Day 96, Haukenzell – Kreuzhaus

Weather: 🌤️🌤️🌤️⛅⛅+ 🥵🥵
Lunch: 🥪🥪🥪🥪 (4 out 5, nice sandwiches in the bakery in Konzell and knödel soup in the Kreuzhaus)
Track: 🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪 (4 out of 5, nice trail through forest, fields and towns, with beautiful mountain views)
Home hospitality: 🛌🛌🛌🛌🛌 (5 out of 5, unexpected bed and food in the Kreuzhaus!)
Name of followed trail: Jakobsweg, Goldsteig
Special mention: Gilbert , Sonja and Walther for the hospitality, friendliness and the great evening. Gilbert, thank you for reminding us to always take up the friendly offer of a fellow hiker!

A day with an unexpected end 😁.

We start our hike along a brook into a village, but the trail takes us up the hills quite soon. Within the hour, we’re sweating freely. The insects around us seem to enjoy this a lot more than we do, so we walk in a cloud of mosquitoes and their friends. Mark finds new insects everyday and they all seem to bite..😅

The walk today is tough but beautiful. We get water at a farm and continue up the hill theiu (luckily) mostly forest. The views we have over the mountains are really nice.

We reach Konzell where we do a short resupply and have lunch at the bakery.

From there it’s another 4 kilometer to the Kreuzhaus at the highest point of today. It’s a demanding, yet rewarding walk up. We have only 8 km left to go from here so we have a nice break to cool down a bit.

When we are in the process of leaving, we get into a conversation about our journey. The owner, Gilbert, hears this and invites us to stay there for the night. We want to continue, because we still have 8 km to go. Gilbert insists on us having a shower here. He’s a hiker too and he knows the importance of a shower. Ok, we can’t deny that!

While we’re having a shower, happy and surprised over the unexpected kind offer, we rethink our answer to Gilbert. Why say no? Why stick to the plan while there is nothing there waiting for us? Why not go with the flow a bit more?

So we end up staying at the Kreuzhaus. We have a wonderful time there with Sonja the waitress, Walter the chef and Gilbert the owner. It’s an afternoon and evening with good food and drinks singing, dancing and music. I make poi out of toilet rolls and guy lines to dance with in this beautiful mountain scenery. What a joy!

We really enjoyed our decision to stay. It’s liberating to let go of the plan and just…. be. I feel free and happy just being and enjoying the moment.

I guess we knew that having a plan is good but not sacred. We need some reminding every once in a while..

Our evening even has a soundtrack. Thanks to Gilbert who insisted on playing this song at least 30 times… So our evening sounded mostly like this: https://youtu.be/yoifvqKhfp0?is=rzIQ0NTpup-fAQFe 😅🤣🤣