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• Lake Constance Water hike
• Info – Lake Constance

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Lake Constance

Lake Constance
Water hike

For southern Germans it is the nearby sea substitute, for northern lights it is the first stage destination when going on vacation – Lake Constance. Located between alpine peaks and a Mediterranean ambience, it offers a stylish range.

Sylvia Lischer

08/16/1999

Summer has finally arrived. An almost overflowing fruit tree colony in the midst of bright yellow dandelion meadows has paid tribute to the warm days and welcomes me to Lake Constance with a huge, soundlessly exploding natural spectacle. Wrapped in shimmering color reflections and daring scents, I set course for Langenargen. The wind flowing into the open visor and the rumbling of the Honda bring the right rhythm, the feeling of vacation. Montfort Castle moves into focus, balancing on a graceful headland in the dark lake. Ducks and swans swing in front of it, and further out, sailboats make their way. The background is sketched by the white peaks of the Appenzell and Glarus Alps. A perfect geological backdrop, unfolded at the beginning of the Tertiary, artfully milled out in the Ice Age. On the B 31 I follow the current of the Rhine, which has been rolling westwards through the Lake Constance basin for thousands of years. The main road winds in wide swings almost mirror-inverted to the course of the bank. Friedrichshafen flies past me. It is from there that the first zeppelin arose almost a hundred years ago and probably caused the region’s first mass tourist crowds. Today it is a piece of history in the Friedrichshafen Museum. I keep humming on the Bodensee Highway, the blue-gray water in the corner of my eye, lines of cars in front of and behind me. At the current average speed of 80 km / h, around 265 kilometers of bank length could easily be unwound in around three and a half hours. But that cannot be the goal of the trip. And shortly before Immenstaad there is a branch into the hinterland. The lake disappears in the rear-view mirrors and I dive back into apple, pear, cherry & Co. Nice to drive, the dangling over Oberteuringen and Markdorf, because it leads right into the middle of the Lake Constance fruit-growing area. An enchanting Garden of Eden, created by the simple fact of a monoculture. Already after the end of the war, the livestock and grain industry was curbed in favor of more profitable and climate-favored fruit production. Fruits and vegetables are now stored in the former stables of the old farmhouses. “It doesn’t matter whether you eat a meal or throw away at each other,” the older man explains when I explain to him that his five kilo minimum order quantity of apples is cheap, but hardly transportable due to the lack of a sidecar. After a short discussion, some of the goods are consumed on site and some are pressed into the tank bag under expert supervision. Since there is no one to throw the rest of, I am dismissed with less than the minimum amount. The vitamin boost creates the basis for a sporty driving style, the B 33 opens up the right framework. The Dominator rolls into the narrow streets of Meersburg with a bang, as if a sledgehammer is hitting a garage door. In the middle of a half-timbered idyll that seems to have sprung from a textbook. Grapevines climb up candy-colored house walls, flowery bed linen flutter from the windows. The alleys climb almost vertically through the upper town, which is built in terraces on the steep slope. One floor below, the lower town is similarly tight. In between, on oriel-like porches, buildings from the Middle Ages and Baroque towers. In the castle drugstore there is an advertising sign for a slimming product, next door there are golden Droste thalers. What the city of Salzburg is successfully marketing with the portrait of Mozart, Meersburg is implementing with the image of its famous ex-resident, the poet Annette von Droste-Hulshoff. A look at the Meersburg suggests that there are hardly more suitable places to indulge in poetry. Inside the massive knight’s castle, a gray-haired guide gives me a little foray into the Middle Ages. I discover the “fear hole” in the castle dungeon, a moose foot drinking vessel in the knight’s hall and a massive fountain from which free wine once gushed for the people. But then the gloom is enough and I let the Honda carry me back into the vastness and warmth of the sunlit vineyards high above the city. Always in visual contact with the huge lake, which tapers to the uberlinger See in the west, barely revealing the contours of the flower island of Mainau. With its species-rich flora, it is, so to speak, Noah’s Ark of the plant world. Modeled close to the shore, the road leads towards Uhldingen, past high-tech ferries. In the picturesque harbor of Unteruhldingen, on the other hand, only tiny fishing boats bob around the quay without any attributes of modernity. Whitefish is on offer everywhere and apparently the ultimate Lake Constance specialty when it comes to fish: blue whitefish, smoked whitefish, whitefish cream. “Every tourist wants whitefish,” laughs Stefan Knoblauch, the owner of a fish shop on Poststrasse, “and the lake has quite different delicacies to offer.” Two corners further lies his boat, around four meters long, just big enough for two People. Stefan has some time, and so we chug out onto the lake, past the Uhldinger pile dwellings, a not quite stylish, but atmospheric replica of Stone and Bronze Age settlement forms. The 25 hp engine picks up speed with a croak. His Kawasaki ZXR 750 had a more powerful engine, grins Stefan, but he finally sold it. Because of a lack of time. Leisure time is limited with the 168 traditional Lake Constance fishermen around the lake, including Stefan. He pokes in the water with a hook until guiding thread and traps come to light. Only one eel got lost in the trap. Yesterday the yield was better, he says almost apologetically. With calm flaps of their wings, two wild geese pull over the boat, which is gently rocking on the waves. He actually learned to be a banker, says Stefan on the return trip, and also worked in a bank. But this one, his gaze glides over the water, he has known from an early age. And then he became a fisherman, like his father and like his father. The young man and the Swabian Sea, I think to myself as I say goodbye. I got cold during the boat trip and I like to let the warm wind on the B31 warm me up again. The baroque church of Birnau sits enthroned on the shores of the uberlinger See like a richly decorated cream cake. I can not resist. “Please enter the place of worship in decent clothing,” can be read at the entrance. And stern looks suggest that the motorcycle-clad visitor misses the “decent” category by a hair’s breadth. In contrast, I find the souvenir shop with the overpriced little pictures of the Virgin in the anteroom of the church somehow more indecent. On the way back to the parking lot, I discover a simple sign pointing to the concentration camp cemetery. Behind this is an unpleasant piece of Lake Constance history, which tells of the inmates of the Dachau satellite camp in uberlingen. In the winter of 1944/45 they dug the tunnels in the rock for underground production for the Friedrichshafen armaments industry. A quarter of the prisoners died, the rest survived under inhumane conditions. When I reach the exit of uberlingen, the sun is already quite low. Since the railway prevents a beautiful view of the lake anyway, I turn off to the uberlingen campsite without further ado. It is located directly on the water and is free for visitors. The barrier opens, the Honda roars to the bank, the campsite attendant afterwards with a clenched fist: “Speed ​​limit ten 10 km / h,” he thunders across the square. Meanwhile, the surface of the water is wrapped in pink tones and a sailing boat is illuminated. The view to the horizon suggests the vastness and loneliness of a Norwegian fjord landscape, makes me forget the caravans behind me for a short time. The next morning it’s all about the uberlinger See to the Hori peninsula. According to legend, after the creation of the world, God formed the Hori and proclaimed happily in Swabian: “So, now listen.” Historians, on the other hand, derive Hori from bondage, since in the Middle Ages the region was tributary to the Bishop of Constance. As soon as you climb the Schiener Berg in wonderful serpentines, the variant with satisfaction seems more obvious. Dense mixed forest suddenly darkens the road. Hardly released into the blazing sun again, small towns appear in front of the visor, lined with avenues of poplar and espalier fruit, meticulously arranged like vines. The Swiss border appears, a sharp look penetrates the helmet, thank you, drive on. Stein am Rhein, just a stone’s throw from Swiss Customs, welcomes me with a grandiose house backdrop. Narrow one-way streets pull me irrevocably into the center like tentacles, as if they wanted to demonstrate that they are home to one of the best-preserved medieval cities north of the Alps. Mythical figures stare from the house walls, battle scenes tell bloody stories from times long past. I slowly chug over to the Rhine bridge to see how the “Swabian Sea” tapers into the river. On the way to Hohenklingen Castle, high above the city, the complete scenery is presented in miniature format. The obligatory look at the map reminds you to set off, and on a flying trip back to Swiss Customs, then along the banks of the Untersee. Hemmenhofen and Gaienhofen pass by, dreamy little Hori villages that, in the first half of the century, cast a spell over artists such as Hermann Hesse and Otto Dix with their peace and seclusion. Vanishing points from urban stress and political persecution. Shortly before Allensbach I come across the B 33 again, which soon leads as a poplar-lined road through the reed belt of the Wollmatinger Ried, the most important nature reserve on Lake Constance with around eight hundred hectares. Flocks of birds in never-before-seen shape and color buzz around the narrow access road to the island of Reichenau. While the tourist buses make their way towards Mainau, I cross the so-called Konstanzer funnel, where the Rhine leaves the Obersee. Another cool Swiss customs, followed by the boring N 13 embankment, which stretches more or less in a straight line to the east. At Arbon I turn into the winding Swiss hinterland, into its quiet corners and scattered settlements, embedded in soft green valleys, hollows and hills. Flowers cover the baroque landscape design like freckles. Every now and then the view falls down to a blob of Lake Constance blue, then up again to the cool, towering Santis. It’s like living here on a sun terrace between snow and lake, beamed a hiker when I asked him for directions to the Austrian border crossing in St. Margrethen. The following route description ends somewhat confusingly with a throaty “right?” Obviously not a counter-question, but a Swiss language formalism, because the route description to Vorarlberg is exactly right. After you have elegantly bypassed Bregenz on the bank road that has been blasted into the rock, a barely perceptible road climbs in Lochau the city’s local mountain in exuberant turns. With 1064 unscathed meters of altitude, the Pfander is the highest point on Lake Constance. However, the speed limit of 40 km / h prevents any inclination and thus provides a view of the lake and the alpine panorama in a natural perspective. Hot air balloons dot the air space over the island town of Lindau. I still want to sniff a little alpine air, turn off in Dornbirn to Ebnit, a tiny mountain village in the Bregenz Forest. Flanked by the bubbling Dornbirner Ach, the path leads through a densely forested valley to finally climb the mountains at Gutle in barely comprehensible dangling stretches. Moisture creeps into the collar, followed by a stationary cold air front that relentlessly replaces the gentle, almost Mediterranean climate of the lake. Bare rock walls hatch out of the thicket, move closer and closer to the narrow path, finally suck me up in a couple of roughly hewn tunnels, while the Dornbirn Ach stays out in the sun and roars over its cliffs. At Ebnit the forest recedes. The sun is just licking away the last of the snow on the gently green hills, eyeing the omnipresent ice sheets on the alpine mountain peaks. With a last dangling through the front Bregenzerwald and a few kilometers on the German Alpine Road, I plunge down to Lindau at dusk . Exhausted, as if I had circled the entire globe instead of the lake, I sit down in one of the harbor cafes. A little more, and the Lake Constance tour would be complete. But I’m too tired. Hiking in the water is exhausting. But nice.

Info – Lake Constance

With around 540 square kilometers, Lake Constance, fed by the Rhine, is the largest lake in Germany and the second largest lake in Western Europe. The neighboring countries are Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The large masses of water behave like a thermal power station and, together with the damming effect of the Alps, ensure a mild, balanced climate in the region. Accordingly, the area is also ideal for trips in the transition period, when the surrounding mountains and passes are still or already snow and cold preventing tours.

For travelers from the northeast, the A 96 from Munich to Lindau on the east bank of the lake is ideal. The fastest route from the north is via the A 7 and Ulm. If you come from the west of Germany, the most comfortable way to travel is via Stuttgart and the A 81 in the direction of Singen to Konstanz. Travel time: With the exception of the winter months, the season on Lake Constance is all year round. The beginning of spring is a particularly beautiful time when the fruit trees are in full bloom. October is also worthwhile when the grape harvest is due on the hills around. During the school holidays and on public holidays, the driving pleasure is significantly impaired by the overcrowded streets. The route: If you only follow the well-developed riverside roads through the three countries on your Lake Constance tour, you will not experience much driving. Friends of scenic and technically beautiful routes should definitely take the recommended detour into the hinterland, because only there the whole range of the region can be seen. And since ingenious low and high mountain ranges spread out around the lake in all directions, it is worthwhile to study maps carefully and perhaps to bring a few more days or weeks with you. Pensions and private rooms equipped. Nevertheless, a reservation is recommended during the high season from June to August. During this time, surcharges of between ten and 20 percent are to be expected. Accommodation near the shore is generally more expensive than in the hinterland. Numerous farms there offer a room with breakfast from 25 marks per person. Evidence of rooms can be requested from the tourist offices of the individual towns or the tourist offices listed below. Information: Useful information material (list of accommodations around Lake Constance, sights) is available from the International Lake Constance Tourist Office, Schutzenstrasse 8, 78462 Konstanz. Telephone 07531/90940, fax 909494 (also Internationale Bodensee-Tourismus GmbH, 78465 Insel Mainau). Special information about the Bregenzerwald is available from Bregenzerwald Tourismus, A-6863 Egg, phone 0043-5512 / 2365, fax 3010. Literature: The HB image atlas “Bodensee” for 16.80 Marks and the annually updated ” Bodensee Magazin International «, from Bodensee-Magazin-Verlag for 9.80 Marks (ISBN 3-9805063-5-5). The Bodensee-Band from Michael Muller Verlag offers practical tips and extensive information for 32.80 marks. The Marco Polo General Map No. 6 from the Large Paper Collection on a scale of 1: 200,000 for 12.80 marks is suitable for orientation. (The 1998 anniversary package, which is still available, with all twelve Germany maps, costs 19.80 marks.) Distance covered: around 500 kilometers Time required: two days

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