A weekend trip to Frankenjura

This weekend, I took a short trip to the Franconian Jura in Bavaria, Germany with 2 other women I met for the first time on Monday (I’ll call them L and A). We all met through a climbing group in Berlin. I’m not a climber, but I asked if I could tag along, and so I did.

Sometimes, going out in the nature involves not really doing anything but just being out there. For me, it’s a great way to bend time, or at least the perception of it. It’s been a while since I could wake up on a Monday morning feeling like I had a good, fulfilling weekend. So I want to write some thoughts down while I still remembered.

Day 0 - Getting there #

It was around a 5-hour drive from Berlin. We stayed at a campsite called Kormershof which was probably one of the nicest campsites I’ve stayed in – there’s a climbing wall within a 5-min walk, a fireplace, clean toilets and warm showers, a cool underground storage for food, lots of cute animals, surrounded by fields where I got to see lots of fireflies at night.

We left on a Friday morning and stayed over for 2 nights. It was raining on our way there, but the sky cleared as we arrived and had a two full day of sun. We arrived around 4pm on Friday, set up our tents and checked out a nearby rock.

Day 1 #

We had a slow start with a big breakfast. Back home in Japan, I usually have a fairly good idea of what I want to take with me to these kinds of trips, but this time I really struggled at the supermarket. L and A were both vegetarians, and it was great to see what they had brought.

There are so many options when it comes to rocks you can climb in the area, but I also noticed that there were people hiking, canoeing, biking and even combining multiple activities like these as well. It made me want to get out there a lot more.

I’m a complete beginner in climbing, but this is not my first time going on a climbing trip - I’ve had friends who took me to climbing areas in the past and let me climb with a top-rope in Japan, Israel and France. However, this was my first time climbing in Germany, and it was interesting to listen and learn climbing terminologies in German. Interestingly, I already knew a few words because the words we use in Japan seem to have been borrowed a lot from German.

For example, in Japan, we call ropes for climbing ザイル (seil - DE) to distinguish from other smaller ropes which we call ロープ (rope - EN). We call small tents ツェルト (zelt - DE) to distinguish from bigger tents, which we borrow the English word テント (tent - EN). Other words borrowed from German: Steigeisen (shortened to ‘Eisen’), Kar, Schlafsack (shortened to Schlaf), Haken, Eispickel (shortened to Pickel), Hütte, Jacke … I find it so strange that words such as Kocher (cooker) or even Jacke (jacket) are taken from German instead of using existing Japanese words.

*A lot of Alpine climbing related terms are taken from English.

This was also probably a trip that made me want to properly get into climbing. Even though I’ve watched people climb enough times to have a general idea of what goes on up there, I still felt like I didn’t know anything at all because everyone did things slightly differently and there was no consistency in the way I learned from different people.

We went for walks in the evening, gazed up at the stars, and slept like babies.

Day 2 #

We packed our things and went to the same area as yesterday. I really wish I could speak German more, so I could casually strike up a conversation with other climbers.

We listened to some podcasts For the Love of Climbing on our way back on the car, which was nice to listen to.

Afterthoughts #

Even though the three of us were complete strangers just a few days prior to going on this trip, I had a lot of fun and really felt connected. I’ve been feeling quite lonely in Berlin ever since the pandemic hit. I was doing my best to make new friends despite the restrictions, and I was meeting people (with social distancing of course) and yet was still really struggling to find meaningful connections, to a point where I felt somewhat hopeless. Was I naive to think I could start over, make new friends, build up a life from ground-up in a new city where I didn’t speak the language? Maybe. But this trip made me hopeful. Or at least, gave me motivation to at least give it a try - to connect and really build on relationships I can feel a part of.

Some things on my mind right now: I want to take a beginner’s course in top-rope climbing and lead-climbing, get my own gear (at least the minimum necessary things) and get stronger physically. I want to join the alpine club in Germany and learn more German, especially climbing related words and phrases. I also want to get more involved in climbing communities and plan more active weekends. This trip has also inspired me to do other outdoor trips around Berlin (no more couch-potato!), like multiple-day canoeing/cycling in Brandenburg or hiking in Sächsische Schweiz.

I finished a few books while camping and saw beautiful fireflies and dragon flies. I got introduced to great instant meals perfect for hiking. And I got to know two beautiful people and learned beautiful stories from them which made me hopeful about my life here in Germany.