Via Romea Germanica Day 30: Eussenhausen - Bad Neustadt

Hiking is not escapism; it's realism. The people who choose to spend time outdoors are not running away from anything; we are returning to where we belong.

- Jennifer Pharr Davis

I was glad I hadn't attempted to walk all the way to Mellrichstadt in one day: it was another five kilometres. My phone battery would definitely have died! In the morning I faced these five kilometres tromping through fields of long, wet grass with new energy (and waterproof trousers). I arrived in Mellrichstadt and stopped in at the tourist information office for a pilgrim stamp, then at the café next door for a slice of Apfelkuchen and a bottle of Apfelschorle. Two of the first words Duolingo taught me! 😄

Mellrichstadt city walls

Mellrichstadt 

On the way out of town I passed a mill with a working waterwheel. After this there wasn't much worth commenting on... a lot of fields, some chickens, cows and horses...

Bavaria is, historically, Catholic, and this was reflected in the roadside shrines and the stone crucifixes at crossroads,  which reminded me of Galicia. 

After skirting round the outskirts of several villages, the Via Romea passed through the centre of Heustreu, where I stopped for a moment in the (modern) church. 

Heustreu

It had been raining gently for some time, but it stopped in time to allow me to take off my bright orange rain poncho before I walked into the town of Bad Neustadt, my destination for the day. I didn't want to walk into the big city (population 15,000) looking like a fluorescent orange tent!

I followed the cycling track into the town and stopped in at the tourist office to thank the young woman on duty for helping me find accomodation and to ask for a stamp on my pilgrim passport. Then I visited the Karmelitenkirche, begun in 1352, with its Rococò wood carvings.

I walked across the town square to my accommodation at Gasthof Am Matkt, right in the market square. It was just about the only affordable accommodation in the town that was not fully booked for the Pentecost long weekend, and yet it is very inexpensive and located right in the main square! The rooms are a bit dated, but clean and spacious,  and there is a restaurant downstairs serving traditional Bavarian fare. The reason it's not booked up - in fact I wonder if I may be the only person staying here, and not just dining - is probably because it has no online presence. No website, and so evidence of it being anything more than a restaurant. This is what put me off at first - I figured it must be just a place to eat. But the tourist information office told me they had rooms available, and so I made an actual phone call, in German, to check and book a room. And here I am!

Maypole in the square 

My guesthouse is the green building on the right

Spatzle with cheese sauce and onions for dinner! 

Good night!

Eußenhausen - Bad Neustadt 24 km