• Trips

    The Napoleon Trail near Jena

    The Napoleonpfad is an approximately 8km circular hiking trail near Jena that Nathalie, René, Dominik, and I hiked recently. But first, how did we come to choose this particular trail to hike? We had already been hiking twice in Jena. Once on the Jenzig-Hufeisen-Kunitz trail and once on a trail near René’s place. During the second hike, we noticed that we intersected with another hiking trail, and even more exciting, René mentioned that he had developed an app for that particular trail at his company! Of course, for Nathalie, that was reason enough (as if she needed any reason in general to go hiking) to explore this trail and try…

  • Travel

    Camino de Santiago (2022)

    Whether Paulo Coelho’s book on the Camino de Santiago, or Hape Kerkeling’s “I’m off then”. The Camino de Santiago has long ceased to be a mere pilgrimage route for Christians from all over the world. Instead, it is a world-famous phenomenon and as such one of the best-developed and most popular long-distance hiking trails in the world, including being declared a UNESCO World Heritage designation. I, too, first became aware of this pilgrimage route through the media. For me, it was the French film comedy “Saint Jacques… La Mecque”. The concept of spending days, weeks, and even months wandering from one place to another absolutely intrigued me. And so I…

  • Travel

    Scandinavia (2021): From Thuringia to the North Cape and back

    Like so many others, the corona pandemic has thwarted our travel plans for 2020. We were in South Africa shortly before the outbreak of the pandemic and even a short vacation on the Polish Baltic Sea was possible in the summer, but we had accumulated a few vacation days that we now, freshly vaccinated, finally wanted to enjoy by traveling for a whole month. Of course, the world was far from what we were used to before 2020. For sure, this was also reflected in our way of traveling and, above all, in our destination. The Scandinavian countries have also taken some special paths, but all in all they naturally…

  • Trips

    Activities between Christmas holidays and New Year

    The year 2021, like the previous one, was special due to the pandemic. What was new was that Nathalie did not go home for Christmas due to Corona, so we were both in Weimar and were able to carry out our own plans over the holidays and up to the New Year. Of course we were still restricted by the pandemic, but we had just had our third booster vaccination and were therefore able to do a lot to make the last week of the year a special one. The Christmas Holidays Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day fell on Friday to Sunday this time (actually quite stupid on…

  • Trips

    The “Drei Gleichen” Hike

    Already when I first sat in the car from NRW in the direction of Erfurt, I noticed three castles shortly after Gotha, which stand on neighboring hills and are clearly visible from the highway. Nowadays I know that these are the so-called “Drei Gleichen”. At that time I planned to visit these three castles one day. Shortly thereafter, however, the idea unfortunately fell into oblivion again. When we recently walked a section of the 3 Towers Trail with Marie and Christopher, Marie made the suggestion to do the hike at the Drei Gleichen. She had already done this twice and the path was quite beautiful and also not too strenuous.…

  • Trips

    The Thuringian 3-Towers Hike – A Self Experiment

    After Kevin and I have recently hiked a section of the Thuringian 3 towers path together with friends, I wanted to know my limits. On the last Saturday in May, Kevin had a big card tournament and was thus busy all day. But since the weather was quite promising, I decided to unpack my previously unused hiking poles and do the Thuringian 3-Towers hike on my own. Kevin and I both got up early in the morning. Kevin to get ready for his tournament and me to pack my backpack and prepare provisions. We had a chickpea-avocado salad and a strawberry-wheat-arugula salad. In addition, of course, I took a bottle…

  • Trips

    From Bad Berka to Weimar – Our 1 1/2 Towers Path

    Thanks to Corona, possible ventures are unfortunately limited. However, one thing that is always possible in good weather and that we like to use is to go out into nature and hike. The bridge day between Ascension Day and the weekend it was once again so far. Kevin and I took extra vacation and together with Christopher and Marie, two good friends of ours, we took the train to Bad Berka. The original plan was to walk the Thuringian 3 towers path, but since it is quite long with its 26km, I let my comrades-in-arms talk me down to hike only part of the way. However, this should also be…

  • Trips

    Hike to Ettersburg Castle

    On Sunday the weather was just perfect. With 25°C it felt like a beautiful summer day without being overwhelmed by the heat. We took advantage of this to hike to Ettersburg Castle. Since the way from our front door to the castle is quite long with almost 10km, we split up for the first kilometres. I walked the first part while Kevin went a little later and took the bus. Our meeting point was Weimar Schöndorf. The way to Schöndorf is mostly along a main road. Nevertheless, there is the Buchenwald railroad memorial path. Along this path prisoners from the Buchenwald concentration camp had to build a railroad line under…