Planning

The first thing that comes to the mind when thinking about a trip from Germany to Italy is that there are the Alps to cross. Of course, we'd done that a number of times before, but always by car, train or plane. Dad had even done it on his racing bike in the past, together with his father, with his mother driving the "support car". But on foot?

We had spent nearly all our family holidays in the Alps and so knew we would be able to use any footpath that didn't ask for climbing gear. But I didn't feel expert enough to try to find a route myself. So I scanned the internet and bookstores for information on alpine crossings for moderately skilled hikers. The one that runs from Munich to Venice was out of the question, as both cities lie far to the east of the shortest route. The Via Mala/Via Spluga route in eastern Switzerland was an option. But the paths seemed to be quite wide, well suited for people with little alpine experience, but ill suited to our children, who tend to get bored if the path is more than a meter wide and well-traveled. They prefer small paths with lots of rocks, plants and animal prints to look at.

So the decision fell on the E5/Via Alpina route (www.via-alpina.org; the north part of the yellow route). This meant that the finishing line for the first year of hiking was the door of the train station in Oberstdorf.

The first challenge then was to find a route from home to Oberstdorf. The first stage had been easy: as told before, find a village to the south from which we could get back. As Oberstdorf is on the headwaters of the river Iller, which runs to the Danube, meeting it in Ulm, it was logical to choose this old free town as first goal. Luckily, good maps are available from the survey service of Baden-Württemberg (www.lgl-bw.de, unfortunately in German only, but their maps are availalbe in bookstores).

With a daytrip ending in Geislingen in the valley just south to ours, and a weekend trip from Geislingen to Ulm, we reached that goal safely.