E11: Arensdorf (Köthen) – Dessau

Sunday, July 22: A little cooler to begin with and quite cloudy. A ray of sun during the day and a drop of rain, sunny and warm towards evening

Hiking: 31.9 km

René’s

I was up fairly early for a breakfast of a yoghurt and a cup and a half of the litre packet of iced coffee (and the fridge had certainly made it quite icy), and then to prepare two bread rolls with Saxon Leberkäse for lunch. I was ready to go at 8:45, got to the station quite quickly, bought a ticket, and got into the train for the first section, and after arriving in Köthen had to wait nearly an hour for the connecting train (can’t this be done better?) for the last three-minute trip. I had my ipod with me and so was able to listen to all of the rest of the podcasts, then the next train was there and it spat me out one station later.

I had the entire trip noted in great detail today, because there was no promise yet of the signs returning. Rival football fan clubs had postered every lamppost in Arensdorf with their stupid stickers, so there was no chance of anything official or otherwise surviving. Found the way particularly easily in Pfriemsdorf and beyond, then at the road construction site it took me a while to find a continuing path, and when I did it was correct because it soon led beside Zehmigkau and onto Quellendorf, where I stopped for lunch. Looking back at the GPS track this was a bit of a miracle because part of the path had been completely removed and replaced by a new path at the construction site, and it was only rough and ready orientation (under cloud) that led to any success.

Over the final fields to the forest where I had to take a closer look around and compare the tracks to those on a map near the station that I had photographed this morning. Found the long forest stretch and continued down it. Just before the forest began there was a sign, but no mention of the E11, in the forest itself there were a couple of green crosses on a white background, about halfway through there was a sign which had the E11 on it, and at a critical crossroad the E11 markers turned up again, this time I hope for good.

The remainder was fairly easily done, although it was becoming much hotter and the dried out meadows along the River Mulde didn’t offer much by way of shade. I came off the track about 1 km before the bridge that I wanted to come off at, but was soon in the middle of town, found an ice-cream place and had a double serve of lemon and melon. From there it was not far to René’s place, although there is plenty of construction underway in the center of town. Back here had to seriously rehydrate first, then shower and debate whether I would use the washing machine to wash the sox and the hiking stuff.

Put in a skype call to the place at Rabenstein but they couldn’t tell me if they had a room or bed free on Tuesday, so I started asking a bloke who lives just a few km off the track. His answers were much better, and apart from not being able to refill the soda bottles that may well be the deal.
Getting on time for dinner. I hadn’t seen too many eateries in the center of town, but the one Indian place whose menu is lying around here was more than 1.6 km away, and one Chinese place seemed to be closer (and two along the way were shut on Sundays), so I headed out there, but it was in a shopping center and not accessible from the outside on a Sunday. Headed back to the Market Place and settled on Schlemmer-House for a Bohemian schnitzel for €13.9. Very filling, although not nearly as much as yesterday’s Greek.

OpenStreetMap

On the way back here discovered another Chinese place that I might very well try out tomorrow. Was sorting out the track when René made an appearance and the washing (all of it) was put in the machine.