Weekend In The Country

Friday afternoon, P and I traveled by train via Hanover and Bremen to the town of Syke, some 380 km from Berlin. There we met with M and spent the weekend with his parents. Mostly we did "family stuff", but I have a few photos to share from our morning walks.

The family home is on the outskirts of town, and a small neighborhood of homes is surrounded by farmland. This was the view from my bedroom window Sunday morning.

Sunday stayed sunny most of the day. Saturday started sunny, as well, but clouded over fairly quickly. Temperatures hovered in the mid 40s during the day. While out and about, I saw my first flowering bulbs.

Snow Drops

Crocus

More Crocus.

I also saw a few other buds and blooms.

Primrose

Pink Flowering Shrub

Wildflowers

Everything was beautiful and green as far as the eye could see.

One thing I find enchanting in Germany, fabled as it is for "order", is the semi-wild nature of the most manicured gardens.

A few weeds are considered a part of nature and not something to obsess about. I've tried to add an element of weed tolerance to my own garden, but I've yet to find the balance where the weeds don't take control.

On our walk this morning, we were delighted to encounter a small herd of 5 deer.

The European version is significantly smaller in stature than our white-tails, and far less numerous. During Kaffeetrinken, we also spotted a pheasant in the back yard. But, alas, no photo was possible.

This afternoon M's mother and I visited the neighborhood fire station and a nearby playground with a 3-year-old family member. Forgive the lack of photos, but I didn't feel comfortable snapping pictures on private property without permission, let alone photos of someone else's child.

My primary observation at the fire station was that both vehicles inside were Mercedes.

The playground is on the grounds of a "Kindergarten", which in Germany means a preschool or day care facility. My observation there was that it was "way too much fun" for American kids. I'm not quite sure why a preschool needs a fire pit, but they had one. And a zip line. The slide had both a climbing net and a narrow stairway carved from a log to reach the top. P, who is a psychologist, tells me that kids who are allowed to experience some risk and occasionally get hurt are better able to assess risk when they get older. America hasn't, at least by my observations, bought into that philosophy.

This evening we took the train back to Berlin by way of Bremen and Hamburg. Our connection in Hamburg was delayed by 30 minutes and the platform was cold during the wait, but the trip was otherwise uneventful. M returned to Berlin with us, so I'll have some daytime company during the rest of my stay.