April 17 - Die Lueneburger Heide

Heinke and Gustl invited us to take a walk with them in the Lueneberger Heide (Luneberg heath), so we took an S-Bahn in to Berliner Tor where they met us shortly after 10 o’clock. The Luneberg heath area lies 30-40 kilometers southwest of Hamburg and Gustl drove us there in no time. We wandered a roughly triangular route from Egestorf to Undeloh and back. The landscape was a wide vista of heath plants that are apparently spectacular when they all bloom a rose-lilac color in the fall. The plants were mostly dry and brown when we visited, but it still looked pretty in a severe kind of way. Our footpath was separate from a nearby horse trail for most of our walk, and not only was it soft on our feet but it was also mercifully free of the horse dung that decorates so many dual-use trails.

Heinke had brought some carrots for the horses and when we stopped for lunch in Undeloh we ended up giving our apple cores to some hungry horses that wanted to share our lunch. On the way back we even spooked a deer—it bounded across the trail and away before either Heinke or I could get our cameras ready to shoot.

I also had a chance to test my “snake-jump” reflex when we ran across what Gustl called a “Blindschleiche” (Blind snake) that wriggled across the path. Monika was ahead of me, and she either stepped on him or scared him. So he was writhing energetically when I came up one step behind her and I, of course, leaped directly into the air and came down somehow off to one side so I didn’t step on him. Gustl said he was harmless, didn’t bite, and that you could even pet him. So I did pet him once but he squirmed around in a way that made me think I was disturbing him so I stopped that and let him calm down and slither off on his way.

We didn’t see the shepherd with his herd of sheep this time, but we did see a new type of “Robust Cattle” breed for which they were fencing off some pastures. It was kind of a small, hairy-looking thing like a hairy version of a Black Angus. They were trying to reintroduce that breed to attempt an economically viable but yet ecologically friendly version of cattle ranching. It was disturbing to see some of the open spaces fenced off, but they did preserve critical links in the network of paths in the area. I was surprised to find paths in all of the open fields and woods all over northern Germany. Only land that was actively used for livestock was fenced, none of the cropland, and there were almost always trails along the outside edges of the fenced fields. I wondered if this was due to a tradition of preserving trails for walking (or horse riding) or due to some type of legal restriction, but in any case it made walking across country in Germany a lot simpler than in agricultural areas of the U.S. In particular, the German Volksmarching clubs have an easier time than the Volksmarching clubs in the U.S. in laying out a variety of trails in the countryside.

It turned a bit cloudy as we finished up our walk, but we certainly had a nice day walking in the sunshine in some beautiful countryside. Heinke and Gustl dropped us off at Berliner Tor on their way home, and we took the S-Bahn to Hauptbahnhof to purchase our tickets for our planned trip to a Volksmarch north of Eckenfoerder the next day. Despite that detour we got back to Reinbek in time to ride our bikes over to Famila to buy some groceries for the weekend. I was a bit footsore, but fortunately the bicycle was very easy on my feet and the groceries didn’t fall off the luggage rack on the way back, so it all ended well.

Along the way Monika bought a “Hamburger Abendblatt”, the local newspaper, and one article caught my attention. Apparently every parent currently has the legal right for 4 hours of daycare for his or her children per day! No wonder the mothers are all so happy! Not only that, this entitlement was going to be extended in 2005 to 5 hours per day! And in 2006 this right was going to be extended even further so that if both parents worked the state would have to provide approved day care for as long as the parents worked plus commuting time! Holy cow, Batman, is this “Creeping Socialism”? And all this legally required daycare has to be officially inspected and approved by the German government, unlike the catch-as-catch-can situation for daycare in the U.S. I must admit I cringed at the thought of how expensive this new entitlement was going to be, but I also had to consider that readily available daycare might be one factor in having less stressed, more happy families in Germany.

We ended the evening watching yet another folk music program on TV, this one with the theme of “Fruehling in Wien” (Springtime in Vienna). The moderator Karl Moik had just had triple-bypass heart surgery 6 weeks back but was up there on the stage doing his thing as if nothing had happened. Kids started the show throwing flowers into the crowd and then we had a couple of hours of folk music to enjoy. But then we hit the sack early because our plans for the next day required running for the 7:50 train from Reinbek.