When it's Bad Schandau and the Sachsische Schweiz for a sunny weekend. We decided to revisit this neck of the woods at almost the same time of the year as we did back in 2007. Though this time it was the 1st of May or International Workers Day, one thing about getting out of Berlin on this day is one misses the riots - not sure if that's good or bad. Might have to hang around one year and check them out...
Pictures are here.
This time we took our American friends, yes we do actually like some Americans :) Amy and Barry, we took the train down Thursday night and had a quick beer at the May Day celebrations before getting some sleep.
Friday we walked up from Bad Schandau, through Ostrau, found a cool well balanced rock that I was able to use as a bit of a see-saw, the only other person game enough to join me up there was Amy.
And up the Großer Winterberg again - stopping off for a couple of beers and a snack before going down into Schmilka.
This is one part of the walk I really dislike. It's downhill steeply for about 45 minutes on ancient paving at anywhere between a 45 and a 60 degree angle. This always seems to do for my knees. 25 km
Drinking, expensive hotel bar, bad music, chocolate balls
Saturday got on the cute little tram up the the Lichtenheiner Wasserfall - the dodgy "toilet flush" waterfall with the beer hall musical backing - partially so we could watch Amy and Barry's faces as they saw it but mainly it was the start of another walk we wanted to do...
The was one part on the description where the height changed by over 100m in 0m horizontal distance. There was some talk of "ladders" too. We weren't too sure what to make of that until we got there to find U-shaped metal rungs driving into the rock face at irregular intervals. Barry nearly managed to kill himself on the first one, and me not much further up with both of us bleeding from the elbow by the end. The girls managed to get up quite nibbly and without much fuss. There were a few hairy bits - actually an time one looked down - where one just had to go ok three holds at all times and don't fall off. This point also involved much queueing as there were about 400 other people making their, sometimes slow, way up the mountain side.
At the top we managed to follow the correct trail for a little while, then ended up somewhere else, which was kind of right, but then not exactly where we thought it was. In the end we gave this one up after 7.5 km went back to the waterfall and consumed beers confident that we'd done the "hardest" (read most fun and least walking) part of the hike.
Sunday we split from our compatriots, they went off to do Prebisch Tor (Právčická brána) and the Kahnfahrt (boat ride) over the border in the Czech Republic, on our recommendation. Also on our recomendation they did the Tor first and the Kahn later meaning they walked downhill for most of the day, as opposed to us dolts who'd gone by the book and slugged uphill like fools...
Anyway... we took the ferry across the Elbe and did another 19km or so. It was actually very peacefull on the other side of the river, lots fewer people around and a generally more relaxed atmosphere, ended up on another mountain Papstein, drinking beer and eating in one of the ever present Gaststatte.
A pleasantly on time train ride home completed the weekend. Bad Schandau and the Sachsische Schweiz are definitely recommended and there's lots more walks to do around there - so who's up for next time?
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