COUNTRY-SIDE

On Sonday I explored the nearby countryscape just south of my apartment. The weather was so perfect and sunny, that I went jogging instead of using the public transit. I threw on my Cincinnati t-shirt and Michigan basketball shorts and took off toward the Rhein, away from the city. I came upon a small village that had a lot of new construction going on, which seems pretty common in Düsseldorf. I even saw a smaller sized crane on one of the construction sites, and it looked like it was just for a single family house! There were also some pretty fancy, yet very worn-looking Modernist houses along the river. But at some point it started to smell like poo, and that's when I noticed a field of cows to my right. I also saw some old barns, a horse stable, and more people biking/jogging/walking as the day went on. I found some smaller paths, which led to some tiny slivers of sand along the river. Many of these "beaches" were cluttered with happy remnets of campfires. But as I got close to the Rhein I could really tell how fast and powerful the current was. There were some tiny waves coming up the beach, but as they meagerly descended back, they were pushed aside by the central current into swirling eddies, creating this defined crease along the entire river. Further along, some of the trails became more thick with foliage, and I began to worry about any sort of German poison ivy I don't know about. I didn't, however, expect to see any exotic wildlife: just some ducks, birds, and some old naked people sunbathing. I was sort of prepared for this, because my German professor told us that sometimes people will sunbathe in the nude even in public parks. But it still caught me off guard when I approached an elderly gentleman, who was standing slightly off the path and looking out toward the water, and all he was wearing was a t-shirt. Everything seemed normal at first, because of the tall grass - well - I'm just not going to go into any more detail on the subject. The scenery was pretty and green. There was a cute little pond that settled in a gentle slope of grass, reflecting the nearby line of prettily planted trees, and giving me nice photo shot. But this cute little pond ended up blocking my path and I had to backtrack about a kilometer, and I was getting really hungry at that point :( - suppose to resemble my look of determination