Sunday afternoon

Just back from a walk on the Blauer Weg, for the first time in months, which damn nearly killed me. I am so utterly unfit, it's just appalling. I used to be able to get up the hill without gasping (roughly 110 vertical metres, the first half of which is a staircase); I used to be able to walk as far as the University campus in Vaihingen (6 km). This is not good.

But the path is beautiful once you're up there, high over the valley looking across into the forest (very colourful this time of year. The Black Forest proper starts a hundred kilometers south of here, our local woods are deciduous, mostly beech and oak). I walked the path, stopping often to admire the view (not to catch my breath, thank you :-) as far as the descent to Heslach. a narrow gravelled switchback path which (if you clicked on the map link above) leads into the Pfarrwegle, at the north entrance to the cemetery at the Bihlplatz. This is a very nice, calm place, as German cemeteries usually are: clean, well-maintained, with lots of flowers. Remind me to tell you another time about the cemeteries, they're different. I walked slowly around admiring the headstones and reading names, as is my wont. This would be a nice place to be buried, if I didn't intend to live forever.

From there I got lazy, and took the tram to Schreiberplatz, arriving just in time to see the 42 bus drive away. So I watched the boules (boccia) players until the next one came. The boules field appears to have developed by common consent, I'm sure the square used to be grassed. In any case it's now a lightly sanded, pressed-earth field, and today there was standing room only: half a dozen groups were there, each with a referee and some cheerleaders. Some Russians were playing Extreme Boules, bowling the length of the square where the other groups were content with half its width. They didn't seem that much less accurate than the others, either. It was fascinating watching them, I nearly missed the next bus too.

A wonderful afternoon, with the sun going slowly down & dying the clouds yellow ochre & the smell of smoke (wood, leaves, coal fires) in the air. Coal smoke reminds me of the year we spent in England (when I was five); according to my mother I was unhappy there, but the smell carries only happy, if wistful, memories.