E5 Days 76-80

Monday, May 20

The Basel Basilisk and our start into the Rhine Marathon Weeks

• We wake up very early (at 6am), have a relaxed breakfast (and watch climbing =)), pack the laundry and set off at half past nine.
• Maxim is waiting right on time outside our apartment door – he will accompany us part of the way today.

• First of all, we go on an exploratory tour of Basel, with Maxim, who worked in Basel for years, as our guide: he shows us the town hall with its pretty façade, Basel Minster – a great church with a hidden cloister – mega! – and finally the remains of the city wall on the edge of the old town.

• Once we have left these behind us, our route leads us along the Rhine through sheer industrial areas in the harbor basin around Basel.

• We walk through the middle of an oil port, although we’re not entirely sure whether we’re allowed to just walk through – at one point we end up in the middle of some tracks – it’s a good thing it’s Whit Monday and therefore nothing is going on.

• In between, there are also more idyllic sections where there are a few cafés, and in one of these we treat ourselves to a break and toast Maxim, our first companion on the E5, with a beer!

• We continue on official-looking paths through industrial areas, once even with goats on the premises – crazy!

• Finally, we leave the industrial landscape behind us and continue along small riverside paths to Rheinfelden, a very pretty town.

• Here we have a dinner with Maxim before he leaves us – he hasn’t experienced a very characteristic stage with all the industrial areas, we tell him – although very beautiful with Basel and along the Rhine in the sunshine.

• We continue on our own – past a huge lock system and then along the familiar field and forest paths.
• It soon gets wilder and the path leads – as so often along rivers – uphill and downhill.
• As today’s stage is very long – almost 40km! – we soon enjoy a wonderful evening atmosphere along the Rhine – very beautiful!

• Our accommodation is perfect for such a long day of hiking – a 24-hour check-in hotel/motel in Stein – not to be confused with Stein am Rhein – although it’s also misleadingly located on the Rhine.

• We almost raided the motel minibar – if it wasn’t for the fact that you have to pay in cash and we don’t have a single Swiss franc with us.
• Instead, we live off our supplies, chill out in our room and soon go to bed.

Tuesday, May 21 

• For breakfast, it plays Backstreet Boys in the background, which immediately makes me sing along loudly and puts me in a good mood right away.

• When we try to do a booking session, I describe my state of mind very aptly: “I’m thrilled! But useless.”
• Very promising, especially as today’s stage is once again not exactly short – with 35 km.
• That’s why we have affectionately christened the week the “Rhine Marathon Week”.
• We set off through a cheerfully painted underpass to the Rhine, where we are immediately greeted by rain, which will accompany us for most of the day.

• We pass a historic wooden bridge, which I dimly remember visiting once with Nico, who is from Rheinfelden, but we leave it to the left and follow the Rhine instead.

• Along very idyllic little paths, but they are full of wet grass, which is why our shoes are soaked in no time at all.

• Around lunchtime we reach Laufenburg, a beautiful Swiss town, where we decide to make a detour over to Germany for lunch.

• Nice try – all the restaurants have closed at 2pm on the dot and won’t give serve us any food at this hour – so my mood is not good, to say the least.
• I’m somewhat reconciled when a folding bench appears – a great invention for rainy days, where we can at least eat our thankfully still available snacks without getting completely wet.

• We also discover an entertainment trail where you can learn about the fish species of the Rhine.

• We soon leave the villages behind us again and pass through areas where there are more goats than people and where our path leads uphill and downhill through forests and across meadows.
• But the views are quite nice – just a bit gray in gray.

• At one point, near a bell tower reminiscent of a campanile, we see a bird of prey up close – great!

• Soon our route leads us through more industrial-looking neighborhoods along the Rhine and we see a huge cooling tower and ask ourselves: Is that a nuclear power plant?

• We look it up and find out: yes, this is the Leibstadt nuclear power plant, which we pass very close by – still at a reasonable distance, of course.

• Our path then winds for what feels like forever along an arm of the Rhine to a bridge where Koblenz is already signposted – and not that far! Yay!

• So we bravely continue our hike on our already tired legs, only to discover that we’ve reached the train station, which is a few kilometers away from Koblenz – great!

• It’s no use, we continue along the Rhine arm back to the Rhine, where Koblenz and our accommodation soon appear.
• We arrive at an Asian-run hotel and I call to helpfully say: “We’re here” Wow, no more brains in my legs, as we like to say.
• Somehow, amazingly, we manage to check in and move into our room.
• The restaurant is closed, but Matthäus is kind enough to get some take-away sushi while I dial into the Woodquarterrock meeting.

• Eating sushi and good night!

Wednesday, May 22 

“Nur nicht pressieren!” – Sand martins, water birds and vineyards

• We make our own breakfast as there is none at the hotel.😮
• Again, worryingly, our destination is not yet visible on the hiking sign at the start of the stage – we only recognize one place, which is halfway along the route, and this is totally encouragingly signposted with a walking time of more than 5 hours.

• The paths are small but beautiful riverside paths, some of which run so close to the Rhine that you are almost level with the surface of the water.

• Shopping after 9km in Bad Zurzach, where we first have to find our way around the Swiss supermarket (after two months doing groceries in France) – I also have a slight chocolate escalation in view of the delicious Swiss chocolate.
• Strawberry snack on the newly vacated bench inside – great, because it’s raining outside.
• We’re both a bit exhausted from the previous marathon stages and so the mood is a bit low.

• The strategy is to work your way from place to place and “What’s next?” I continuously ask Matthäus, who has the phone with the Komoot track.
• He takes a look: “Kaiserstuhl” – a place name that I can’t remember for the life of me.
• At least I get closer over time: while I’m still talking about “Kaufland” at the beginning and explain to Matthäus who looks at me questionably, logically, my mnemonic is: there’s a “K”, an ‘a’ and it consists of two compound words – “Ah, Kastanienbaum” says Matthäus: “What could possibly go wrong with the bombproof mnemonic?” Later I call it “Kaiserslautern” and then “Kaisersessel” (both very Swiss place names).

• We pass a lady with a dog who kindly steps aside on the narrow path and then says: “Nur nicht pressieren! (something like: ‘No need to rush!’)”
• “Don’t listen to her,” says Matthäus, who is a little nervous considering the fact that we’ve already been walking for 5 1/2 hours and haven’t even made it halfway.

• Nevertheless, the route is beautiful: we cross the Rhine at Eglisau and climb up into the vineyards, which glow beautifully in the light of the setting sun.

• We try to write to our host this evening about the delay that is looming, which is difficult as we first have no German network and then no network at all.
• The fauna we see today is amazing: lots of birds, including sand martins and some other water birds, a deer, snakes etc.
• Our shadows are getting longer and longer, Matthäus more and more stressed and the views of the Rhine at sunset more and more beautiful.

• Unfortunately, Matthäus can’t enjoy it as much – but I’m busy taking photos that he can look at later.
• On the last mountain before the final descent, when we can already see our accommodation down by the Rhine, two hikers coming towards us ask us anxiously whether we still have a long way to go – we reassure them and point downhill: “There it is already, the accommodation.”
• Our host is a 70-year-old lady with lots of energy, who welcomes us warmly despite our delay and forgives us for not getting our message – she wouldn’t have read it anyway.
• The accommodation is very special: it is the bowling alley building of a former inn that used to be here – a great story.

• The friendly lady looks after us very kindly and even brings us olive oil, which we use to cook dinner and later to make popcorn 🙂 Njam!

Thursday, May 23 

• At breakfast, we listen to music and the song “It’s raining again” plays – very appropriate, because it’s pouring outside.

• Equipped with a poncho and rain jacket, we head out into the pouring rain.

• The path is still very beautiful, of course, and as we don’t meet anyone or anything in this weather, we use it to continue listening to Harry Potter 5, the 29-hour marathon audio book.
• That’s good, because it at least distracts us a little from the constant rain.
• We take advantage of the dryness under a bridge and treat ourselves to some real Swiss snacks: Appenzeller Biberli and Chocolate Branches.

• Less spectacularly, our route further taking us along paths, small roads and country lanes directly alongside the Rhine, which has a high water level due to the constant rain.

• The most exciting event is probably when we pass a school class on a Rhine boat trip.
• We can hear the announcements from the ship booming over to us, while at the same time we watch bored teenagers on their cell phones in the boat.

• We finally reach the Rhine Falls, where we decide to book a boat trip despite the rain – at least the queue for tickets is manageable.
• It doesn’t matter whether we get wet from the Rhine Falls or the rain, but let’s put it this way – I’ve been on waterfall tours that I’ve enjoyed more.

• We walk past a very nice-looking restaurant, which unfortunately only has outdoor seating and is certainly great when the weather is nice, to the nearby town of Schaffhausen, which we reach through a pedestrian tunnel – a highlight with all the rain.

• We stay at the Hotel Federnhut, which we have chosen because of its direct location on the route and which offers – how shall we put it – a cultural experience: As soon as we walk in the door, the owner proudly says: “You know – Schaffhausen is the only town in Switzerland where you can still smoke in pubs! So if you go out tonight, you’ll have to be prepared!” OK, if I’d had any desire to go out (unlikely in the Rhine marathon week anyway), I would have lost it by now at the latest.

•  She also comes up with sayings like “Only cash is king” – we feel like we’ve traveled back in time, and not in a positive way.
• Well, before we hear any more slogans like that and when a couple of people sitting at the bar start making slightly racist remarks, we take that as a sign to retreat to the room and not leave it again soon.

Friday, May 24 

• First of all, we stroll through Schaffhausen’s old town to Café Noordlicht, where I discover that they serve a good breakfast (there’s none at the hotel, which doesn’t make us too sad).

• Thank goodness we pass an ATM where we withdraw Swiss francs (“Only cash is king”) and wonder what we should do with them the rest of the way, well – future worries.
• Luckily we have time, as we’re taking a ferry across the Rhine today, which doesn’t leave until 11:45 anyway.
• The café turns out to be a culture shock after the hotel – it’s totally modern and has vegan food, which I wouldn’t have expected from Schaffhausen after my first impression .

• Matthäus and I order breakfast dishes, but we get the wrong – or at least different – ones delivered, but think “before we send it back and they throw the food away, we’ll just eat it”, which leads to me getting a scrambled egg and veggie bagel with added salmon (there are also non-vegan options) – nice deal!
• We walk along the beautiful promenade along the Rhine to the ferry.

• It leads to the other side of the Rhine to a place called “Paradise”.
• When we arrive at the shore, there is not a boat in sight, the only thing we see is a tiny jetty and a bell.

• I ring the bell enthusiastically, whereupon we promptly hear an engine start on the other bank and it comes into view – the little boat being driven back and forth by a ferryman.
• The ferryman is chilled out and also pretty easy-going, at the end I say to him: “Wow, a great job, ferryman to paradise” – and think to myself, oh, he’s probably heard that line a thousand times before – still, really nice!

• Exhilarated by the great ferry ride, we continue along the other bank of the Rhine, which is good anyway, as there is more shade here and today it is fully sunny again for a change.

• We discover a poster with a slogan that will be our new hiking motto from now on: “Nothing stops us from going forward.”

• We stroll through Diessenhofen, where Michèle comes from, which is totally picturesque and beautiful.

• There are some really nice cafés, which are of course all open and tempt me, but Matthäus reminds me that we have arranged dinner with Estelle and Pascal and that we still have some way to go.
• We don’t take a break until quite late as we are making good progress.

• We discover a Fiat 500 parking lot!
• Wild-looking storm clouds are gathering on the horizon and it looks like it’s going to start raining immediately.

• At that moment, two cyclists ride past and we hear one say to the other: “It’s about to rain, du Opfer!”
• Yes, we Opfer, it really is about to start raining, and how – as if the whole cloud is going to empty out at once.

• We are forced to take shelter at the Meiri nursery, which is thankfully on the way, and are glad we did, because shortly afterwards it starts to thunder.

• When the worst is over, we walk to Stein am Rhein in the dripping rain, move into our accommodation and I keep an eye out for Estelle and Pascal from behind the curtains like Aunt Petunia.

• They turn up on time, of course, and we head to a pizzeria for dinner, which passes far too quickly with lots of laughter and chatter – a mega evening!
• We also successfully give Pascal our remaining Swiss francs, which he accepts rather reluctantly (“Only cash is king” is apparently not his motto…).