On the border between Baden and Bavaria, there is a track called “Smart Pfad.” Spanning a length of 15 kilometres, this ‘smart path’ features 45 exhibits that explain how our world works. The exhibits have been carefully chosen by people, who love their home region. Going for a stroll in the Mudau part of the Odenwald.
Christoph Müller has always lived in Mudau—a municipality with 5,000 inhabitants located between Eberbach and Buchen. Like his grandparents and parents used to. He is deeply rooted in his hometown. It is here that he used to go playing under old oak trees amidst lush green meadows as a child. It is here that he can observe bats flying above his head with a hissing sound when he sits in his garden in the evenings. And it is here that everyone knows each other, among all of the sparsely populated nine parts of this municipality. And everyone helps each other. “Our village-like lifestyle and our rich scene of associations are characteristic,” says Christoph, who is in charge of geotourism in the town hall of Mudau. Basically, his job is to bring the beauty of his home region home to other people—its character and its laws of nature.
Christoph Müller demonstrates how to playfully learn and enjoy nature at the same time.
To achieve this, the municipality developed the Smart Pfad track together with the Joachim & Susanne Schulz Stiftung foundation and the Kirchzell and Amorbach villages. The track runs 15 kilometres along the Main-Neckar cycle track. Six stations along the way with different topics attract visitors and offer tasks, experiments, knowledge boards and special playground devices. “The attractions are aimed at playful learning and taking exercise at the same time. And: at unwinding and decelerating your life,” Christoph explains.
The local of Mudau runs his fingers over three parti-coloured cubes that are fixed with red metal springs to the ground. They are part of the temperature station that is located at “Unter dem Brunnen” square and is one of three stations in the Mudau neighbourhood. The first cube is made of concrete, the second of rubber and the third made of larch wood. The concrete block feels cool, the rubber block hot and the larch pleasantly warm. “All of them are exposed to sunlight in the same way, an yet they absorb and store heat very differently.” And there you are—in the thick of scientific phenomena that determine our ways of life. Such as the phenomenon of temperature that surrounds us and that we can influence in very simple ways.
The “Smart Pfad” runs 15 kilometres along the Main-Neckar cycle track.
Christoph Müller at the sundial.
Romping around and learning at the same time—that’s the idea of this track.
Christoph Müller enjoys the various stations—no less than children do.
Behind the barefoot path there is an “Indian air conditioner” consisting of empty bottles that are cut open on the one end and fixed in a plate. When wind blows through the bottles it becomes nice and cool on hot days: the air that comes out on the other side of the plate is cooler. This construction can help in saving lives, when people in India or Bangladesh live herded together in corrugated-iron huts at an external temperature of 45 degrees Celsius. “We asked ourselves: How is it possible to solve the world’s climate issues? What sustainable methods are there at hand?,” Christoph explains. He lets his gaze wander into the distance, to the treetops of the Odenwald. “Many solutions can be found in nature itself.”
“I am bursting with pride, because we have such a great place here.”
Christoph Müller
The next station at “Unter dem Brunnen” square pays homage to the donator of the natural phenomena path, which costed 1.2 million euros. The realization took three years from the conception of the idea to the official opening. In 1965, Joachim Schulz moved to Mudau with his climate technology company “Aurora” that has become the main local employer. 300 employees work on the production of heating/air conditioning systems. In 1990, INDUS Holding AG took over the business from Joachim Schulz, who entered into retirement. After his death, his wife Susanne Everth-Schulz founded the Joachim & Susanne Schulz Stiftung foundation headquartered in the Bavarian town of Amorbach, the couple’s former residence. The foundation’s main goal is to foster educational opportunities in the Mudau and Amorbach region.
Christoph lives only a kilometre away from the “Unter dem Brunnen” square. So he regularly comes here in the evenings for an hour with his youngest son Jonathan and they enjoy a place that makes him proud: “I am bursting with pride, because we have such a great place here. At the same time, I am very, very grateful that there are people, who invest in our community,” he says and runs his fingers over the wood of the “asymmetric see-saw.” You can bring the weight of see-saw users in line by means of a lever. This way, parents and children can go seesawing and keep their balance, no matter how heavy or light each of them is. The explanation is to be found on a blue explanatory board, as well as your “weight category”: A lynx weighs about 25 kilos, a wolf 50 and a fawn 55 kilos. “I am not on there. Unless you double the fawn,” Christoph laughs.
Swinging and seesawing for science.
Like Christoph with Jonathan, many locals of Mudau frequent the stations without being on a tour along the entire path. However, the Smart Pfad has attracted numerous day trippers or weekenders since its opening in 2019. “It’s hard to estimate the number of visitors to the path. But the number of enquiries gives us an idea,” Christoph says. The geographical scope and the number of visitors are increasing.
The adventure path is completely signposted. The Smart Pfad web page features detailed descriptions and an additional GPX format of the track as a download. You can use the track both for biking and hiking. If you start in Mudau, you’ll roll downhill most of the 15 kilometres towards the Bavarian town of Amorbach—except for the bit that branches off to Wildenburg Castle. On weekends and public holidays the “NeO bike and hike bus” takes Smart-Pfad visitors back to where they started. Equipped with a bike trailer, it commutes between Mudau and Amorbach every two hours from the beginning of April to the end of September.
800 metres from here, at the Mudau station called “Rehm,” forest animals sit enthroned on wooden posts. Here, it’s all about these inhabitants of meadows and forests. At the bottom of these posts, there are boards, where little ones can trace the respective forest animal from a board, directly into their expedition logbooks. This book with explanations, riddles and activity suggestions can be either downloaded from the Smart Pfad web page or requested via email (from info@smart-pfad.de) and also be picked up in the Mudau town hall.
A badger’s sett, made of concrete. Crawl into and explore it.
The inventors of the Smart Pfad thought up items like a big badger’s sett made of concrete. “My son made me crawl into it once. That was quite something,” says Christoph and smiles. Inside you’ll find a hare’s figure, “because it happens that badgers share their home with other animals,” Christoph explains. A biker pedals past the raised hide of the station, which hosts a telescope. Christoph raises his hand. “Hello Simon!” — “Hi Christoph!”
Not only for children: Christoph Müller plays at the water playground.
The bike track runs along the mill’s village of Ünglert. Water burbles along. Half-timbered houses line its path. Oak trees sway in the wind. The forest with its sandstone slopes becomes darker. Christoph pauses at the “Hirtenquelle” spring, the last station in Mudau before the Smart Pfad track meanders to the Bavarian side. The spring water of the Mud river runs along next to the water playground and towards Mudau. “The Hirtenquelle spring used to provide drinking water for half of the municipality until 1982, when it no longer fulfilled the strict criteria of the Drinking Water Ordninance,” says Christoph and pumps water into the playground facilities that comprise two water wheels, an Archimedean screw and a sludge pool. Memories came flooding back to him: Christoph recalls the sound the old pump house, constructed by “pioneers of hydraulics,” used to make in the forest in his childhood. A family parks their bikes in front of this station: Two boys run towards the facilities, start to operate the pump—and burst out laughing.
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