It's been not so long since I last wrote about language learning... and now I'm actually going to have a chance to improve my old language skills. Or, to be more precise: Learn some medieval French.

I chanced across information about an online course on medieval French, held through CHASE, and open to graduate students affiliated with CHASE (which is a collaboration of a number of British universities listed here). My first thought was that that is a very cool idea, and something like that course would have been enormously helpful back when I was working on my thesis.

My second thought was that it would be enormously helpful still, as my medieval French is about, hm, non-existant. I can read modern French allright, and I used to be able to speak it passably (gone all rusty from disuse now, though). So, because it's online, and because learning a language is good brain training, and because there's nothing to lose, I asked whether it might be possible to join in if there were free spaces left. To my great delight, I just received notice that it is, and I did get in!

I certainly get the impression that couses like that are getting more frequent these days, with the corona-induced restrictions lowering the resistance to trying out digital solutions. (Which, if you ask me, is certainly a good thing.) And I'm beyond thrilled to be able to finally get some medieval French skills!

So now that I've more or less brought you up to speed on the summer break events, here's something completely different again... with thanks to one of my friends, who pointed me to it.

I like medieval music. I also like modern music. And I do enjoy a good crossover as well - at one point, me and a few colleagues had a lot of fun translating modern songs into Middle High German.

Here's a similar thing: Jolene, set into more archaic English, and nicely interpreted with appropriate instruments:


I also like the name Bardcore. Made me giggle!

Because the Forststeig trail is a true multi-day hiking trail, there's no rubbish disposal along the route, apart from the one regular campsite in Ostrov (which is after the second day of hiking or so). This means, and you are explicitly told about that on the website, that you have to carry your rubbish with you until you reach the end of the trail.

Our home-made bars, and the mostly home-made other foodstuffs, meant that we had a very manageable amount of rubbish accumulating on the trip. Also a good thing, because you are required to take everything along with you for the whole journey, there's no waste disposal along the trekking route. Because I was curious, I weighed our rubbish upon our return... and it was 140 g of plastics. (That's not counting the ziplock bags we had at home and brought along, which will be re-used.) We had thrown away about 10 g previously, at the camping place in Ostrov, and of course there was a good amount more of it when preparing the things at home, in form of the packaging for the ingredients used. It was not much in comparison to some of the other hikers on the trail - due to the homemade bars, and not using convenience food, regular or hiker-specific. It was still quite a bit, though.

So many things are still sold in plastic. Even organically grown stuff - which is especially hard for me to understand. I can sort of get it when it's soggy stuff that is being sold, or moist and oily things, but dried beans, or grains, or pasta? Please, come on. These can very well live in paper packaging.

This feeling of it being too much plastic by far was reinforced when we came back home: Indra Starke-Ottich's book "Mein Weg aus der Plastikfalle" had arrived during our time away, and was waiting for me on our table. I confess I bought the book mostly because I wanted to support Indra's cause, not because I thought I actually needed it.



Well. I now know that I did need it, and a lot of other people might also need it. The book is written in a very nice manner, with a wonderful voice that pleased me throughout. It was a gruesome read, though - and really drove home the necessity to change our ways, and our consumption, as much and as quickly as possible. I did know that plastic is not good, but did not realise how big a problem plastic poses for the environment. It basically never degrades, only falls apart into smaller pieces, which can then be consumed easily by animals and people... with the result of the average person eating about one credit card's worth of micro- and nanoplastics per week. Per week! Eeek!

Reason enough for us to look over our lifestyle again, and make a few more changes. One of them, for me, was installing an app called "replace plastic", which aims to show the makers (and packagers) of things that their customers do not want everything plastic-wrapped. Once you have the app installed, you enter your name and postcode. Then, whenever there's an item you use, or would like to use, you can scan the barcode; the app will pass the request on to the manufacturer once 20 people have scanned this item or after about 4 weeks, whatever happens earlier. That is a very quick, very pain-free and easy way to ask for a more environmentally-friendly packaging!

Another change is that I will be much more consequent in getting foods without plastic packaging. Foodstuff packing is, like probably everywhere, where the bulk of our plastic waste comes from, even though we've been trying to reduce that for a good while now. We've switched to milk in glass bottles and, more recently, we're getting our milk as raw milk directly from the farmer, and we found a source for quark in deposit glasses. (The quark costs more than twice as much as the plastic version, but it's organic as well, which means the cows do get better treatment. Our milk is actually cheaper by about the same factor now, as it's sold directly by the farmer, who will earn more per litre of milk sold at that price than for selling to a dairy factory.)

For the other food things, there's fortunately a few online shops offering plastic-free things that are hard to get locally, such as poppy seeds. Finding those involved some internet surfing, and some checking and comparing of prices to get an indication of what is sensible, and what is not. And now it's just getting those changes done, one step at a time, until they are the new and comfy way of doing stuff...

Let me talk a bit more about food (as we all know that I like to do that).

The food planning efforts were very well worth it - the things that we brought onto our trip worked very well, and they were just the right amount. We had a walk into the village of Gorisch on our last Forststeig overnight stay, and had something for dinner there; accordingly there was a little bit of food left over in the end. If we hadn't had the dinner out, we'd have ended up eating odds and ends in a slightly curious combination, but it would have been about the amount necessary to bring us to the end of the trail.

For our evening meals, which were the main meal of the day, we had pre-packed things that would cook quickly and easily, with an appropriate amount of calories, and a variety of tastes. That included potato soup with lots of bacon and some salami; rice with a rich peanut-coconut-sauce spiced with ginger (my favourite of the meals); red lentil curry, again with coconut; and pasta bolognese with sunflower seed "minced meat" (which also worked fairly well). The vegan sausages we took along to try out, eaten with mashed potatoes, were not convincing, though.
I'd packaged the individual meal parts in ziplock bags, and each bag collection was held together with a rubber band; then there was "food roulette" in the evening, when The Most Patient Husband of Them All stuck his hand into his pack and pulled out one of the packages. For breakfast, we had a kind of porridge with added dry fruits, and for food during the day, there were nuts, bread, sausage, and home-made bars. Theoretically, you'd call these "Müsliriegel" in German, or "granola bars" in English, but as we were going for more caloric value per weight unit, they were more like... nut bars. I had made some in several different flavours, and the least favourite for both of us was the most müsli-like one, with rolled oats as basis. For the others, I combined figs, walnuts and cardamom; cashews, pistachio nuts and marzipan; and our favourite variation was made from cashews, poppy seed, marzipan, almonds, and dried apricots. The last one did remind me more of a poppy seed cake than a granola bar, which is a very nice thing on such a trip!

And just in case you want to try it yourself, here's the recipe:

100 g shaved almonds
40 g poppy seed, ground
42 g maple syrup
65 g honey (I used honeydew honey, which to me always seems less sweet than other honeys)
35 g marzipan
30 g almond flour (ground almonds should also work)
55 g dried apricots
100 g cashew nuts, finely chopped or ground

Grate marzipan into small bits and mix these into the ground poppy seed. Mix in the other dry ingredients. Mix honey and maple syrup, maybe adding a little hot water, pour over the dry ingredients and mix well. The mass should be firm and sticky. Bake, either shaped into individual bars/pieces or as one flat piece, in a fan oven at c 150-160°C for about 35 mins. It's more drying the mass than baking. If baked in one piece, cut into pieces of the desired size. I had about 12 bars. They tended to stick together a bit in their little bag, but could be pried apart more or less easily. Wrapping them in rice paper would probably work well to keep them more separatistic, or placing a wafer on top and below each bar.

The apricots were not really taste-able in this mix, and could probably have been left out without a change in taste. You should be able to change the amount of the ingredients according to your preferences; as long as things stick firmly enough together, you should be fine - the individual ingredients are all stuff that keeps well, and their combination, accordingly, should do so too.

For trekking beginners like us, the Forststeig was the perfect setup: Taking everything you need, and getting the experience of having to rely on what you brought, but with the option of finding a bus stop and getting out with only a few kilometres to walk at about any place during the trip. I'm not sure whether I would have dared to do a trip with a similar description (only for experienced hikers, it said) without that option. We had done a few trips before, especially to try how well we both could handle walking several days in a row with a pack, and how we'd cope with a rather heavy pack, but we still were not sure about the combination, and doing a multi-day hike with all the food, and sleeping in a tent, and so on.

Accordingly, there was a lot of planning beforehand, and more thinking about what to bring and what to leave at home than usually. Lots of weighing of stuff was happening. (Interestingly, women's underpants are much more lightweight than men's, but that advantage is completely eaten up again if you plan to bring bras, which are surprisingly heavy.) We did weigh about everything, partly because it was interesting, partly because it helped to decide which shirt or sweater to pack, and also because we tried to keep track of the ever-growing load we'd have to carry. It was a very good thing that most of our equipment was already chosen to be lightweight and relatively small to pack; it's not as crucial on bike trips, but it does of course help. There was more food-planning, of course, too. Usually, when on a bike or canoe trip, we have a "kitchen pack" which includes spices, a few kitchen tools such as a can opener and a peeler as well as sharp knives, and then we pack some essentials such as rice, pasta, couscous, oil, vinegar, coffee, tea, butter, jam, and so on. Then we rely on being able to buy fresh ingredients along the way, or eat out if we fancy it and get the opportunity. There's always at least a full meal's worth of ingredients in the pack though. The powdered tomato sauce packets sold for pasta are a staple fallback for this; in case there's nothing to be had anywhere, we can always have rice or noodles with tomato sauce. (We've had situations where that fallback was necessary, and much appreciated.)

This time, fresh stuff was mostly out, because of its weight and bulk. We took some snack veggies onto the train trip with us, and had them along for the very first day of walking, when they got consumed according to plan. Afterwards, it was dried stuff, and no fresh things at all - which was weird and very unusual. I did get my fix of freshness at least partly by picking blackberries whenever they presented themselves and looked more or less ripe, and there were a few late raspberries as well, but it was certainly far below the usual rate of greenery and fruit consumption.
Also much different to my usual meal planning, where I prefer things that are lower in caloric value, we tried to pack densely for the trip - and that did include nutritional value in regard to weight and bulk. Nuts were our friends, and I've probably never eaten so many nuts in a week before this. There was some wild guesstimating as to the number of calories required for a day, and some maths, and then there was writing of green numbers with the kcal values on each package, which did help a lot for the planning. It all added up in the end to about the amount we were guesstimating, and made for an astonishingly large pile of food. So large that we doubted it would all fit into the backpacks - but with careful squishing, and packing everything in as tightly as possible, and relegating tent and sleeping mats to the outsides of the backpacks, we did manage to pack everything.

We ended up with about 14 and 18 kg of pack weight, without drinking water (which added another one and 1.5 to 2.5 kg to the packs, respectively). That was quite heavy, but still manageable. It felt like about 80% of it was food (not quite true)... and the nice thing about having such a lot of food in the pack is that it will get lighter every day.

[caption id="attachment_5563" align="alignnone" width="216"] This pack contains... mostly food. Or so it felt!


So we went on the trip, and walked, and it was taxing, at times, but it was utterly wonderful, and we even had a lot of luck regarding the weather. There was one day when it was raining all day long, and that was by chance the one day that we spent evening and night in a hut. When we arrived there, someone was already there, the wood stove was on, it was nice and warm inside, and we could dry our wet things - heavenly!

Now that I've posted the date-y things, it's time for some rambling about the summer break. First of all, and most importantly: It was wonderful. It was also full of things, both holiday-ish things and some work-related stuff that I finally got around to doing, and some household things, and a bit of cooking things, and some green living stuff. All of this is, in some ways, mashing nicely together. Which also means that I want to write about all of this, which will probably result in a long and rambling post that will be split at semi-random places to make a series of blog posts, because it's definitely way, way too much to go into a single one.

So. Let me set the scene...

First of all was our vacation, with a trip. Like about almost everyone, we spent our holidays this year in Germany (though we quite often do that, actually, since we both appreciate not having to travel for ages before or after). We had originally thought about going on a cycling tour in Denmark, but several different things, such as not being keen on spending 8+ hours on the train wearing masks, and some issues with the bike that are a bit more complicated and need to be fixed before a trip with heavy luggage, along with the usual C-19 issues of going abroad, made us change our plan. At least the bike issues meant that the decision what to do was easier: canoeing or hiking. We definitely wanted to use campsites as much as possible, which ruled out quite a few possibilities. That was especially the case with the hiking areas and hiking routes; a lot of them only have very few campsites along the route, and you need to spend nights in pensions, hotels or B&Bs. This would not be a real deterrent for us in a normal year, but this summer, we had indications that it might be rather full in German accommodations.

In the end, after researching quite a bit, we had almost given up on the hiking plan - and then I clicked one last link, and stumbled across something called the "Forststeig", and there we had it. The perfect hiking route for us: located in Saxonia, in the Elbsandstein area. This place is known for its spectacular sandstone formations - we had seen them when paddling on the Elbe last year, but it's very different again to explore them on foot.



The route is leading you through the forest with almost no contact with civilisation, with small campsites just for the Forststeig hikers. We were a bit unsure at first, as you have to carry all your food and take care about your drinking water underway, but we did decide to do it. Definitely a very, very good decision - it was glorious!

[caption id="attachment_5556" align="alignnone" width="225"] Stone steps in the middle of nowhere - a rather frequent occurrence.


The Forststeig leads you from Schöna to Bad Schandau, almost exclusively on small paths and trails. The route goes through Germany and the Czech republic, and on some parts, you walk right on the border between these two states. Because it's meandering to make sure you climb every hill (the steeper the better) and see every spectacular sight, the route manages to squeeze more than a hundred kilometres of trail into the area.

[caption id="attachment_5557" align="alignnone" width="225"] You can be sure that if there's a "comfy ascent" and a "steep ascent", the Forststeig will send you up the former.


It's very well marked (yellow lines on the trees), and there are campsites and a few huts for spending the night along the way. There's also one partner campsite near Bad Schandau, and one regular camping site in Ostrov. There's a scant handful of restaurants in the first half of the route, but there are no shops along the way. In fact, you're always as far away from civilisation as is possible. You're sometimes very close to the stones, though:

[caption id="attachment_5558" align="alignnone" width="300"] In some spaces, the stones are close enough together that my backpack touched both sides of the gap...


We walked about 12 to 18 km each day, with the packs slowly getting lighter. That was exhausting, but in a very good way - and it felt so good to be breathing fresh forest air all day long, and to have (mostly) silence, and then casual good company in the evenings when we'd see other hikers again at the bivouac sites. And because we all were outdoors all the time, there was no wearing a mask for days. You could almost forget there's a pandemic going on...

More catching up: There's a recently started exhibition at the Haus der Seidenkultur Krefeld, titled "Purpurschnecke und Färberwaid". It is about the development of textile dyeing and colourings, and it will remain open until 28.02.2021.

You can read more about the exhibition in German here, and English information is available here. And if you want, you can even watch the video recording of the (mostly digital) opening!