What a day!

Lucked on the sunrise this morning. Absolutely beautiful with the mist rolling off the river and the sun rising over the mountains of the border into Czechia.

We have been blessed with a beautiful day today for our walk up the mountain.

So, after a yummy brekky, we set off to walk to the Bastei. This area is known as the Sächsische Schweiz (Saxon Switzerland) National Park which extends over the border into Czechia. About 3 hours of lovely walking walking through beech and fir forest brought us high up to amazing views from the sandstone and basalt rock formations known as the Bastei. We could see for miles along the Elbe in both directions.

The descent was steep via a series of stairs and passages, sometimes cut into the rock.

This brought us into the touristy town of Kurort Rathen where we grabbed some bratwurst at a street stall and on a whim decided to go to the DDR Museum in Pirna directly by train rather than returning to the hotel and cycling in. First we had to take the ferry across the river. 

On the other side we saw the VVO office and the kind man there worked out a group ticket for the 3 of us that was a return train trip for the day and included the ferry we’d need to take later at Stadt Wehlen. The beauty of this was that there would be no more buying of tickets today; we just had to show our ticket on any train and the ferry.

For the most part this new plan was a good idea until the stupid street maps (those big ones up on a board that have a big ‘you are here’ symbol on them) at Pirna stated that the DDR Museum was 2 kms away which, despite our tired feet, we thought was do-able.

Unfortunately, 2 kms further along, a similar street map said the same - only the ’you are here’ symbol was in a different spot on the map. 

This was lining up with the advice we were getting from people we stopped along the way to ask directions who said ‘you are walking?!’ At one point we met a lovely young Afghan man, who had worked as a translator for the Americans in Afghanistan; he walked with us a considerable distance showing us the way. We FINALLY got there, out of water by now, and my poor plantar fasciitis in my right foot giving me merry hell.

The girl at the reception of the museum was most unfriendly and the museum was weird: a collection of East German artefacts dating back to the 1970s and 80s - a skeleton in the ‘medical’ room with a cigarette in its mouth??

I liked this photo though:

I knew I couldn’t walk back to the station - it must have been 5 kms - and I was even thinking of thumbing a lift. There were no buses that we had seen and very few taxis. Pirna was quite closed down for the day; probably being a Sunday was the issue.

Fortunately, at reception, the girl was talking with a man on our side of the desk who, when I made enquiries re a bus (btw she didn’t speak English), he intervened and said buses were very few and far between today being a Sunday and when I asked if a taxi could be rung, he grabbed her mobile off the desk and rang for one. He came outside intermittently while we waited and chatted and even rang the taxi company again after we had waited 15 minutes. He was very nice.

We couldn’t ring for a taxi ourselves as My Friend had left his phone behind at the hotel - the phone with the German SIM card in it (which he seems to be having trouble getting to work anyway ...). Also the phone with the German maps downloaded which would have shown us the way and saved one error in navigation that added at least an extra km on our walk there. He found the phone in his back pocket at the end of the day ...

My Friend is ‘on a roll’ ATM as this adds to his leaving his Passport on the plane seat on the trip over; plus the small bag he dropped with his wallet in it when we were at Pillnitz Castle yesterday which someone kindly handed in and when we were going through a ticket check at one of the entrances; reception had obviously sent a message that,  if the group of 3 Australians passed through,  to let them know that a bag had been handed in; he had no idea he’d lost anything at this stage ... Do we blame jet-lag?

Anyway, our (Mercedes) taxi arrived and whizzed us off to the bahnhof (station) where we returned, passing by our stop at Stadt Wehlen, and continuing to Konigstein to visit the fortress there. 

We found the bus stop at Konigstein - a double decker bus to the top. We would have had to ride up tomorrow as we will be back on our bikes then. Looking back down the road with the traffic all lined up behind the bus as it groaned its way up the hill, I was so pleased we had decided for this option today - the hill was very steep, the traffic very heavy and the road had no shoulder so it would have been a nightmare to ride up tomorrow especially with our fully laden bikes.

It was late afternoon by now. The fortress closed at 6 pm and the last bus back was 5 pm which we wouldn’t make in time if we were to have a good look around so we had lots of walking ahead of us still. Oh my aching feet!

Unfortunately where the bus dropped us off we still had a long climb up the hill to the fortress. But the late afternoon light was lovely and the views from the top across the surrounding countryside were great and we restricted ourselves to whatever took our fancy in terms of ‘fortressing’ as the place is IMMENSE. There was a cellar down long dank steps, an art exhibit in one building, a demo of water being brought up in a barrel from an extremely deep well over 152m down plus a dear little chapel very simple in style and an attractive folly looking out over the fortress wall to the Elbe river below. All set in lovely gardens.

We gave ourselves till 5:10 or so to look around and I made an estimation based on the train we’d caught earlier from Kurort Rathen to Pirna and calculated backwards as the station at Konigstein is earlier, that there’d likely be a train about 10 to 6, so we flung ourselves down the mountain pathway and arrived with hearts pounding (and tired legs and feet!) just a minute before the train arrived. Our day ticket was proving very good value as we returned to Stadt Wehlen; a short walk to the ferry and up the short hill (!) on the other side from the river to our hotel. We had 15 minutes to have a shower so we’d have enough time for a drink before dinner on the hotel balcony looking out over the river as the sun disappeared behind  the hills.

The hotel restaurant was closed tonight so we had been booked in to a place down the road where we understood nothing on the menu and the waiter was run off his feet; we were kindly helped out by a young woman at an adjoining table. 

Unfortunately the service was terribly slow, even though the food was fine. Eventually our meal arrived and we didn’t hang around after; back to the hotel we went and into bed (after the obligatory hand washing of clothes).

What a day!

Walking distance: 16 kms (!?)