“Look at that rock. Do you know what it tells us?” Kristin Arnold, My guide in the Saxon Switzerland National Park in southeastern Germany points to a large mass of light green moss growing on a boulder.
““It tells us that the air quality here is great,” Kristin says. “This moss doesn’t grow when there’s pollution around.” She inhales deeply, making the buckles of the backpack strapped across her chest creak. It’s infectious, like a yawn. The chirping of unseen birds and the drizzle on ferns mingle with the sounds of our breathing as we fill our lungs with premium Saxony oxygen.
Saxon Switzerland crosses Germany and the Czech Republic and got its name when two 18th-century Swiss painters, Adrian Zingg and Anton Graff, noticed that the beauty of the sandstone mountain landscape was reminiscent of their homeland. The area has attracted hardcore hikers for centuries, but the western edge of the 94 km2 national park has become easily accessible to skinny amateurs like me.
This is thanks to Bad Schandau, a spa town on the banks of the Elbe, which is served by direct trains to Dresden, Berlin and Prague in the south. A night train connects Zurich with Bad Schandau and in March the European Sleeper which ran between Brussels and Berlin was extended to here.
From Bad Schandau station, a tiny passenger ferry takes me across the Elbe to Hotel Elbresidenz an der Therme, where I get a free public transport pass: standard for tourists. The town is walkable, with buses and a tram serving hiking trails, and an Art Nouveau lift from 1904 connecting Bad Schandau to the suburbs.
Kristin says most tourists go to the Bastei Bridge, built in 1851 to connect spherical rock formations, or the nearby large Königstein Fortress on the hilltop. She smiles with relief when I ask for a “non-Tripadvisor” tour, then leads me to a trail that starts at the Schrammsteinbade bus stop. We duck beneath forested sandstone ridges and slowly climb metal ladders up rocky crevices.
A vast jagged sandstone wall towers above the forest, a gnarled ridge with wiry trees sprouting from its midriff. Winter scenes like this inspired Caspar David Friedrich, the German Romantic artist, to paint works like his 1818 masterpiece Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. Kristin says that this area, known as Schrammsteine, is packed with selfie-seekers in the summer, but now it’s ours.
A huge jagged sandstone wall towers high above the forest. Scenes like this inspired the romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich
Kristin points out small metal boxes on some of the most dangerous-looking rock peaks. They contain logbooks in which climbers can record their vertical conquests. Recreational climbers have been climbing the 90-meter-high Falkenstein, the area’s most famous climbing crag, since the mid-1800s.e century, but Kristin says that tools from the Middle Ages have been found.
She opens a picnic box of local wild boar salami and walnuts, plus local cheese. Kristin doesn’t accept hiking groups of more than eight people, to minimize her tour company’s impact on the national park. Climate change is a big enough problem for the park without the added burden of overtourism, she says. In recent years, bark beetles have been gnawing through the park’s spruce trees because warmer winters haven’t killed the insects.
Kristin says some local businesspeople don’t want the national park, which has 250 miles of hiking trails, to remain a protected area, “so they can build zip line parks and get more tourists. I’d rather help protect it for future generations.”
Sustainability is also promoted in Schmilka, a one-street village on the Czech border and a short bus ride east of Bad Schandau. As I eat sausage and lentil soup in the village restaurant Gasthof Zur Mühle, I admire antique wooden pinball machines mounted on the wall: they are part of a collection by entrepreneur Sven-Erik Hitzer.
Hitzer began playing a form of rustic Monopoly in Schmilka in the late 2000s, buying and renovating buildings until he owned nearly every location here. His friendly employees show me a 200-year-old wooden bread oven in the village bakery, which was then their organic brewery.
Some of the “sustainable” measures, like a giant water-powered wooden wheel that grinds grain, are for show. But Kristin tells me that Hitzer, though a shrewd businessman, was focused on sustainability before it became an industry buzzword. Heat from the bakery and brewery helps power the village, and electric car chargers were recently installed.
After two peaceful days in the mountains of Saxon Switzerland, I would probably marry a bunch of Saxon moss if it appealed to me.
I’m tempted by the steam rising from Schmilka’s wooden outdoor hot tubs, but instead end my trip in Toskana Therme, the large pool and sauna complex that I have free access to as a guest of the Hotel Elbresidenz an der Therme. After being scolded by a waiter for not changing out of my swimsuit quickly enough in the sauna area, I float in the circular Liquid Sound pool, my breathing slowing as tinkling classical music plays from underwater speakers.
As I watch purple jellyfish shapes being thrown onto the ceiling, I start a whispered conversation with a dreadlocked man floating next to me. His name is Andreas Ullrich, an artist from Dresden who has set up an artist residency here to attract more creatives who make works inspired by nature.
“The drama of life is played out here,” says Andreas. “There is a cherry tree that we visit and consider family. In our house, a bird comes in the morning and taps on the window. Maybe this is just the romantic image of a man who has lived most of his life in a city, but these sensations feel deep and rich.”
Normally, the mention of friendly trees and anthropomorphic birds would have me running to wash the hippie out of my system. But after two serene days in the mountains of Saxon Switzerland, I would probably marry a bunch of Saxon moss if it asked me to marry it.
Journeys from London to Brussels were provided by Eurostar (from £38 one way). Journeys from Brussels to Dresden were provided by Omio, whose app allows travellers to compare different transport methods at once. Accommodation in Bad Schandau was provided by Hotel Elbresidenz an der Therme (double rooms from €190 B&B, with access to Toskana Therme), via Tourism Association Saxon Switzerland. The European Sleeper train runs between Brussels-Midi and Bad Schandau station (one way couchette from €69)