Thursday, May 7, 2009

Coffee Smuggling?

Last Saturday, Jim and I decided to go for a hike in the Eifel National Forest. After searching the Eifel website, Jim picked out a trail which was actually a smuggling route. After the Second World War the town of Schmidt was completely destroyed. In order to rebuild their town the Germans began smuggling coffee in from Belgium. Seeing the prosperity of the smugglers, the Church decided it wanted to get a part of the action. They began preaching that the church should be entitled to 10% of the smuggling profits and is now approapriately named St. Mokka.


As we pulled into the parking lot of the church to start the hike, we saw three car loads of senior citizens getting ready to start their hike. They were all equipped with their walking sticks and hiking boats even through the terrain on these hikes isn't particularly uneven or technical. I am always amazed to see how active older people are here. They are always out hiking and biking.


The Schmugglerweg trail was a really nice 17k loop through forest, meadows and farmland. It was the perfect day for a hike as it was probably the nicest day of the year so far. When the weather is nice in Germany, it is a really beautiful place.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hello, My name is David. Looking for some hiking path in germany, specially in the Eiffel region, I found your Blog, which is really well done and interesting. Congratulation. I wanted to ask you where can I find maps for hiking. Do you have some nice websites? Do you have some books or maps on the area close to Daun or the "VulkanStrasse". I would like to go there around the end of June for a walk of 10-15km. Thanks a lot for your answer. If you like hiking in the region, the Luxembourg border is also really nice, close to Echternach. You can find well done maps of hiking paths. There is also a really nice event on the 1st week-end of June, called "Saint Guy Procession". Thanks again for your answer and apologize for my bad english which i not my mother tongue. David

Alison said...

Hi David,

Sorry for my delated response but I've been travelling. I have had some difficulty finding good trails that are well marked in Germany. You can check out the Eifel National Park website - http://www.nationalpark-eifel.de/go/eifel/english.html which has some trails. If you go to one of their main visitor centers, you can buy a map of the area with the marked trails. Their maps on line aren't very good. Good luck!I have done some hiking in Luxembourg and the trails are great. Plus they are marked much better than Germany. I generally get a little lost on every hike I do here.