This was just outside the train station in Bonn-Mehlem where I started my trip. My destination was the abbey at Laach Lake. The actual goal of the trip was to find out how easy it would be to travel around spending as little money as possible though.

The plan was to travel along the Rhine so it would be easy to know where I was going and then eventually branch off into the mountains where Laach Lake was.

The mountain you can see on the other side of the Rhine is the Drachenfels with Schloss Drachenburg on the left and the ruined Burg Drachenfels on top of it. It's a nice place to visit, but I only walked along this side of the Rhine during this trip.

This is Villa Genienau. I had actually never heard of it before and only looked it up after I got back home. Apparently it's used as an event site now.

I left Bonn and kept walking south along the Rhine. I didn't even know what the next town would be, but it would be a long time until I had to leave the shore of the Rhine to head into the mountains anyway.

I was actually kind of suprised to see this sign. I didn't know Bonn bordered Rhineland-Palatinate on this side of the Rhine. On the other side there's a bunch of other towns in between. I guess Bonn has a pretty weird shape.

Just a spooky gate. Not too spooky, but still kind of spooky.

When I entered Rolandswerth, I actually decided to leave the shore of the Rhine for a bit and check out the Rolandsbogen, because I saw a few signs pointing in its direction. It was on a mountain apparently and the way up was really steep, so I was glad they built this rest area.

I did come across something that I thought might have been the Rolandsbogen, but it was so unremarkable, I didn't even take a picture. When I got back home and looked it up, I found out that the actual Rolandsbogen are the remnants of a castle and that I must have missed it on my way to this plateau. Anyway, horses.

I was pretty high up already, and there were mountains everywhere. I always thought the Drachenfels and its colleagues were just an exception and the rest of the mountains would only start further up the Rhine. Still, these ones aren't very tall compared to the Drachenfels and some of the other ones I was about to climb.

It's hard to tell from these pictures, but it was really hot. And I think you can kind of see it in this pony's face. It's not exactly what I would call content.

Another view of the mountains or hills on the other side of the Rhine.

"The highest pleasure, just so you know, are Hannibal's nuts!"

It didn't look like there was another path off the mountain than the one I used to get up, so I decided to just take the shortest way down whatever the terrain was. There was a stretch where I sank like 10 cm into the leaves on the ground with every step and other one that was so steep I slid more than I walked. This creek was the last obstacle before I was back on paved roads.

This is a restroom inside a museum in Rolandseck. Washed my face and refilled my water bottle.

I really shouldn't have gone here. There's an animal park in Rolandseck and I wanted to go there, but when I got there, I found it was close. Then I ignored the "Don't go here" sign near the entrance because the path looked pretty walkable and eventually ended up here.

Not only was it steep, the ground was also really loose, so I was slipping all the time. And I didn't even know how I would cross the tracks. But I didn't want to turn back either.

Looks like I wasn't the first person to go here though. But judging by the almost completely decomposed labels on those bottles, this mess was made some time ago.

Still no end in sight. Nice view of the Rhine though.

I got tired of walking along the slope and just crossed the tracks. I still had to get down to the road on the other side though. I fought my way through a few meters of wild bushes. They had long twigs and I got stuck several times, but I had a pair of scissors to cut them fortunately, although a machete would have definitely looked cooler.

"May this house be in God's hand. May God protect it from fire and conflagration."

I bought food! 4.80 € for all of this. 3.50 € if you don't count the plastic spoons. I thought it would only get me through one or two days, but I actually brought half the carrots and one pack of oats back home with me. I unnecessarily carried that whole additional kilo around with me for two days.

Good thing I'm used to this kind of food. I wouldn't claim I actually like it, but it does its job of providing you with calories while still being inexpensive and healthy even compared to some of the other stuff we regularly eat.

Nothing too special here. I just relocated here to finish my meal with a nicer view in front of me.

Now this was special! These kind of trampolines are a common thing to see in people's gardens lately, but I've never seen one that was free to use. Couldn't refuse that offer. I wasn't able to do a proper frontflip though! I used to be able to do that as a kid. I'm just going tell myself it was the trampoline's fault.

Just a nice-looking town with a funny-sounding name.

On my way to Remagen, a town whose name I've actually heard before!

"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." - Oscar Wilde. Classy.

My feet were starting to hurt at this point, so I took off my shoes and took a break. The sky looked a lot prettier in reality than in this picture.

"Don't sit down!" - I didn't.

I still haven't looked up what these say. They were set into a wall at the edge of Remagen. There were like 10 of them in total.

This is the Apollinariskirche in Remagen. Looks really cool if you ask me. It even looks a little like Schloss Neuschwanstein from certain angles. There's other cool places in Remagen too, but I wasn't feeling very touristy, so I just kept walking along the shore.

This dog was real! And he didn't even bark. Just ran up to me on that wall. Dogs who bark are the worst, but this one was a bro dog.

There's not just cool churches and cool dogs in Remagen, but cool houses too!

"Peace museum, Bridge of Remagen" - "Bridge"? What bridge?

Oh. RIP, Bridge ;_;7

Too long; didn't read.

The sun was setting, so I left the shore and decided to walk along the edges of the towns to find a good place to sleep outside in my sleeping bag.

Just a rape field. But there's a lot of rape fields where I live and it was nice to see something familiar after all those hills and mountains.

Someone forgot to put a fence around their garden.

Some sheep. If they are tough enough to spend the night outside, then I'm sure I'm too.

Oh, this cat. I spotted it camouflaged behind a little hill of soil looking at me. I tried to lure it towards me with my phone, and it actually worked, but when I turned the phone to take a picture, it got suspicious. This was the best I could do.

I've always liked bridges like this one. It was already getting dark pretty quickly, but I decided to still try to get to the next town.

Now it's really dark. This is the lights on the other side of the Rhine being reflected by the water. At this point, I was getting more serious about finding a place to sleep, but I wasn't really tired yet, so I set out to another town.

Reached Bad Breisig, about 24 km from where I started my trip. And right at the edge of the town and just up a little slope there was this grassy field, nicely hidden from whoever might pass. Time to sleep. I woke up two or three times during the night. The first time I was woken up by the sound of ducks, and then the other one or two times from the cold and humidity. I really didn't expect it to be that cold after it had been like 20 °C all day. And it got so wet around me. I could have drunk the water off my sleeping bag, and my face started to get wet too. I still managed to sleep for almost 8 hours.

It's the next morning and I spotted one of the culprits who woke me up during the night.

She seemed pretty cool though, so we had breakfast together.

The sun was rising and I got ready to continue traveling. My feet were killing me though, so it was a really slow start of the day. And it wasn't about to get much better either. The first day of this trip was the only one that wasn't full of pain. Lesson learned: Get proper shoes or don't walk for more than a few hours a day.

I took a little trip through Bad Breisig and then went back to the shore. I took off my shoes and socks (I had kept the latter on at night) and witnessed the whole beauty of my blisters for the first time. I don't want to get into details, but it was pretty bad.

I somehow managed to stumble my way to the next town, Brohl. Now this was a cool town. Just look at this site to welcome you to the town. And it's not just any train, it's the Volcano Express!

That mountain in the background looked pretty volcano-y too. I first thought that might be the one with Laach Lake on top, but then I realized it was too close to the shore and the top wasn't big enough to be Laach Lake. And that was true. But it was still a bad idea to continue along the shore past this town. I only realized that on my way back home unfortunately though.

I took a picture of this excavator because it was so majestic. I don't care what you think about heavy equipment, but if you can't appreciate the beauty of this excavator, you need to work on your aesthetics, in the philosophical sense. Also, later I realized that I actually knew the name Furukawa from somewhere else. It's Furukawa Airi's last name!

These are like Mega Man's busters. Also, despite my feet still hurting I decided, for whatever reason, to walk to the end of that dam thing in the background, even though I knew I had to walk the whole way back. 2 km in total.

Well, here I am at the end of it. Wow. Very water. Much wet. This is also where the thing that lets me properly carry my sleeping bag on my back ripped, which made carrying it quite a bit harder for the rest of the trip.

This is the stream I could have followed uphill to get pretty close to Laach Lake up in the mountains without having to worry if I was going in the right direction, but I didn't realize at that point and kept walking along the shore instead.

Following the shore was a pretty bad idea. It was a horrible path. It was less than a meter wide and had a steep slope into the Rhine on the left side and a high wall with a highway on top on the right side. The ground were some of the sharpest rocks I've ever walked on. In the end, I came across a pipe in the wall I could walk through and then climb up to get to another path parallel to the one I was walking on but properly paved. Turned out it was the Way of St. James. You can tell by the yellow scallop shell on that rock.

The woody hell I was about to enter to get into the mountains. I didn't even know if the path I picked uphill would lead me to where I wanted to go. There weren't any signs anywhere.

Bee yard right at the foot of the mountain.

Oh man, this mountain. For the whole hour it took me to get up here, I had no idea if I was going the right way. It kind of looked as if it was exclusively used for forestation, but according to my less than optimal map there were still some towns supposed to be around here. Also one of the last views of the Rhine for this day and much of the next.

More than half an hour later I finally came across the first sign on this mountain. It wasn't telling much, but it was a start.

This path just went up and down all the time and my feet had gotten to the point where even walking downhill would be annoying because of how much pressure it puts on them.

Now we're getting somewhere. I could have used a sign like this about 3 hours before though. And I still could't read anything about Laach Lake or one of the towns around it and had to guess which way to go. It was neither of those two actually.

Civilization! Kind of. I was so glad to see something else than trees and slopes again.

I thought I had seen someone in this barn from afar and wanted to ask them for directions, but I only found these cows.

Got directions. The next town on my way to Laach Lake would be Kell. I was pretty close to the top of the mountains around here, so there was a lot more plateaus here, which made advancing a lot easier than on the slope of the mountain.

This map was kind of similar to the one I was carrying with me, but it had the big advantage of showing my currect location. What was funny though was that it was completely missing Kell, the town I was supposed to go next. It's in the middle of that town triangle north east of the lake.

Goats! They thought they'd get food from me, and they actually later did in a way.

They were still watching me. Just not in this picture because right before I took it a dog started belling, which caught their attention.

Being followed.

There we go. They immediately lost interest in me when they realized there was food on the other side of their meadow.

Reached Kell and came across this beauty. An old Opel GT, only built from 1968 to 1973 according to Wikipedia.

Front view.

The first sign I saw of Maria Laach, the abbey at the lake. It was only 5 PM and the abbey only 7 km, so I would actually be able to get there before the night.

Left Kell and headed towards Wassenach, the last town before the lake.

This was one of the most orderly forests I've ever seen I think. It almost felt like the trees were placed on a grid.

This is a spring that used to be used by the Romans back in the days according to a sign. I wonder if the water was as bad as this when they used it. It actually managed to turn the soil around it red a little further downstream.

Crossed over from one 1. FCK territory (1st Football Club Köln) to the other one (Kaiserslautern) apparently.

Basically the Romans took the stone from the volcano and built stuff like millstones from it.

This was in front of a center for Buddhist meditation. Definitely a weird sight in a town like this one.

Almost there.

You can already see the lake from here.

I was kind of envious of the people who had gotten here by car.

From this map it looked like walking across the left way of the lake was the shorter way to the abbey south west of it.

More about stone.

This was one of the spots along the shore of this huge lake that actually let you get this close to the water. Most of the rest of it was fenced.

That's the abbey in the background. My goal for today. Just a little more.

Another view of the lake.

Entered the abbey site and it was so touristic. They even had an ATM here, and a hotel, probably for the people who are too lame to just sleep in the abbey's guest house. The blue border on the left side of the map marks the area that's only accessible if someone lets you in.

The church of the abbey, with lighting that automatically turned on when someone comes near even. The whole site was pretty modern for an abbey I thought.

And the rest of it.

The fountain between the two entrances of the church.

This is one of the two entrances. Those handles have a different picture of a zodiac sign on it each. The door on the other side had their Latin names instead.

Sagittarius and Cancer.

The doors of the abbey's guest house are always closed and are only opened when you ring the bell. But it was too late in the day, so even that didn't help and I was starting to think I had to sleep outside again. But then a monk who happened to walk on a wall near the entrance spotted me and let me in. But since I just showed up without telling them before, they didn't have one of their usual guest rooms for me and instead took me to another older guest house. This was my room for the night.

Who plays board games with themselves?

This is the hallway of this old guest house. On the left you can see some of the bowls filled with cat food that were scattered around here, but I didn't see any of the cats that lived here.

Another day. I had breakfast in the same room as the "real" guests. The monk who let me in had told me I should have breakfast there too like the other ones. He was also giving a tour to a school class later that morning and asked me if I wanted to come too. I did, but it was only starting in more than an hour, so I went back to my room first.

This is the old guest house where my room was. The monk told me it was built somewhere around 1050 if I remember correctly.

The tour was about to start at 10 AM and we were waiting for the school class to arrive, so I took a look around the information hall of the abbey. This model was built from 50'000 matches, which took the guy who built it over 600 hours. Dedication at work.

The tour had started and one of the things we were shown was the bell manufacture. They have other workshops here too, but this was the only one we were shown but probably the most interesting one too. This bell weighs about 2 tons.

Drinkable water. The monks take their drinking water from a spring nearby and whatever isn't used by them ends up coming out of this fountain.

The door of one of the inner quarters.

The old library. They get new books all the time, more than they sell apparently, so they had to build a newer library to hold all of them. And this one was being restored, so they put all the books on provisional shelves in the hallway next to this library.

The inside of the church.

That picture of Jesus on the ceiling is a mosaic actually. We were also told that one of Jesus' pupils (the ones in his eyes) is as big as a soccer ball, so it must have taken a pretty long time to make it.

After the tour we were let outside the church, which also meant we were outside the blue border that separates the tourist area from the guest area. But I still had to get my stuff from my room! And whoever takes care of letting people in has a 3 hour lunch break each day! I would have had to wait 2 more hours until I could get in. But I wanted to get back to the Rhine today, so I had to find another way in, and sneaky as I am I actually did pretty quickly.

This is how I got back in. This wall is just ridiculously easy to climb. And with all the one-way doors at this site, it kind of felt like wall-hacking a Zelda dungeon.

On my way back home. I wanted to walk along the other side of the lake this time, but I couldn't find out how to get there for some reason. It didn't really seem accessible from this side.

Leaving the lake behind me.

Back in Wassenach. I should have been glad that it was mostly downhill from here, but my feet were so busted that every step was painful, considerably more than it would have on a straight path. I couldn't wait to get back home.

The town center of Kell. On my way to the abbey the day before I used this fountain to refill my water bottle and for water that was supposed to be non-potable, it didn't even taste that bad. I've had worse from hotel rooms actually.

Another helpful map I had missed on way here. The blue line shows a supposedly "dreamy" hiking path. It also leads to a stream and at that point it hit me that the stream I had seen the day before on the shore led up this mountain, so I decided to follow it on my way down.

Had I taken the same path I used to get here the first time, I would have crossed this whole valley and go back up on the other side again, but this time I only went down the valley and then took another path further down.

Entering Indian Territory?

This is the stream, my savior. No more going uphill, no more having to wonder if I was going the right way.

And this path actually shows some of the stone this region was supposed to be famous for.

"Wet paint!"

More stone.

Well, what do we have here. This cave really looks like it wants to be explored if you ask me.

Going in.

A few steps in, the path forks left but ends up in a dead-end after just one meter.

The other path leads to a bigger room that by the stuff on the ground looks like it's the hip spot for the local cool kids to hang out and consume recreational substances.

And eventually to another dead-end.

I kept following the stream and came across this site. Empty bottles waiting to be refilled. Also another easily climbable wall, but I wasn't feeling Solid Snake like enough to actually do it. So i went further down and when I passed the building, the air was full of orange soda aroma. It was so strong, it was like I was actually drinking some.

Another spring. This one's commercially used even. The table at the wall is a poem about how that water is supposed to be healing.

More empty bottles.

So "Tönissteiner Sprudel" is what the spring is called. I had read it on a map on my way here and had thought it was some kind of waterfall or rapids.

Even more stone. This one actually looks pretty cool though. You can see different layers even.

These tracks. Someone had told me I could follow these tracks to get to the Rhine (these are the Volcano Express' tracks actually), but they didn't tell me how absolutely terrible the ground was to walk on.

Last stone picture. I swear.

There it is. I couldn't wait to finally get off this mountain again.

The stream is getting wider.

And after almost an hour of walking on that painful ground around the tracks I could finally leave it and take another path further down.

But first I took a break. My last on this mountain.

Final spurt following this other stream.

The two streams flowing together. Always a good sign. It's getting flatter.

About to enter Brohl. I was kind of expecting to have to go to Bad Breisig, where I spent my first night, to get on the train back home, but fortunately this town had a train station too.

A goat fountain. The best kind of fountain.

This kind of looks like it could be close to the spot where I had seen this stream the day before when I was walking along the shore. Getting closer and closer to salvation.

There it is. The train station. I actually did it.

7.70 €! Anyone who knows me well enough can imagine how painful walking had gotten for me to be willing to spend that much money for a half hour train ride.

I also missed the train by a few minutes, so I had to wait for another hour. I usually hate waiting and take walks instead to kill time until the train arrives, but definitely not that day.

Ah, Köln. It was like a warm embrace to read those four letters.

And here I am. Finally. I had to wait another 20 minutes for the train back to where I live from here and gave my change to a homeless kid, making my total expenses for this trip 15 €. Definitely not a bad deal. And I even still had that half box of carrots and the second pack of oats. But the most important part was that I was finally able to rest my feet.