It’s always something special when you start a trip from your frontdoor.
Leaving my home town I started out hiking northeast towards Donauwörth on the HW1 of the Swabian Alb. Having reached my first goal I closed the gap by train to Bad Kötzting in Bavaria and hiked the Goldsteig through the beautiful Bayerischer Wald down south to Passau. The “bavarian forest” is a low mountain range situated between Bavaria and the Czech Republic with the highest peak being the Großer Arber (1456m/4775ft).
The Swabian Alb ranges over a length of about 200 kilometers and a width of 80 kilometers across Baden-Württemberg in the southwest of Germany. The Swabian Alb is a gentle highland with juniper heaths, where shepherds still make their rounds. But Europe’s largest karst mountain range also has other sides – wildly romantic and sublime, the Alb is framed by the gorges of the young Danube and the Albtrauf. In between, mighty castles of the Staufers and Hohenzollerns as well as historical sites of the Romans and Celts. The secret, however, lies deep inside, hidden in countless caves: From there come the oldest works of art in the world, 40,000 years old.