Monday 20th May -- Oberursel and Bad Homburg

Caught the U-Bahn to the north-west, which as I had hoped went up into the foothills of the mountains. It's quite hard to work out what's where around here because all the maps are incredibly complicated, but I was able to work out that Oberursel should be somewhere high up and that the end of the line -- called 'Hohemark', which means 'high place' -- would be a good place to start. There were only three of us left on the train when we got there, and I was the only one heading for the walk, which is in the Taunus region and runs around a mountain called the Altkonig, or 'Old King'. It was a very pleasant walk through a pine forest, with plenty of bird life all around, but to do a complete loop around would have taken 16k, possibly in complete isolation, with no open kiosks or bus stops on the way, and I thought that was a bit much for an old man with a bad leg.

So I retraced my steps and took a more urban walk from the next stop down, intriguingly named 'Waldlust'. This took me into some flatter, open country, through some wheatfields, and eventually into a long village which runs slowly downhill along a windy road. They had a schloss, of coss, for the local Stadtholder, and in the grounds nearby a big pond in which the local frogs were doing their own version of the display at the Botanic Gardens the day before. And again, the noise was incredible. Later I saw a robin by the road; and in the Palmgarten yesterday a big lizard was sunning itself on a rock. Along with a red squirrel in the apartment gardens, I'm doing quite well for wildlife.

Eventually I came into Bad Homburg, which has nothing to do with an unsightly hat, but has an attractive Old Town with yet another Schloss, with a prominent tower and a very pleasant garden and lake. Here I had a very welcome coffee and a pastry -- a kind of free-standing rhubarb crumble. Rhubarb is in season here now. There's something that  seems to be a kind of wild rhubarb growing by the pathsides, and some places offer rhubarb juice by the glass. The other current seasonal delicacy is 'Spargel' -- asparagus -- which is advertised by signs in restaurant windows. One of the market booths in Amsterdam had a whole counter selling nothing but different types of asparagus.

I think I've already commented that Google Maps doesn't seem to have access to German train information, and there's no other easy way to find out where stations are and what trains are running from them. Apparently Bad Homburg has a train station, and since I had a day pass I could have taken a train from there, but I didn't know it at the time, so I walked another 4k to Oberursel and the U-Bahn. Again with Google Maps, I discovered it's wise to check both the cycling and the walking options; cycling routes are often much more pleasant and about the same length.

I got to the U-Bahn just as it was starting to drizzle, and headed back to the apartment for a bit of a rest and a late lunch, via a supermarket for provisions. By about 5 pm it was overcast and drizzly, so it seemed like a good time to visit a graveyard. Luckily there is a humungous one just down the road; the Frankfurt Main Cemetery, which is a massive tract of woodland. It's bigger, I think, than either Rookwood or the one that the kids and I went to in Milan, with hundreds of criss-crossing paths and headstones popping up everywhere. Somebody could hide out in here for weeks.

Schopenhauer is buried there, and there's a large area in the centre for war graves, hundreds and hundreds of them, from both World Wars. A Jewish cemetery is next door, but that closed earlier, and besides the one was quite enough. But this explains the cluster of stonemasonry businesses across the road; the cemetery is still in use, and in fact contains its own crematorium. 

And so home to bed. Still slightly drizzly today, but I'm hoping to walk along the river.

Love,

Jon.