Notes from the Wanderpfad

Last night at around 10:15 my friend M. and I arrived in Munich. It was raining, we took a taxi, and sped down the street from the Hauptbahnhof to the Meininger City Hostel, where we checked in and then ascended the stairs to the fifth floor. Mentally I felt leached by the long train ride, but it took a long while to sleep after all, and I woke up again before 7 a.m. But I don't feel too bad, especially as I just ate breakfast, a poppy seed bun with strawberry and with raspberry jam, and a cup of strawberry tea. The place is full of schoolchildren and people of all other ages; M.'s and my roommates are two nice Korean girls. At around 10 a.m. we can set off for a free guided tour of the city centre, which is pretty exhaustive and moreover should be, considering that it will take three hours.

As for the train ride, it was beautiful. Until, I'd say, Leipzig, there were fields upon fields of tanned grasses, pine and birch woods, brick houses, and rows of wind generators and even, at one point, a little wooden windmill that sat in a backyard confined in a neat wooden fence. There were fields of corn, wheat of whose stalks the grains had been stripped, and sunflowers; shooting platforms; and, near towns, sunken gardening colonies. Ridges of forest rose in the distance, and at last the train tracks were enfolded in them, as we ran along into the valley of the Saale. This was, aside from the inevitable modern factory buildings, a landscape that strongly recalled the Germany of Romantic literature: apple trees, brown castles on hills, oak and beech and fir woods, the winding river which at times reminded me of a Rubens (?) landscape in the Gemäldegallerie, the towns full of houses roofed in red tiles and (later) shining black shingles, and the clock-faced spires rising from them in peaked bulbs or pyramids. The region of Jena struck me especially.

There is little internet time left to me, so I'll have to stop here. (c: