This post is about a 21km walk from Amelungsborn to Bodenwerder. I walk through a forest, and I arrive at a dark monastery.

There was no one at Amelungsborn Abbey. The night before I had called a number and a voice on the phone had told me how to get to the key to the pilgrims’ apartment from a lockbox. The apartment was nice, and there were all kinds of informational materials in the kitchen. One of them spoke of another monastery about a day’s march from here.

It was the German Orthodox Monastery of Buchhagen, and apparently it offered lodging to pilgrims.

Before I started walking a gentleman appeared from somewhere. His name was Wolfgang, and he, too, had seen the NDR news piece about me. He told me to try finding a place to sleep at the monastery, and if that didn’t work, go to a certain guesthouse in Bodenwerder, the next town.

“The owner is a friend,” he said, “and a very interesting guy.”

I left Amelungsborn and walked towards a forest. At first I was worried that there might be a lot of mud on the forest roads with all the thawing snow, but it turned out to be okay. It was quite beautiful actually. After walking for about an hour I was alone with the trees and the light of the winter day.

When it started getting dark I left the forest path to walk to the town of Kirchbrak and see their fortified church. It was from the 13th century, and even though its fortifications were much smaller, it still reminded me of some of the fortified churches I had seen in Transylvania. I wondered what had happened in this region in the 13th century for people to build their churches this way.

The German Orthodox Monastery lay on top of a hill, and when I reached the foot of the hill, I noticed that the roads were getting icy. I was a bit worried about the way back down as I was pulling the Caboose up to the monastery.

After a while I arrived at a gate. I left the Caboose there and opened the gate. There was a footpath made from boulders. It was slippery and steep. I went up anyway, just to see what was behind it. Darkness was behind it. I saw a few buildings, all of them completely black. Maybe the monks weren’t home? Or maybe they had already gone to bed? I looked at my watch: it was seven in the evening.

the walk from Amelungsborn to Bodenwerder:

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