Malerweg, Day 2 & 3 · Hohnstein - Kuroth Rathen - Stadt Wehlen (16.5 km, ↑ 381 m, ↓ 597 m)

I didn't sleep as well as I had hoped last night. It was not the temperature, which I had been most worried about since the temperature this weekend was lower than i had hoped. Apparently my neck couldn't handle me sleeping without a pillow. At the end I made a makeshift pillow out of clothes stuffed into a dry bag, but by that time it was too late, I had lost hours of sleep and woke up really feeling it. The coffee we made on the little titanium stove helped eventually, though it took longer than I would have liked.

Being in a campsite is a luxury in itself; we were able to pre-order some pretzel from the kitchen, and so our breakfast, while simple, was pretty much taken care of. We had also brought some homemade leberwurst from Hohnstein which we emptied out in one go. We were taking our time - we knew today was going to be a short day. The original Malerweg would have us hike from Hohnstein to Stadt Wehlen in one day, which was not a long trail by itself, but the campsite we could find was somewhere in the middle, in a town called Kuroth Rathen.

We packed our tent, deflated our mats, rolled everything away, and backtracked to Hohnstein because it was not clear if there was any other way. The only remarkable thing that happened in Hohnstein that day was me getting pooped on by a bird, which, I choose to believe would not have happened had we found another way out.

But had we found another way out, we probably would have missed Hohnstein and therefore, the Polenztal valley. As soon as we left Hohnstein we were back in the forest - the very same forest where we were yesterday, but the difference was stark: under actual sunshine, we could see the how lush everything was; instead of shades of muted brown and dark olives and the greyness from the cloud coverage, this time we were able to see more shades of greens, from the leaves covering the remnants of the fortress to the moss on the rocks. Being in the valley now, instead of the slight claustrophobia I felt yesterday, this time I felt like I could spend hours there, just observing and being.

At the other end of the valley, there was an information panel about Caspar David Friedrich, and how he made a pencil sketch of the exact same castle ruin that had caught my eye earlier. It was said during his lifetime he had returned to the area many times, enchanted by the very same valley.

We had our first climb of the day after traversing through the open space that came after the valley; this led us to some really interesting overhangs, some of which were on the other side of the valley, directly facing the Hohnstein castle. While we had no time to boof, we decided to stop by for a break, and I thought this place would be a perfect place to sketch: sheltered from the sun, plenty of space to stretch our legs, and the view was exquisite. I wanted to sketch Burg Hohnstein yesterday, but it was raining; today is my lucky day, for now I have a much better view and a much more comfortable spot to sketch in.

This section of the Malerweg felt like a very well designed playground, which I mean entirely as a compliment. Besides the overhangs, today we also encountered many narrow and steep stairs, squeezed between giant rocks. Out of nowhere bridges would appear, and also countless guarded viewpoints where hikers could take in the sweeping view of the valley from above safely, without worrying about accidentally steppin off the cliff. It was, I thought, a very well maintained trail which I really appreciate.

We hiked a stretch next to the highway briefly, unfortunately something unavoidable in the modern times, which maybe Caspar David Friedrich didn't have to deal with and that made me a bit envious.

The next town we passed through was Rathewalde, which from the outside didn't seem like it has much going on, until we entered the center of the town where we came across a small park with a big pond and swans going about their day, and also a lovely local restaurant where we ended up having our lunch. People were out and about, mostly with their families, but there were some hikers with big backpacks passing by, too.

The stretch past Rathewalde turned out to be the entrance to the most touristy section of the day, which became apparent gradually and then all at once. As soon as we entered Amselgrund, the name of the valley, people coming from the opposite direction in increasing numbers, a waterfall appearing, a valley that was wider and airier, a bit less claustrophobic but still a lovely one where you could still bserve the eroded rocks very closely, but there was also enough space for kids to run around.

Our initial plan was to push further to Bastei, then backtracking to Kuroth Rathen for the night. But the number of people we'd been encountering since Rathewalde made me pause. Bastei is the most visited spot in the entire Saxon Switzerland national park, so if it was already crowded here in the valley, there would probably be twice the number of people up there, at least that's what the math in my head told me. If you have read my previous journals, I have a strong preference for not hiking in a crowd, which is a more polite way of saying that I will reroute significant distances to avoid being stuck in a queue outdoors. I proposed that we headed to Kuroth Rathen, and made our way to Bastei the next day in the morning.

This means we arrived in Kuroth Rathen rather embarrasingly early, the sun was still up setting up tents now felt like a waste of such a beautiful afternoon, so we did what any reasonable person would do and went to look at model trains.

The Eisenbahnwelten museum is home to kilometers of model tracks, with totally functioning model trains that were modeled after real trains from various parts of Germany, Switzerland and somehow, the United States. Unlike Dylan and the folks running this place, I have no particular strong feelings about model trains, but we stayed around for quite long.

After the trains, we headed to our campsite called Hinterland Hostel and Campsite. I thought Entenfarm was already a luxury campsite, with showers and a kitchen, but this one was even more luxurious that it did not really feel like we were camping. The campsite has a huge communal space with a well equipped kitchen that is shared between campers and hostel guests, with showers that must have been some of the cleanest shared showers I had ever seen in my life - a specific category of things in life that I have grown to appreciate more and more, the older I get. And they have table tennis, which we love, and so we spent the evening playing rounds of table tennis after having our freeze dried dinner.

We saw some other guests were setting up fire outside, and once we were tired enough from table tennis, we decided to join them. There were other guests around it too, and I noticed that several of them were solo hikers, and that all of the solo hikers were women. Some of them were still buzzing from the day, some of them were exhausted, most of them were both.

I always remember my own first solo multiday fondly. I had started hiking alone to find out what I was made of when there was nobody else to rely on, if I could will myself into walking for 20 more kilometers when I did not feel like it. The views were almost a bonus. I didn't say any of this though, because nobody probably wants unsolicited hiking philosophy around a campfire, but when they asked about other trails I had done I told them, and gave whatever practical advice seemed useful. I hoped quietly that they would go on more of them.

I slept better than I did the previous night - the makeshift pillow turned out to be a life savior and this is exactly what I was hoping to learn from during this dry run hike. It was raining the entire night, but our tent could still manage it and we woke up with our body and stuff still dry. After some breakfast and some coffee, we headed out of the campsite and started our first climb of the day almost immediately to Bastei.

The Bastei was said to be one of the earliest tourist attractions in Germany, if not the world, since it was built entirely to cater to tourists, because people wanted to come and look at the view. Tourism seems to be a running theme here in the area: the tram, for example, has existed as a tourist tram since the 1800s. People, a long time ago, looked at this landscape and thought that people will travel to see this, and we should make it easier for them to do so.

I have not spent time researching it, but I keep thinking about what leisure must have meant back then. What prompted someone to build this bridge and all of this infrastructure, specifically so that strangers from all over the country could stand on it and look at a valley? As someone who has grown up mostly in the world of social media, I feel like there is a certain status and vanity to it that comes with traveling. A lot of places these days were solely built to become "Instagrammable". But what about back then, where the Internet did not exist, words traveled slow and photographs were a novelty? And yet, despite all these, people were still making their way to Saxon Switzerland to stand on a rock and look at the view.

Up at one of the viewpoints towards the Bastei bridge where I wanted to sketch, again I met with another panel about Caspar David Friedrich. He, too, had made a painting from the exact same spot. I would never be as good as him, and I have made peace with this fact, but I found it flattering that we kept stopping at the exact same places, two hundred years apart, for the same reason. I may not be as skillful as him, but apparently I have his eye which I choose to take as a compliment to myself.

The rest of the walk to Stadt Wehlen was an easy walk. We made a brief stop for cake - it's always cake o'clock when you are hiking - before continuing to descend to Stadt Wehlen. Our train would be leaving in the afternoon, so we still had plenty of time to kill, and we decided to have lunch in Stadt Wehlen. The sun was out in full force and everyone - hikers, bikers, locals, and vacationers - were out, filling every table. Apparently, everyone was in agreement that today was a beautiful day. Over lunch, we declared that this hike was a success: we learned a lot about our setup and how we could improve it for our next bigger trip, we had so much fun with the stairs and the overhangs and the tram and our favorite recurring character, Caspar David Friedrich. And we had done all this just two hours from home, which felt like a good reminder that we don't always have to go far to have adventures.