BEHIND it all lay the vague memory of a holiday with a sulky German pen pal rescued only by the flush of triumph you get from marching up mountains. And liked the sound of it. "Where did you say you were going?" "Thuringia." A minor enigma to lob into conversations a mystery destination that might as well have been Narnia for all the sense it made. If the Hindu Kush was out of the question, a short walk through a forgotten pocket of the new Germany would do nicely instead.
Midway between Frankfurt and Leipzig, just east of the old frontier, the Thuringer Wald stretches down a narrow ridge woods spilling over hilltops like icing on a cake. Along its crest runs the longest high altitude footpath in Europe, a hundred mile zig zag track with plenty of majestic views as an excuse to stop often and rediscover how to breathe. The Rennsteig, it is called most puzzlingly the Run climb. Maybe the running bit relates to the couriers who hastened along this track in mediaeval times. These days, not even hardy Germans in knee breeches and jazzy stockings (the better to reveal muscular calfs?) run up here, thank goodness. Some comfort for the panting Dubliners, equipped with serious boots but sluggish lungs.
You could walk the entire Rennsteig in a healthy week, stopping at half timbered guest houses in neat villages to overnight ... or with a hire car you could cheat, setting off on foot only for the most spectacular stretches, then nipping back to motor on. I took the lazy way, I need hardly tell you, and was sorry afterwards missing the soothing swoosh of wind in the tall pines and the feeling of walking directly into pale, luminous sunsets.
There is something addictive about scrambling up through woods fringed with cranberries and blueberries (good for the chemistry of the blood, said our vigorous guide), and red and white spotted toadstools, like Noddy's up to the point where you tower over a misty panorama of gently undulating mountains.
Goethe seems to have felt that way, clambering, even in advanced old age, up to the cave high above Ilmenau where he had once entertained his adored Charlotte von Stein. They say he even swam in the 11m river in the moonlight in November. Bad news for one so unfit that her legs, after just a few hours' walking, are as jelly like as the strawberry topping on the mountainous cream cake seized upon as a vital energy source in a cafe along the way.
But without the cheating, without the car, Goethe's Thuringia would have been only half discovered, and half the pleasure of the week missed. Around the Rennsteig in an oval loop, runs "the Classical Road" a sort of pilgrimage route through the cultural heart of Germany. The ghosts of Luther, Goethe and a string of other luminaries have been shaken gently, in the past few years, and installed in the houses they once knew, now all impeccably restored.
I hadn't realised, before I went, how architecturally and historically rich Thuringia's towns are. Erfurt, the regional capital, grew wealthy beyond belief in the early Middle Ages, partly because of its position at the intersection of the key routes between Paris and Moscow, Italy and the Baltic lucky for a town with a major dyeing industry, based on a plentiful supply of woad. Luther arrived as a student in 1501 you can still see the original gateway of the university he considered so outstanding that others, compared to it, were "small elementary schools for ABC learners".
The Cathedral of St Mary and the Church of St Severus grand ecclesiastical twins, perched on a mound right behind the marketplace, date from the 14th century. The Kramerbrucke, a bridge disguised as a street of mediaeval houses a sort of Germanic Ponte Vecchio is from that golden age, too. And the gold on the old houses, with their ornate facades and stepped gables, is shimmering. In the few years since reunification, every sagging old building worth a bean has been granted new corsets and fresh make up.
NOWHERE is this more true than Weimar, the jewel in Thuringia's classical crown and thus first to have signed up for a facelift. What other small town could boast so many august residents untouched by vulgar commerce? Not just Goethe (house fresh buttercup) and the dear Mrs von Stein (just around the corner, romantic pink), but other writers Herder, Schiller, Nietzsche composers Wagner, Liszt, Richard Strauss painters Lucas Cranach the Elder. Even Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, was here not that you would know it from wandering past so many classical facades.
The old Elefant Hotel, immortalised by Thomas Mann in Lotte in Weimar, has had its insides so stylishly renewed that it might be a mistake to check in, sweaty from the hiking trail, without first swapping your boots and breeches for a sliver of black Armani. The bells of the town hall, neogothic and gorgeous, have a delicate tinkle because they are made from Dresden china. Everything about Weimar is so gracious, so perfectly civilised, that I could not bring myself to cloud its beauty by visiting Buchenwald, a mile or two down the road.
It was easier to drive away, past fields of maize and beet and apple trees through fish scale roofed villages where there might still be a porcelain factory or glass works in operation a lone survivor among collapsed hundreds, rather like the last few lawn mower whirring Trabants. Not everywhere in what they now call the Green Heart of Germany is appealing. Oberhof, for instance, is a jumped up ski resort a place of grim box hotels flung up in the heyday of the GDR. But it is an exception, almost worth seeing in order to appreciate the half timbered splendour of handsome old towns like Schmalkalden and Meinigen, where there are castles and palaces and corner houses with the sort of turret rooms Rapunzel might have known.
When the mist comes down the mountains and you finally give up trying to follow the Rennsteig's trail of "R" signs on tree trunks, these are the places to seek refuge. In some cosy wood panelled inn with lace curtains at the windows and friendly locals knocking back fig vodka at the bar, you will be surprised how easy it is to polish off a half haunch of venison, a mountain of sauer kraut and dumplings the size of tennis balls. Later, in the hunt for shiny blue Burgel pottery in the market square, you may even succumb to a fearsomely long Thuringer sausage, sticking out of an inadequate roll. You will feel terrific, in spite of this continuous gluttony, and return home in better shape than before. Walking even with short cuts is wonderfully forgiving of excess.