2012-05-12 47 9

Location

Ostrach, a field

Participants

Ekorren was there. It was wet.

Expedition

A few days earlier a friend called me and asked whether I would be interested in sharing a group ticket when she had to go to somewhere in the Upper Suabian area. Well, since I think a spontaneous trip is always a good idea, I said yes. Only, I had to find a destination for myself as well - but the hash of the day is always a worthy destination, provided it's reachable.

In the morning we both packed our bikes into the train, and went southeast. She to her destination, I to Altshausen, from where the hash wouldn't be too far. The weather was ugly, but it wasn't too cold, so... whatever. What doesn't kill us only makes us harder.

I rode through the wet hills and eventually got close to the point. It turned out to be located on a harvested field, so it was no problem to reach it. It wasn't really special either, so I left soon again.

On the map I had seen a Border stone museum nearby - which actually did not include a building. A museum without a building? That's interesting enough to go there. It turned out to be an open air exhibition of old border stones and a model of the area with some historical borders. The story behind this is that here at Ostrach before WW2 there was a three-country-point (or rather: several of them) where the three states of Württemberg, Baden and Preussen-Hohenzollern met - those three states which nowadays are joined to the state of Baden-Württemberg. For lack of time (but also of specialized interest) I decided not to take the large tour offered in form of a waterproof guide paper you could borrow from a box at the entrance.

There was more to see close: A larger moor. There aren't so many of those in Southern Germany, anyway, and those are always worth a visit. Even more on a rainy day, IMHO - there's so much more atmosphere than in sunshine, isn't there? See the photos below. I didn't mind the rain on that part.

Now, I was running a bit low on time because we had agreed to meet again in the afternoon after both of our day plans were finished, and spend the evening somehow in the area. However, I didn't really want to go back the same way I had come, so I took the slightly longer and more hilly trip to Ravensburg instead where I caught a train to the meeting point.

We then decided to go to the Bodensee for the evening and do a small bike trip along the shore, through another nature reserve worth visiting. And another time it turned out to be a good idea to go on the evening of a rainy day - on sunny days, the Bodensee lake is totally overrun by tourists, but not this time. And in the end it stopped raining and even cleared up, culminating in an impressing, incredibly kitschy sunset. With swans, even.