das Limes

The Limit. The northernmost reaches of the Holy Roman Empire extended just a few kilometers north of us, here in the Taunus Region. This afternoon, Helmut and I decided to go for a hike along "das Limes." This wasn't very German of us, however, as our spontaneity could have been better planned. We missed the train to Bad Homburg by 2 or 3 minutes, causing a delay of more than 20 minutes at the Oberursel Bahnhof as we waited for the next train. [After about 15 minutes, we observed that Bad Homburg is perhaps only 5 kilometers west of Oberursel - so we could have walked the distance in about the same time.] From Bad Homburg, we took a bus up into the hills to a Roman fortification at Saalburg. Here, we missed the last allowed entrance into the fort by ten minutes. This possibly worked out to our advantage, as much of our hike was spent in near darkness as the daylight quickly faded. I had forgotten that last week we moved our clocks back one hour, giving us less light at the end of the day. But it was a nice, quiet walk through the woods. Das Limes is more of an earthen berm than a wall with a ditch on the "bad guy" side. We spent most of the afternoon (arguably where we belonged) on the barbarian side of the wall. We covered the approximately eight kilometers (mostly uphill) in just under two hours. Upon arrival at the bus stop on the end of our route, we observed that we had missed a bus by not more than five minutes. But again, this worked out to our advantage, as it afforded us the oportunity to enjoy a nice, cold Pilsner ("Pils," auf Deutsch) at the Gasthaus on the corner before the next bus came.