 rows, and it was probably better there than at the front, because those fires were HOT, but it did make it hard to see a lot of what went on, and take good photos.

The most impressive were these huge wagons stacked full of wood, with huge tongues of flame and sparks shooting into the sky. There were also people carrying huge torches, which I didn't get any good photos of, but the links at the bottom of this have some nice shots. They came through in groups of about 3-10 torch bearers, then one of the big wagon torches would roll by. The torch bearers marched along for a ways, then had to stop and set the torches down for a rest and a dousing, then pick them back up and go running along to a great cheer from the crowd, then settle back in to a walk.

One group of torch bearers even had little 'spits' set up on top of their hats with real sausages to roast on them! And they were roasting away! Quite a few had metal colinders as their protective hats, some had felt pointy hats, though most had hard hats or firemen hats. One group was dressed up like mariachis and had decorated sombreros, but they were pulling a wagon, so didn't need the fire protection as badly as the torch bearers.

The street was lined with burning embers after the event, and covered with confetti from an earlier parade. The firemen did their job well, because the confetti didn't go up in a wall of flame along the street. The crowd getting back to the train was insanely packed, you could only shuffle along the entire route back to the train station, somewhere between a quarter and a half a mile I think. And getting on to the train there were no orderly lines, everyone just kind of shoved like mad and popped through the bottleneck at the doors, very crazy.

Basel Morgenstreich

We planned on going to the Basel Morgenstreich as well, which was at 4am, and we figured by the time we got home it would not make sense to go to bed. So we stayed up all night, and headed out to see the Basel festivities at about 3:15, settled in to a spot and proceeded to freeze (it was about 25°F/-4°C) for couple of hours while we watched them parade their colorful satirical lanterns by, accompanied by screeching piccolos and crashing drums. Each group also had miniature lanterns attached to their hats.

Thankfully, where we were, near Schifflände, was not quite as crowded as the street in Liestal, but I think if we'd braved the Marktplatz or Barfusserplatz it would have been. There were bus-loads of tourists being shipped in all day for the event. I didn't bring my camera to the 4am parade because the only light was from the lanterns, and the camera has too long a delay to take good photos at night. Or I haven't figured out how to take good photos at night, I'm not sure which.

I plan to take photos later at the Munsterplatz when they display the lanterns, and possibly as we wander around downtown these next couple of days, so will hopefully have a few more to post. The costumes are very colorful and bizarre, with huge caricature faces and bright poofy hair and clothes, characters of all kinds, animals and fantastical creatures as well.

Two links to other pages with description and images of the burning parade.
English Forum, with the description and pix at the last post.
Photographer's website, great pix

Swamped

Just wanted to let everyone know that we haven't fallen off the face of the earth. We've both been busy with work, and just haven't done anything blogworthy. MrB is working major overtime to get a book chapter written as well as working on his postdoc research, so he's been at work 12+ hours a day and on weekends. I've been starting some work that I can do at home for the place that I used to work, figuring out the best schedule for that. Hopefully we'll be able to at least go out for a weekend hike or two in February, so you might see a new post or two next month.

Langlaufskiing (Cross country skiing) at Les Près-d'Orvin

Today, for the first time in many years, we tried cross country skiing. We had a great time, but discovered that we have very much to learn and re-learn about cross country skiing. I used to go skiing around my family's farm until I was about 18 and went away to college, and MrB had skied only once or twice before. That was very different from today's skiing on the well prepared trails, and on even the small slopes that we encountered today we had some difficulties. We have a lot of practicing to do, hopefully on a flatter area at first, to get our 'ski legs'.

It was a beautiful day for it, very sunny and about 4-5°C (about 40°F). There was an occasional gusty wind blowing, but it was not too bad. We drove through a gray cloudy layer on the way up, and it was not till we reached very near the top of the hill/mountain (1000-1350 m altitude) that we started to see any snow, and the sun.

I had forgotten how much work your whole body does in this sport. It is amazing exercise, working your legs, shoulders, torso, and uses different muscles than walking. It is even harder work when you are first learning (or re-learning) how to do it. I'm sure we will be quite sore for the next few days, both from working new muscles, and from falling! Going downhill is much trickier than it looks. We have yet to learn the snowplow technique. I never had to use it on the tiny hills I skied on at the farm growing up.

We stopped on the way out for some soup, coffee and beer at a little restaurant that was also a cow farm where they raise Scottish Highland cattle. I had to take a picture, because these are what my mom and dad raise on their farm now. I was a little surprised to see them out here.

Thank you very much to our friends V and N who kindly drove us and patiently waited while we muddled along, giving us tips and helping out. I think V skied about twice as much along the trail as we did because he kept coming back to check on us.

As we drove away from the parking area, a magnificent view of the Alps came up on our right. I tried to get a photo, but it was a bit too dark, and I still have much to learn about the camera. I include it here anyway.

Hunting for the Schalberg Ruins

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!

Today I made up some more peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and we headed back to Aesch to find our way to the other ruins that are near Pfeffingen on the map. We made our way up through Pfeffingen (up being the operative word, the entire hike there and through the town was all up hills of various grades) to the trail marker directing us into the woods toward the Ruine Schalberg (15 min). The uphill trend continued through the woods. These castles are of course built on the most advantageous viewing points for the region, which means hills!

About 10 minutes or so into the woods we saw this tree, adorned with Christmas decorations! That's my kind of tree, alive and happy out in the woods, not dead and drying out inside a house. No, we don't have a Christmas tree in our house. We haven't in quite some time, and I'd rather not follow that tradition. But it was a pretty surprise to find a decorated tree out in the middle of the woods.

A ways beyond that we found the first of three sets of ruins, that we think might have been the Münchsberg ruins. There was no sign for them, and they are barely visible. There are only a few crumbling walls left and the trees and moss have taken them over almost completely. They were probably simple watch towers, and were built on two separate outcroppings of rock that overlook the valley where the Klus Valley Vineyards and Domaine Nussbaumer operate.

Roots growing over what was left of a wall...or is it just a stony outcropping? Very hard to tell at this point.


The next ruin we saw had a helpful sign attached to it as well as a ladder to climb up to it. This is the Burgruine Engenstein, and they think that it was built in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, and served as a 'stadthaus' or city hall up until the completion of the Burg Schalberg in 1280.

As we were looking around on the top of this ruin, we saw to our north yet another ruin. Here, finally, must be the elusive Ruine Schalberg! We climbed down from Engenstein, and continued along the trail. The next ruin was indeed the Schalberg ruin. With its crumbling outline it is hard to make out amongst the trees.
Looking up at the ruin from the trail below, and up the trail along the wall of the ruin.

Looking out across the ruins toward the tower. Upon closer inspection, the tower has unfortunately been filled with trash. There is also some graffiti scrawled on it, very sad.


Tree growing up and out of the window.





As we left the Schalberg ruins, we came upon a small natural 'cave' system, that is called Schalberghöhle. It was only marginally a cave, as it was open on both ends, with holes overhead in a couple of places, more like stone archways than a cave. Unfortunately the photos I took did not turn out very well. The sign there said that judging from the archaeological remains found there it had likely been used as a resting place for hunters, and as a hide out.

As we wound our way down off the mountain, we crossed over this small icy stream, that ended at the road in this gorgeous waterfall.

These last two photos give you a better idea of the overlook the castle was built on. The first was taken from the ruins looking down at the horse farm in the valley, and the other is looking up at the ruins from the horse farm.

Ruine Pfeffingen - Homeless shelter?

It has been a busy weekend. Saturday we took a trip to Laufen to Sport Shop Karrer to see about renting langlaufskis (cross country skis). We managed this successfully, even though we had to do it in German. Now we just have to find some snowy place to make use of them! Sunday we took a last walk through the Basel Weinachtsmarkt and had the last cup of glühwein for the season. Then we continued on a walk along the Rhein for the rest of the afternoon.

Monday we decided to head out to the ruins we had seen overlooking the valley during the train ride to Laufen. Looking over our hiking map, we decided these were the Pfeffingen ruins, and we could get there by taking the 11 tram to Aesch and walking to the town of Pfeffingen, about a 20 minute walk. From there, we followed the signs to Ruine Pfeffingen. By the way, that is not snow on the ground, but frost. The moisture in the air around here forms some pretty impressive frost crystals, as you can see in this photo.







This was another fairly extensive castle ruin with bridges leading to it on two sides, and a gorgeous view of the surrounding valleys.


There was the tall tower at the end of the cliff, and a smaller tower at the right of the bridge we walked over, but you couldn't go into either of them. There were warning signs saying something like 'For your safety, and for the protection of the stonework, don't climb on the stonework' and there were no stairs that had been built as in the other towers we've seen.


As we were walking on the trail around the big tower, we saw this sweater that had been rigged up in one of the windows (the only window available to see that area of the interior). Lifting up the corner to peek through, we saw that someone had set up camp inside the restricted area in the ruins, carefully hiding all their gear so that it could not be seen from the viewing area. From the amount of stuff lying around, they had probably been there for some time; likely they remained undiscovered because virtually no-one in Switzerland goes where you aren't allowed to go.

Here you can see the stairs on the left that lead up to a metal rail - the viewing area. Behind this is the interior of the tower, where the little camp was set up. From the rail you could not see any of the person's belongings.

When we were done here, we decided to try to see another three ruins that are on the map near Pfeffingen. We headed out along the fields on the wanderweg, but it was too late and we did not make it to see them. We had to head back to Pfeffingen and Aesch so we could catch the tram home. We may head out tomorrow to explore the other three, but we'll have to remember to check the tram's holiday schedule. The walk from Aesch to Basel is about 5 hours, so it would not be pleasant to miss the last tram home!

Heading away from the ruins, sun shining through a stand of fir trees.
Looking back at the ruins in the distance.
View of the valley with haze wisping through.
Viewing platform in a copse of fir trees where we stopped to eat our lunch.