A bubbling left, a chuckling right, a rustling from above - otherwise it's quiet. The surface of the water glistens, and beneath it the streaks of the buttercup glow in signal green. The hilly landscape passes in slow motion under a white-gray sky, junipers, rocky hillside meadows, electricity pylons and sheep pastures. A family of ducks swims next to us, in the distance stands a gray heron, which soon flies away silently. Then nothing. The Altmühl is setting the pace today, and that is: very slowly. No wonder, because anyone who adorns himself with the superlative “Bavaria's slowest flowing river” has to be classified somewhere between meditative and hypnotic. We slowly avoid nettles, blackberry bushes and willow branches on the bank. In the expanding silence, the eleven-year-old asks:“How does infinity end?” Paddle stroke on the left. "I have no idea." Paddle stroke to the right. "With t."
Andreas Lesti
Editor in the features section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in Berlin.
Follow I follow
As the father of a fourth grader and a sixth grader, you know the comic genre of flat jokes better than you would like. And immediately thought of another shallow gag when Michael Müller asked this morning: "Can you drown in the Altmühl?" Müller looked a little crooked and waited - just like fourth and sixth graders - a tad too long with the answer: "Yes, if you are too lazy to get up." Michael Müller, the owner of the campsite and the associated boat rental in Beilngries, one of the larger towns in the area, drove us to Kipfenberg that morning, 16 kilometers upstream. The Altmühl winds here in many loops across northern Bavaria, from Gunzenhausen to Kelheim, where it flows into the Danube. And on all conceivable sectionsThose in between can be comfortably drifted by boat hikers or actively paddled ahead. There really is something for everyone.
At the parking lot we lifted the red Canadian from the trailer together, and Michael Müller explained to the children how best to use the paddle.
His campsite, “You can't imagine that!
- has been bursting at the seams for a year, "he said and makes no secret of the fact that he benefited from Corona:" Last year we had almost half of all overnight stays in Beilngries. "Then Müller wished us a lot of fun on this" slowest flowing river "and called after us:" Some also say it is the fastest flowing lake in Bavaria. "