Blackberry brambles on my lunchtime walk

Today was…unusual.

I had to be at work at 7:30 for a phone conference.

Normally, this would be annoying, but manageable. But my train leaves every hour and arrives at quarter til the next hour, making the 7am train too late. I would have had to take the 6am train.

Oh, hell no.

Instead, there is a smaller train that stops at the station before my work.

I took that train at 6:30 and brought my bike! I got off at the station and biked the 8 kilometers to work.

It was so enjoyable! It reminded me of California, with the hills in the distance (I looked in the other direction to see if I could spot the ocean…but no luck).

Despite the fact that the ride back was 100 degrees and all uphill (now I know why the cool early morning downhill ride was so pleasant), I’ll definitely do it again.

So this was the first unusual occurance.

The next was my lunchtime walk.

This is the path that has the strawberry fields in early summer and farm animals in a shed in a schoolyard.

The path where the same weird lady on her rusty bike passes me twice. Every day.

Where the old man drinks beer on the bench and says things in German that I don’t want to know. Every day.

I call it the groundhog day loop.

Today, I noticed some different things on the path.

It’s nearly overgrown with blackberries. Bushes and bushes as far as you can see. I’d never noticed them before.

Today I saw a man in a beekeeper outfit, and upon closer look, noticed that there is a legitimate bee farm. I peeked over the fence to snap this pic. One of the locals spotted me and gave me a look. I wanted to yell, “it’s for the blog!”

The beehives

I noticed a tomato garden I had never seen before.

And a cherry tree.

There was also a plum tree.

And I passed two different people with baskets of apples and beans, like they had just picked them up from the farmer.

It kills me that there’s all this food production going on and I don’t know how to get in on it. If I liked blackberries, I’d be out there with gloves and a bucket.

Although most days seem like the same mundane thing over and over again, sometimes out of the blue, you do something different or see something you had missed before.

Just a little reminder for myself to keep my eyes open and never stop trying new things.