Day # 49 Neuenburg to Lorrach.

Lorrach youth hostel. Very pleasant.

            A sunny early morning, bright but cold, welcomed me to the (German) world  as I slipped hotel moorings at 7.45 am ---hardly light, in this neck of the woods. Sometime in the next few weeks there is going to be a one hour shift to daylight saving and with trains and planes to catch in my near future, I shall have to watch that.

         My walk apportionment today was a little less, 16 kms, than originally planned and takes me to the border town of Lorrach, only 10 kms from Basel, Switzerland. Still suffering from a heavy head cold and related symptoms, I plan to spend a second day, tomorrow, in Lorrach based in the very modern and large, (albeit empty) youth hostel at the edge of town. Not sure yet whether Lorrach is touristically significant, but it will provide an extra day for my walking strength to recover. Anyway, a good excuse relax & to while away a couple of hours in a coffee garden!

        The walk today out of Neuenburg was unexceptional: fields waiting for the field corn to be harvested, gradually transforming into warehouses, factories & stockyards.

       The densely populated border in this area between Germany and Switzerland is convoluted. Basel itself is like a finger sticking into Germany, and France is only two kilometres to the west. No wonder they refer to Basel locally, as the city of three cultures. Apparently, a lot of local Germans cross the border to work in Switzerland due to higher wages and return to Germany to live, for the lower rents.

        I remember as a kid reading stories of escaping Jews & British prisoners of war successfully making it to the Swiss frontier and freedom, only to blunder back into Germany and recapture, as the border switched back---looking at a local map, I can certainly understand the problem they had on dense forest tracks, at night.

16.0 kms. walked today per Google Maps.
922.7 cumulative kms. walked.
Type of overnight lodging: Youth hostel.
Cost of lodging:  34E.