The Rennsteig is a 170 km hiking trail that runs through the Thuringian Forest, a low mountain range in central Germany. The Rennsteig is an ancient border path and many historic border stones can still be seen today. The trail also crosses the old border between east and west Germany several times, so it was impassible from after WWII until 1990. It is a fairly easy trail to hike, as it follows a ridge. Elevations vary from 196 m at the northern terminus in the town of Hörschel to 972 m at the highest point to 414 m at the southern terminus in the town of Blankenstein. We split our hike across two holiday weekends, which gave us too many days (eight) to hike 170 km. Next time, we’ll probably give ourselves about five days to hike the entire trail. There are also Rennsteig ski and bike trails that share part of the hiking route. There are small huts along the trail every 2 km or so.
Planning
- Camping: Wild camping is very possible on the Rennsteig. There are huts about every 2 km.
- Transport: Hörschel and Blankenstein, the starting/ending cities, are both accessible by regional trains. We ended up hiking past Hörschel to the larger town of Eisenach, which has more train options including the ICE (high speed train).
- Water: The trail follows a ridge, so there wasn’t always water right on trail. We sometimes had to fill up water in town or take side trails to springs below the trail.
- Services: The trail goes directly through numerous towns, so stopping for a coffee or beer , etc. is very easy.
- Navigation: The trail is well marked. Still, we loaded the GPS route onto our phone ahead of time with potential huts and stops marked.
Daily Trail Journals Part 1: Masserberg to Hörschel
May 30th to June 3rd, 2019
Day 1
Today we set out to hike a section of the Rennsteig. Today (Thursday) is Ascension Day, a German holiday, so no work! We also took Friday and Monday off :-). We met our PCT friend Parmesan at the Göttingen train station and then took two trains and two buses to Masserberg to start. Before we hit the trail we stopped for a weissbier at a small cafe. At 1 we finally started hiking. The first part of the trail was beautiful and forested. But, for most of today the trail was close to or next to a road. We had lunch at a shelter on top of a hill. We took another beer break later at the Rennstieg museum. When we finished for the day we set up camp at another nice shelter. Today is also Father’s Day or maybe just Men’s Day. There was a group of rowdy men drinking beer near the shelter for a bit after we arrived. One of them hid a beer behind a tree for us! Very thoughtful! Seems like he had already had too much, but the other men were pressuring him to finish that last beer. Because of the holidays the trail is a little bit busy, but we hope it will calm down tomorrow. We are using a map of the trail that Parmesan made that works very well on our phones. It shows the route, shelters, potential beer stops. For dinner we had taco mac. Yum! -Tim
Day 2
Last night we were wild camping in a shelter on the trail off of a dirt road near the main road. At around 3am we woke up when a car pulled up next to the shelter. There was music playing and a guy was talking. A guy walked up to our hut and shined a flashlight in. When he saw us, he ran back to his car and got in. He turned his car around, shined the headlights at us, beeped at us a few times, and then drove away. Very strange. We fell back asleep and managed to sleep in until almost 8, which is impressive considering sunrise is before 6. The trail was very nice today. We finally broke away from the road we were next to all day yesterday. We walked through pretty conifer forests with some nice views of the hills around us. We started out the day by hiking to the top of “Finsterberg” peak at about 800 meters on a Rennsteig alternate. We also reached the high point of the trail today at close to 1,000 meters. The trail stayed pretty high all day – above about 700 meters. We hiked through two ski towns and stopped for weissen beer at both. We found a great hut off of the Rennsteig for some more wild camping tonight. There have been huts about every 2 km. I think probably because the Rennsteig seems to be a cross country skiing trail in the winter. We ate dinner, played cards, and headed to bed early, before sunset at 9:30. Another fun day of hiking with Parmesan and Sausage, enjoying being outside, reminiscing a bit about the PCT, learning German, and coming up with future hiking plans. -Renee
Day 3
After a nice sleep we woke up in our hut a little bit before 7. We had breakfast and several coffees and then headed out. We quickly made it to an overlook that had a nice shelter and amazing view. During our break there a cyclist came by who told us he had only seen 2 hikers in 15 miles. But, it was early, and his experience of so few people didn’t hold. It was definitely less crowded on the trail than during the Holiday Thursday, but there were plenty of people out. We took our first break for weissbier at a roadside stand that was amazingly cheap. 2.50 € for beer and 1.00 € for coffee. Nice. We had lunch at a hut with excellent tables. We hiked on to our second weissbier break at a trail-side restaurant. With all of the options along the way, we are typically taking two cafe breaks and having three weissbiers each along the trail. That’s different from hiking in the USA, but it’s hard to complain 🙂 We got our last water for the day at a spring below the trail that was first recorded in the year 1039. From the spring we had a big climb back to the trail. It reminded us of water collections on the PCT last year. On the climb up Renee brushed against a stinging nettle plant and had a small reaction, but it wasn’t too bad and went away completely within a few hours. Germany doesn’t have poison ivy or poison oak, but it does have stinging nettles. After the stinging nettle encounter, we were inspired to brew stinging nettle tea. It was good! We are camping in another hut. We shouldn’t have brought our tent… The huts are really neat because they are open to the forest in the front, but protected from rain and wind with a roof and 3 walls. We had Thai curry for dinner–it was our last remaining meal from the stockpile we assembled for the PCT. Despite being more than a year old, it tasted great! -Tim
So many beer options along the way! 
Prost! 
Day 4
The trail today was a bit more challenging than it’s been the last 3 days. We had some steep ups and downs. We woke up at over 800 meters and went to sleep at 386 meters. The forest has transitioned from mainly conifers to mainly deciduous trees. There were some nice springs not far off the trail to get water. We saw a mouse near our hut last night, so we did an extra careful job of hanging our food, putting away our socks, and tucking in our shoe laces. We were successful. The mouse didn’t chew through anything. Good lessons learned on the PCT. 🙂 We stopped at 3 Imbisse (roadside food stands) today for weiß beer. Our hut tonight has an awesome view of the castle where Martin Luther translated the Bible. -Renee
Day 5
Our last day on the Rennsteig… For now. We started by enjoying breakfast from our campsite with a view of the castle where Martin Luther translated the bible 500 years ago. We started walking at 8:10. We had an easy trail down to the town of Hörschel, where the Rennsteig ends (starts). There were some minor ups and downs, but overall it was a steady descent. The forest was pretty, and as we came into Hörschel we also walked through farm fields. As always, as we approached town the number of hikers sharing the trail increased, but since today is a Monday the trail never became particularly crowded. We were hoping for a Weissbier when we arrived in Hörschel, but it was a tiny town and the one bar was closed. After a short break we hiked on toward Eisenach, from where we had already bought train tickets. We enjoyed Weissbier and plum cake at a cafe that was right on the Eisenach central square. -Tim
Food Part 1: Masserberg to Hörschel
Below is the assortment of food that fueled the first five days of our Rennsteig hike. We are good at making yummy meals… But we learned on the PCT to eat miserable junk food for snacks, and we haven’t broken that habit yet…
Dinners 
Lunches — Mostly cold soaked 
Breakfasts — Cold soaked 
SNACKS!
For breakfasts we made Chocolate Coconut Overnight Oats and Simple Cinnamon Sugar Overnight Oats.
For lunches we made meals that could be cold soaked, including Homemade Ramen and Rice & Beans.
For dinners we made Spanish Rice & Beans, Ethiopian Lentils & Rice, Taco Pasta, and Coconut Cashew Curry.
Daily Trail Journals Part 2: Masserberg to Blankenstein
June 8th to 10th, 2019
Day 1
After 4 days of work, we headed back to the Rennsteig to finish it off. This is another holiday weekend. Monday is Pfingstmontag (Whit Monday or Pentecost Monday). We are starting in Masserberg again, but heading east instead of west this time. Parmesan already did this part of the trail a few years ago, so it’s just me and Tim this time. It is great to be back in the forest. The German forests are full of birds and bird noises. We have seen lots of property markers on the side of the trail. They look a bit like tombstones and are hundreds of years old. They mark who owned the land. The Rennsteig is an old trade route. The trail was relatively easy today, so we ended up going father than planned. We got to our hut pretty early and we had cell service, so we called our families to say hi. -Renee
Day 2
It was cold last night, but our sleeping bags and puffies kept us tolerably warm. We weren’t quite expecting it to be so cold since 1. It’s June, and 2. It was very hot last weekend. But, this is our first summer in Germany so we’re still getting used to the weather. We enjoyed breakfast and hit the trail around 8:30. The terrain today was very easy, despite the trail remaining at a relatively high elevation (~750m) all day. We stopped for beer and a snack at a hotel/restaurant, where the waitress and our neighbors were confused by our vegan ways and then appalled when we asked for ketchup instead of hollandaise to put on our Kloß (potato balls). We explained in broken Deutsch that Americans put ketchup on everything, and we all had a good laugh. There were beautiful flowers growing alongside the trail this afternoon. Purple and pink flower cones. We took some pictures, and we have to look up what they’re called. Toward the end of the day we pushed a bit farther than planned… The first hut we wanted to stay in was near a road so we skipped it, but we forgot to fill up water at the spring nearby. The next hut would have been fine, but we hadn’t yet found water. Then we came to a tiny hut that also didn’t have water, but it was near a river on the map. We set off towards the river, but before we got there we found a trail-side ditch flowing with nice water. We filled up and pushed on to the next hut, which was perfect. We got there only a few minutes before it started raining. We had our newest recipe for dinner–Ethiopian rice, lentils, and cabbage–Yum! -Tim
Day 3
We only had about 8 km to go to finish the Rennsteig today. There was rain overnight, but we stayed dry in a hut. We mostly descended to the town of Blankenstein. We quickly left the forest and walked through farm fields (canola and grains) and eventually the town. We got to the Eastern terminus before 10am. We stopped for coffee at a nice Café and chatted with the owner for awhile. It wasn’t open yet, but she made us coffee anyway! 🙂 Then we hopped on the train for the 2 transfer, 5 hour ride back to Göttingen. It is so great to be able to take the train (and sometimes bus) to/from trailheads!! It enables us to easily do point to point trips rather than loops or out-and-backs on the weekends. -Renee
