2025-06-09 52 10

Location

In the forest "Burgdorfer Holz", near-ish Hannover.

Participants

Plans

Gaboversta: This is quite far, but I'll only have to change trains once or twice per direction, depending on the hour. Since I wouldn't do anything particularly useful that day anyways, I'll try to be there sometime around noon / early afternoon.

GeorgDerReisende: After noticing that Gaboversta is traveling to this place, I decided to go, too.

Expedition

GeorgDerReisende

I took four trains from Kassel to Dollbergen. From Dollbergen to Schwüblingsen are no ordinary buses on Sundays and holydays but an on-demand minibus called Sprinti. So I booked this minibus to an adresse Rälingser Straße 12, which looked (on OSM) as an adress for an old forester's house, near a car park for hikers in this area. But this was wrong, Rälingser Straße 12 is in Hänigsen, six kilometers north of my wished starting-point. The bus driver then brought me to Krätze, which is nearer, but I was on the wrong side of the forest. (In OSM I changed the street's name to Beerbuschstraße, which I think is the local name.) From there I walked to the hash. I found it, made the usual dance and went back to the forest way. Standing there, at 15:00, I thougt about Gaboversta's planning, telling me about noon or early afternoon of his arrival and the knowledge of some railway blockade at Wunstorf, will he arrive or not and when. And I saw a man approaching the forest way from the north and it was Gaboversta. He looked for the hash, too. Then we walked to Katensen to the bus stop, where we took another minibus back to the railway station of Dollbergen. The booking process was curious. At a crossing of two forest ways, I called the hotline for a departure time 40 minutes later and the booking process took ten minutes. While we were standing in the forest.

Gaboversta

I got up reasonably early and boarded a train leaving Emden at 8:16. Trains were changed in Bremen, Wunstorf and Lehrte, where I boarded the S7 of the Hannover S-Bahn headed for Celle. It deposited me in Burgdorf at roughly 12:30. I had originally intended to be walking towards the hash by then, from Dollbergen. Those plans had been scrambled by construction works between Wunstorf and Hannover, meaning the next train to Dollbergen would have had me waiting in Lehrte for almost an hour.

Instead of taking the the short walk from Dollbergen, I set out for a nice walk from Burgdorf to the Burgdorfer Holz. Within Burgdorf, I navigated east using the sun, until there was no apparent eastward path remaining and my phone directed me south for a bit. I came past some rather varied fields, one glowing in croppy golden colours, dotted with poppies all throughout. My phone was not particularly good at capturing this scene, but I tried.

Upon reaching the forest I gratefully acknowledged the signage allowing me to use the path before me. The perks of not being a motor vehicle. Every path I came across had different signage, leading me to skip one that had just a standard white circle with a red border and nothing else. As someone without a drivers license and the education on the exact meaning of such signs, I took that to mean that I was not welcome, and so I took a different path.

Nearing the hash within the forest I started to panic about not being able to get the exact coordinates loaded on my phone, the reception was insufficient in some places. I made a mental note to start writing the coordinates down before embarking on future expeditions. My phone regained reception a bit later on, so I knew where to turn right.

When I did turn right, a figure stood in the distance. As I was approaching, I started recognizing GeorgDerReisende, who was waiting for me on the path near the hash. We chatted and I left the path to dance around the hash for a bit. I would soon find the hash, and upon returning I noticed the footsteps GeorgDerReisende had left before me.

We walked in the general direction of Dollbergen. Along the way I was introduced to the "Sprinti", which we then took to Dollbergen.

The train journey back did not go smoothly. Departing Dollbergen at 16:50, we moved towards Hannover. The DB Navigator app proposed an itinerary involving taking a delayed train - which would normally pass through Lehrte before ours - from Lehrte to Wunstorf, essentially the same route I took in the morning. After getting off in Lehrte, I learned that the train kept picking up more delay, and the connection in Wunstorf looked less and less likely. We reached Wunstorf with the north bound train having long left. Instead of just taking the next regional train to Bremen or Emden an hour later, I decided to stay on the delayed train towards Rheine. I knew that Rheine had direct trains to Emden. In fact, every one of my expeditions mounted from Emden and using a train had used that route so far.

Going westwards, we picked up even more delay, eventually reaching Rheine some forty minutes late. Just as I got off the train, an InterCity headed for Emden pulled in. My Deutschlandticket is not valid on that train though (at least not until Leer), so I went to grab some fries and waited for the regional train. Said train arrived and departed, carrying me north. It did end two stops early though. The remaining passengers were directed towards a bus, which passed through Leer and further paralleled the tracks to Emden. In the relative darkness of the night I was able to spot a train going to Emden. I would have been on that train if I had waited in Wunstorf. Not for the next train, but the one after that. And there it was, in the distance, speeding alongside us. Okay, it will arrive a bit before us, I thought, not knowing that my bus would prefer to approach the train station in a spiraling manner, more than completely encircling it. The train had long left Emden by the time I stepped off the bus with the only other passenger. I reached home around 23:15.