Miesenbach, Germany & Kusel, Germany

This morning I wake up, get around, do some work, and head outside to go hiking. Erin told me about a lake with trails about a 7 minute walk from her house, just past an apple orchard. So, I head off in the direction she’d pointed out with my backpack and a bottle of cranberry juice (I didn’t have bottled water) and set out on my merry way.

Seven minutes go by as I traverse the winding road, followed by another seven. No lake. The twisting road forks. Twice.

Erin hadn’t mentioned any forking going on, so I randomly pick a path and continue walking. Another seven minutes of no lake tick by, and I begin to suspect that the lake was really a “lake”, a trick designed to be rid of me forever, a la Hansel and Gretel.

Wandering on the edge of a dense cabbage patch, I hear a strange sound, kind of a metallic rattle, and double-check my camera (which hangs around my neck in true tourist fashion.) The camera was off, but I might have left it on, since it turns itself off automatically.

Shrugging, I continue on and in a few more steps… again, the mechanical rattling. I realize the sound is not coming from me or my camera, but from the tall, tangled grass alongside the muddy pathway. Another five or six feet later, the rattle is accompanied by movement within the underbrush.

At this point, I’m convinced that rattle snakes run rampant throughout the path to the “lake”. Robotic ones. Vicious, evil, snakebots.

Then up ahead I see the edges of what could conceivably be called an apple orchard, although there were only a couple rows of sparse trees. Assuming the lake is on the other side and that Erin merely counts to seven in some weird new way, I stride resolutely down the dirt trail, doing my best to ignore the warning rattle of the animatronic snakes hiding in the overgrowth alongside the path.

Seven minutes later, I’m past the apple trees and into the woods. No more mechanical snakes, but still no lake. Curiouser and curiouser.

A watery trail snakes into the woods, and I roll up my pant legs before sloshing down the spongy dirt path. The lake must be on the other side of the woods, I tell myself. I’ll just follow the trail to the lake, and *then* I’ll be seven minutes from Erin’s house. No problem.

Seven minutes later, the trail forks, one path climbing up the hill, the other curving around below. Deciding I’d be better off taking the high road (ach, Loch Lomond) so I’d have more of a bird’s eye view, I tromp gaily along the path until it, well, ends. Not to be deterred, I continue making my way through the trees until I rediscover the path. Or, “a” path, since I cannot be sure whether this continues the trail I’d already been on or was part of a different trajectory altogether.

Another, oh, say, seven minutes go by. No lake (of course) but what I do stumble upon (thank goodness not literally) is a fly-laden pile of animal excrement, so massive that it covers the whole trail and I have to pick my way through the moss and the grass to get around it.

Snakebots are the least of my concern, now that I realize the woods contains elephants, or maybe dinosaurs. Erin totally didn’t mention that the trails led through the original site for Jurassic Park and that I ought to watch my back for the occasional Tyrannosaur.

The next few times the trail twists and forks, I pick a path completely at random because hey–if there are velociraptors gadding about, what does it really matter?

So now I continue along, marching to an internal recitation of Frost (the woods are lovely, dark and deep) and wondering if maybe I should’ve chosen a different path on one of the many forks I’d passed.

But at the foot of a cluster of trees, I come across a giant marker, affixed with a poster of woodland critters and their names. The whole thing was in German (of which I mostly know words like “und”, “grosse/kliene”, and the conjugation of “to be”) but based on the pictures, there are neither robotic snakes nor ankylosaurs.

(Allegedly.)

Luckily, in another seven minutes or so, a break in the trees affords a view of houses and a horse farm, and once the path leads out of the trees I do in fact come across water. Yay!

A bridge bisects the picturesque lake, and various people walk around its circumference, jogging, pushing strollers, walking dogs, smoking cigarettes, etc.

One corner of the lake even has a paved road, which a quick peek determines that it leads to a four-way (paved) intersection. One of those streets must lead back to Erin’s house. But which one?

A quick glance at my watch tells me I have 25 minutes until Erin gets off work and heads home. If the seven minute trail truly exists, that should be plenty of time to return before she has a chance to worry about where I might be. Of course, since I didn’t *arrive* via the correct path, I had absolutely no idea which road I should take. And as I walk around the lake, I realize that almost all of its “corners” lead to roads with further intersections. If I took one, I’d either get back quickly… or get really, really, lost.

So, since I’m of the “always be prepared” mentality when travelling alone, I fish in my backpack for the sticky note on which I’d written the name of her street before leaving the house. All I had to do was ask someone which direction to go, and I’d be home free.

However. (You knew there’d be a however, didn’t you?)

Not only had no one by the lake even heard of Erin’s street, the question I most frequently got in return was, “Well, what town is it in?”

???

“What town?” I manage. “What do you mean, ‘what town’? What town are we in right now?”

Come to find out, we weren’t exactly in a town right now. The lake occurs at the intersection between various towns and is shared by them all. Depending on if I wanted to go to this town or that town, I should head up this hill or down that hill or around that corner or along that field.

Since I, in my infinite wisdom, had utterly failed to write down more than the street name, I had no idea how to get back except… back through Jurassic Park, up the hill, past the cabbage patch and the snakebots, and through the serpentine neighborhood streets to Erin’s house.

According to my watch, I wouldn’t make it in time. As it turned out, my watch was right.

Erin was home and changed by the time I got there. (I, at that time, learned that we were in Miesenbach. Good to know.) She said she was going to give me another 15 minutes before driving around looking for me, which would have done neither of us any good since I was nowhere near any paved streets.

All’s well that ends well, of course, so we piled into the car and headed to Kusel to visit the castle. (The Kusel Castle? I sound like Dr. Seuss.) This castle is cool for several reasons beyond the basic all-castles-are-cool foundation. First, it’s right in the middle of a semi-residential area (unlike, say, Neuschwanstein) so there’s an intriguing vista of old and new mixing together. Secondly, it houses a restaurant in which you can (and we did!) eat dinner.

We had a great time exploring the grounds and climbing up the winding steps to the top of the tallest tower and looking out the windows at the panorama below. Castle towers always have such amazing views. Since I like to read books set in Medieval times (OK, I read novels set in basically any time period) I had fun imagining how it would’ve been like to live there, with the people bustling about and rushes covering the floors and so on. (I’m pretty sure that the view from the top at that time did *not* include a two-lane highway.)

Fun photos attached of our adventures in the Kusel castle (later discovered to be called Lichtenburg castle). Link to more info: http://www.burglichtenberg.de/en/index.htm

Tags: animals, castles & palaces, hiking, lost, travel tips