A visit to the forest...

Once upon a time, I went on a hike many years ago with H. The comment at the time (after furious laughter) was that I must be truly in love to have agreed to go on it. Well, now it turns out that there is another, great love in my life that would not only compel me into a forest, but also up a mountain. The other member of this deep, sweet romance turns out to be bier - there was a bergfest in the Bavarian Forest (Bayerischer Wald) that Fabi's grandfather (a lumberjack) helped establish up in the mountains so I may as well come along to see what a real village fest is like!

Oddly enough though, when I told Riccardito that I was heading to the forest to climb a mountain, he also laughed like crazy and demanded photographic proof. Well! This made me even more determined to climb that mountain - he ignited my desire to prove that, like any princess worth her salt, Princess Mallymoodle can get pretty damn kickass when she wants to!!! And so off I went with Fabi, his gf Steffi, and village friend Hansen!!!

The view of the forest from Deggendorf. A nice safe distance in my opinion!

At the start. We would be walking 3.5km to climb Vogelsang, a 1022m high mountain (considered by some to be a hill).

OMG, I'm in a FOREST!!!

Fabi and Hansen on the way up. Hansen (blue shirt) is a member of the village fire brigade (Feuerwehr) and set a bit of a cracking pace while also getting updates on a walkie-talkie. Fabi was all, "This is pretty fast, we can go slower if you like?" My reply went along the lines of, "FFFUUUUUU!!!!! This is easy!!!"

Hansen on top of the Regensburgerstein - a rock on the mountain from which you can see  Regensburg (here and here for photos from Regensburg).

You can also see the Danube, the Isar, and apparently on a clearer day, the Bavarian Alps. 

Me on the rock with a black labrador.

Throughout the forest, we saw lots and lots of foxglove, aka digitalis purpurea, aka fricken damn poisonous. And now that I've looked up digitalis on the internet, I can never use it to poison my enemies. 

I like to think I handled the pace quite well. In fact, here is a pic looking back towards Steffi and Fabi!

I think this was looking towards the Czech border. 

Trees!

Eventually we came down from the mountain and headed towards the bergfest. It turned out that our pace was so cracking that we'd actually climbed much faster than the time that Fabi thought we'd take, meaning that the fest was much more crowded than anticipated.

The fest is so traditional that the locals wear their normal clothes as opposed to tracht!

Also, I was NOT the only asian there!!!

My bergfest food - Wammerl (a cut of pork belly), kartoffelsalat (potato salad), and a semmel (bread roll). 

My bergfest bier! It was being served straight from barrels in the back of a truck!

The view from the meadow where the bergfest was being held.

After the bergfest, we made our way back to Deggendorf but we  stopped quickly by Schloss Egg near Metten to get some castle action. We didn't go inside because none of us could be bothered paying for it.

The gatehouse looks appropriately worthy of a castle.

Fabi told me some colourful stories about the castle - apparently some evil Count and black knights used to live there and threw people into the dungeon!

Spot the Steffi!

Before we properly headed back to Munich, we stopped by Fabi's mother's place for him to pick up his stuff

and for me to play with her new kitten, Dr. Watson!

And we also stopped to get ice cream! This is my Il Bacio del Diavolo - Chili-chocolate ice cream with strawberries. When I ordered it, the waitress said, "Aber es ist scharf!" (It is spicy!). And it actually was a little bit but not enough for cause me discomfort!