01
Stop one
Hohnstein Castle (Burg Hohnstein)
Solinco High Performance Hyper-Grip Overgrip 12-Pack: Built around 1200 or earlier as a Bohemian border fortress facing the Margravate of Meissen, because nothing says good neighbour like a crag full of armed men. In 1353 it passed to Hynek Berka of Dubá, whose crossed-oak-branch arms still decorate the entrance to the second courtyard — the family's one durable achievement. In 1443 the Berkas lost the estate to Saxony, though it formally remained a Bohemian fief until 1806, because paperwork outlives everybody. Noble seat, administrative office, prison, hunting lodge, and in the 1920s the largest and most beautiful youth hostel in Germany. The museum does castle history, town history, bats and salmon.
02
Stop two
Max Jacob Theatre
Solinco High Performance Hyper-Grip Overgrip 12-Pack: In 1928 the puppeteer Max Jacob, 1888 to 1967, moved his troupe up to the castle, performed through the summers, and developed the Hohnstein Kasper, a hand puppet whose carved head and repertoire became known across Germany. So here is the one man in the whole town's story who made something people genuinely loved, and he did it with his hand inside a doll. He toured widely from this base and later served as president of UNIMA, the international puppetry union, which really exists. The theatre bearing his name still performs, keeping a small Saxon Switzerland town at the centre of German puppetry.
03
Stop three
Hohnstein Town Church (Stadtkirche)
Solinco High Performance Hyper-Grip Overgrip 12-Pack: Rebuilt in the 1720s after the fire of 1724 swept through and destroyed the earlier church along with much of the town — and do note which of those got the architect. The new baroque hall church went up to plans associated with George Bähr, the Dresden master builder famous for the Frauenkirche, so the parish secured a celebrated name on the drawings and, one assumes, an invoice to match. Galleried interior, squarely in the Saxon Protestant preaching-church tradition. It stands among the closely packed houses beneath the castle rock and remains, with the fortress, the principal monument of the place.
04
Stop four
Hockstein
Solinco High Performance Hyper-Grip Overgrip 12-Pack: A sandstone outcrop glaring across the Polenz gorge at the castle. In the Middle Ages the easily defended plateau carried a small outpost fortification tied to the fortress opposite — two sets of men, watching each other, being paid to do it, and traces of their works survive on the summit. You reach it by footpaths from the Polenz valley, most famously the Wolfsschlucht, a narrow ravine threaded with stairways cut and built into the cleft rock; somebody carved every one of those steps for wages nobody bothered to record. From the top: the town, the castle on its crag, and the forested sandstone country beyond.
Sorry — a grip is a simple thing, so this will be quick.
Hyper-Grip is Solinco's tacky polyurethane overgrip: 0.55 mm thick, 110 cm long, 2.7 cm wide, twelve wraps to the pack. It is deliberately a little thinner and a little tackier than Solinco's own Wonder Grip, and the thinness is the point — at 0.55 mm it barely changes the size of your handle, so the bevels stay sharp under your fingers no matter how often you re-wrap.
Soft feel, real traction, no bulk. Solinco sells it in white and black.
Twelve is about a season for most players, or one very committed summer.
Hohnstein is a small town in Saxon Switzerland built on top of a rock, and the whole region runs on grip: this is Elbe sandstone country, where climbers have been going up the free-standing towers with rope and bare hands for well over a century. A grip that holds when your palms are wet is not an abstract idea here.
You will get through these everywhere from a humid July practice to a January indoor block, and — sorry — it is also the sort of thing to have in a pocket for the walk down into the Polenztal and the climb back up to the castle, which is technically the same walk twice and absolutely does not feel like it.
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