After not sleeping very well (a lot of traffic noise because of being on the corner for J), we went for breakfast. A nice array, muesli, yoghurt, salamis, hams, cheeses, jams, nice fresh bread, not very nice coffee, possibly with chicory in it. J had a boiled egg.
We asked the lovely breakfast
frau, possibly the one on the right in the picture of Cafe H about how to get to the
Grosser Feldberg. Actually weirdly none of the people in the pictures on their website or the dog look like anyone that we met.
She gave us the bus number so we went to the train station to get the bus. The bus turned up with a very nice bus driver (Chris’). We climbed up in the bus to the top of the mountain (hill) as it’s only 878 metres where there was the annual town sports rally taking place as well as a biker convention. Despite all this, it was all very calm, there were a couple of cafes and kiosks, so we went to get a coffee.
On the short way, Chris picked up an old geezer who was taking a photo of a car. As well as the challenging language situation he had also had a stroke and so it was amazing that we were able to communicate at all. I kept trying to drag C away from him but this was very difficult so struck was she. Finally got away and into the cafe only to have him come and sit at the next table. At this point we gave in. Anyway his granddaughter lives somewhere in England and is very intelligent. The Americans taught him his English after the war, he was born in 1933. Actually he was quite a nice old man but most of the chat had to be done at high volume so guess we all entertained the cafe customers.
After some small purchases, we set off to walk the so called 7 km back to Koenigstein with the map which took a lot of working out so we just followed the signs and then just the general direction (down).
We had our substantial packed lunch, ate up some of the bits from the previous days extreme hunger rations, ate our new rolls and cheese and ham and tomatoes.
The walk through the forest was lovely, very quiet, a man passed by on a horse, the odd walker. We crossed the big road going up to the top and then came across a cafe/pub so had to investigate. It was next to a campsite and seemed to be part of an old Nature Movement. C had a beer and I had an espresso. Lovely.
At this point I finally managed to work out where we were on the map, better late than never. We walked back into
Koenigstein and the Cafe H. Had a nice quiet couple of hours, I had a nap.
Then refreshed, went into town and after some photo opportunities went to what we thought was a real German restaurant that we’d picked out the night before, only to discover it had a Greek theme to the cooking. We sat outside and C had a lamb kebab and I had a lamb steak with cottage cheese in the middle of it. Not a good choice and mainly because I couldn’t remember what Schafkaese was. More beers.
Wandered back, stopping at a bar for a cocktail (C) and a big whisky (me).
[googlemaps https://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Feldberg,+K%C3%B6nigstein,+Germany&aq=0&oq=feldberg+K%C3%B6nigstein,+Germany&sll=50.194869,8.470974&sspn=0.017308,0.052314&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Feldberg,+K%C3%B6nigstein+im+Taunus,+Germany&t=m&ll=50.224037,8.437157&spn=0.032948,0.051498&z=13&iwloc=A&output=embed&w=300&h=300]
Please visit Map and Compass and learn how to interpret a map with me and my navigation partner, Cath.