Do you know the motto “seize the day”? Well, since last year that’s a rule I promised myself to live by, even when the comfort of everyday life is overwhelming. And trust me, I am so glad I did because otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to sit down and narrate to you my latest adventures. So please, take a seat and let’s begin!
While I was thinking about which story I should present to you, the one that came to my mind first was the “Geierlay Bridge adventure” that was full of unfortunate events, resembling Lemony Snicket’s series.
So, last year I was studying in Germany via the “Erasmus for studies” program for the summer semester (that’s also when I got interviewed for my current position in Foreigners) and while I was staying there I met some awesome people, with whom every weekend we decided on a new random place to visit near Trier (the city in which I was studying in Germany).
Porta Nigra-Trier
This week’s plan was the famous suspension bridge “Geierlay” in the low mountain range of the Hunsrück in central Germany. We decided to catch the first train to Treis-Karden because we wanted to hike our way to the bridge (for some reason we thought that 15.5 kilometers weren’t a big deal to be walked on foot).
Geierlay Bridge
Train Delay
So, Burak and I managed to get to the train station on time, while Zoe kind of bailed on us to get some more sleep. The train had other plans though, not even half on our way it broke down. There was a delay for like an hour or so and after that, we had to exchange a couple of other trains, because there was also an issue on the railway. Meanwhile, Zoe had plenty of time to wake up normally and catch the next train available.
Finally, we managed to reach Treis-Garden with Burak and since we had some more time to wait for Zoe, we decided to have a coffee in the first place we saw in the village. Hm now that I think about it… that wasn’t one of our brightest ideas, since, as we found out the coffee was expired and its taste was extremely weird (not quite what you need when you’ll be walking for hours under the noon summer sun (let’s not forget that it was late June and one of the hottest days in Germany, somewhere between 32 to 34 Celsius).
Anyway, somehow we managed not to throw up, Zoe arrived and we were able to hit the road once and for good. First things first, we stopped at a supermarket to get vital supplies for our picnic hike, aka junk food and water. Then we put the root we had to follow on google maps and started our journey.
The creepy cabin in the woods
Cabin in the woods
But of course, I had to mess things up by putting the wrong root on the map, which resulted in us having to go back and start all over again. This time via the forest and straight to a creepy abandoned cabin in the woods with a chucky look-alike doll on the porch, which obviously resulted in us freaking out big time!
The chucky-look-alike doll
A lot of running (to get away from the cabin) later -which turned into agonizing walking on the forest hill, with several stops to catch our breath, to overcome the random cramps on our pretty rusted legs and to rest my on-of-a-kind problematic knee- we finally managed to reach the suspension bridge.
A bridge like no other, straight from a Disney’s adventure deep in a jungle forest. The only thing missing was Tarzan and Jane to complete the whole picture. For a couple of moments, we were standing there in awe, trying to figure out whether it was all in our imagination.
Our fairytale bridge
At some point, we decided to cross the bridge, with me having a slightly intense acrophobia-crisis and the guys trying to cheer me up to overcome my irrational fear.
It didn’t take long, though, to forget about it since on the other side of the bridge, we sat on a bench and had a picnic like no other, with a breath-taking view to fill our souls.
Boy we were unlucky
But little did we know the worst part of our journey was yet to come, with the lack of drinking water starting to kick in, with our swollen-from-walking feet that could barely move at that point, with the realization that there was no public transportation during the weekends in this god-forgotten place in the middle of nowhere, which meant that we had to do the whole hike, in reverse mode, all over again, with me pouring half of my sunscreen into my backpack making one hell of a mess.
The three musketeers
And they lived happily ever after
But even in the worst situations, if you stay positive there’s always hope! Hope was the one thing that kept us going, hope, and that lovely lady that responded to our auto-stop and took us with her to the near train-station, where our misery finally came to an end!
Dead but alive
I want to close this article with the prediction of the fortune cookie I had the day before, “Patience will last longer than the suffering”, which in the end, made total sense.
If you’d also like to check some of my other adventures you can click below:
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