Europe Through My Lens

As the semester progresses and I get deeper into my study abroad experience, I’ve been experiencing a good amount of homesickness. I miss my family, especially my mom, but also, there’s something really amazing about spending a summer in Maine. Maine is such an amazing state to spend time in, not just in summer, but all the time. Before leaving for Germany, I spent nearly every single day with my mom; no matter what we had to do, we would do it together.

The best coping mechanism I have found to deal with the homesickness that I’ve been dealing with is to go hiking or go on a run. It doesn’t matter the length, but I prefer longer hikes. The best hikes lately have been ones when I’ve been alone. Sometimes I just spend those hikes walking in silence, but a lot of the time, like most of my hike today, I talk to myself. The topic doesn’t really matter, but it’s mostly just me working through ideas for the book I’m writing, creating conversations (sometimes in German), thinking about cross-country season, to name a few things. I just make the most of being alone in nature, listening to birds, and seeing gorgeous views. There’s something so amazing about testing my body’s limits.

Recent Hikes

I try to hike at least once a week, but Pentecost break is this upcoming week, so I have plans to hike as much as I can handle. I’d love it if I’m able to fit in four hikes.

Today I went on my first hike for the break. I used Komoot, and basically only use Komoot to find routes now. I know I’ve mentioned this previously, but when I’m in the US, I’m very loyal to AllTrails, but while I’ve been here, I’ve kind of fallen in love with Komoot. Today I found a feature that shows you your bagged summits, so all the mountains you’ve summited. According to Komoot, I have bagged 20 peaks, many of which are mountains in Maine, but at least two of them are from my time in Germany. The reason why I found this such a cool feature is because my mom and I want to try and bag all of the 4000-footers in Maine. We only have, I think, 3 out of 14, so we have a long way to go, but it was something we just started last summer. So it’s been about a year since we started wanting to do this, but Maine has a very long winter season, and the period that some of these mountains are actually accessible feels like a very short amount of time.

That was a long rant, but on to a brief overview of my recent hikes, starting with today’s. The hike I went on today was called the 2-Seen-Tour – Baiersbronn Himmelswege, or 2 Lake tour – Baiersbronn (this is a town), and Himmelswege directly translates to Sky Trails. This hike was 14.2 miles, or roughly 22.8 kilometers, with (according to my watch) 5,100 ft. of elevation gain, and it took me 4 hours and 51 minutes. I’m not sure if the elevation gain is correct, but that’s what Komoot says, so in Komoot we trust. This hike, obviously, had two lakes, but it also had a wildlife enclosure right next to the trail in the very beginning and a waterfall. I did realize at the waterfall, that I have actually seen that waterfall before and there is some overlap with a group hike I did last month, but there was enough different and the waterfall is so gorgeous that I did not care. I woke up for this hike a 4:30 this morning and my train left at 5:41, so I could start at 8 am this morning. So I had a wicked early start. I love having early starts for hikes because nobody is on the trail and mornings on trails are really gorgeous and amazing. I wasn’t planning on doing another long hike, like this one, but now that I’ve done this hike, I really want to end the Pentecost break with another long hike.

In my last post, I mentioned I was going on a group hike on May 17th, and I did go on that hike in Sigmaringen. It was a bit shorter than my hike today, with 10 miles (16 kilometers) and 2,675 ft of elevation gain. This hike took 3 hours and 41 minutes. The hike was called Donaufelsenläufe – Klosterfelsenweg. This hike is popular for this really cool bridge (apparently, the bridge is called Devil’s Bridge) that is over a Gorge. Another highlight of this trail is that you’re able to see the Ruins of Gebrochen Gutenstein, which used to be a castle.

Other Activities

While I’d love to hike all the time and only hike, I do struggle with shin pain, knee pain, and I’m recovering from shoulder impingement. With that being said, I emphasize recovery, listening to my body, and only hike when I feel good. So while I wish I could hike every day, I physically cannot. So, occasionally I do other activities, such as a musical comedy show I went to on May 8th and on May 15th I went to the Stuttgart Natural History Museum.

I love Natural History Museums, especially when they have exhibits that show how people lived and cooked a long time ago. Not to mention Maine again, but Maine has this museum that has been closed since June 2020 for renovations, and it’s an incredible museum. But anyway, I was looking for a museum that reminded me of that museum to go to. So, a natural history museum. My main reason for going to this museum was to see the fossil exhibition they had for a limited time. Fortunately, the exhibit had the information in both English and German. Actually, throughout the museum, it occasionally did offer English translations, but I was hoping to practice reading German with hopes of finding language targeted toward children. Not gonna lie, there was a lot I couldn’t understand, but I did find some that had language targeted toward children, which I had an easier time understanding.

I took loads of pictures, so I will include them in my two-week in photos section.

My Two Weeks in Photos

This was part of the limited edition exhibit. This is an example of how the exhibit had both English and German explanations.

These two wolves were the coolest part of the whole museum to me because they were actual taxidermied wolves. I think they were some of the last wolves to be seen in the area, but I’m not 100% certain about this. I know there was something similar to that which made them special.

If you’ve ever heard this bird, you’d know it sounds absolutely terrifying, which is why I took a picture of it.

This was the outside of one of the Museum buildings. The Museum was split into two buildings with a 15-minute walk in between them.

This is the start of the photos from my group hike from May 17th called Donaufelsenläufe – Klosterfelsenweg.

This photo and the one above it are pictures of the castle ruins. The photo doesn’t capture just how cool it was.

This is a fountain I saw on one of my runs, and I thought it was funny, so I paused my watch and took a photo of it. I meant to include it on the Strava post for the run, but I forgot/got busy making dinner.

The rest of the photos will be from my hike today. I took this photo this morning on the train because I thought the sunrise and fog combined were gorgeous.

This deer was in a fenced-in wildlife enclosure/refuge at the beginning of the hike I did today.

There was a guy near me, so I felt a little self-conscious taking a selfie of myself and the view. I just don’t like people seeing me take selfies with views; it had nothing to do with a guy being near me. Just to clarify.

I wanted to skip some rocks here, but there were no good flat rocks. So I didn’t stay here long.

This tree was massive; it was so cool.

This was one of the last photos I took from my hike. It was annoying because the end of the hike had a section where I had to hike on a paved road. But the view was pretty.

For the rest of the Pentecost break, my plan is to take photography and go on more hikes. And do homework, but that’s a given. I may make my next post at the end of break instead of two weeks from today, but I have a lot of homework to do, so maybe not.

It’s 9:30 at night, but I’m going to go make a quick dinner now. I know it’s late, but hey, at least I’m making dinner.