Maria Laach

This past Saturday we thought it would be a good idea to combine our workout with a little sightseeing. We headed to Maria Laach which is a Romanesque church built in the 11th century. It is now a Benedictine abbey with 55 monks who earn a living by running the nearby hotel and selling their organic apples and houseplants along with other products produced by monks elsewhere in Europe.

The outside of the church was a gorgeous example of Romanesque architecture but the inside was surprisingly a little plain. It unfortunately had lost most of the original décor in the 1800s. However, I would expect it to have a lot less ornate decoration than a Catholic church, since it is run by monks. I think that is their thing, no bling.

The abbey is situated on a volcanic lake (Laacher See) and is nestled in the forest with hiking and horse trails all around the lake.

After we checked out the church, we decided to take a hike. Unlike most hiking areas in German, there was actually a main map that outlined 6 different trails of varying levels of length and difficulty. We, of course, went for the longest and most difficult trail – 21 kilometers.

We were hopeful that the trail would be well marked after seeing a central map. Ah, how naïve we are. Things started out well, but quickly disinigrated. We found ourselves at an intersection with three different trail options and a sign that had fallen off of the tree. Since we were unable to discern from which tree the sign had fallen, we figured we had a 1 in 3 chance of choosing the right path. Oddly a lot of the trails were marked when there wasn’t any intersecting trail but when you had a number of different options there was no sign to be found. However, it was better than any other hiking trails in the Bonn area. Although a few wrong turns and some back tracking ended up in a slightly longer hike.

During our hike, we couldn’t help notice how many hunting tree stands there were in the forest. It seems quite odd to have hunters set up along hiking trails. I’ll have to remember not to wear my antler hat and leather coat when hiking next fall.

I think these trails would be beautiful with the fall colors. We will have to go back to do some trail running in the fall or spring. Jim wants to do a marathon in the spring so we may be back soon to do some long runs there.