I went to bed very sore last night and woke up a lot better. As I got up I remembered my friend in the mountains who, following a poor result from an operation on his back, decided to help his medication along by walking up hills every morning (obviously he had to walk down as well). This exercise takes away the pain that his meds used to, but more effectively. 

Just prior to my hill walk I saw two older men and reflected on my elderly comment in my previous post. Firstly I came across an old guy pushing an ‘I won’t let you fall’ wheelie, and said hello maybe a touch too loudly. He laughed after nearly falling, but the wheelie kept its promise. I asked him if he spoke English, he answered by speaking German, so more charades as I walked my finger again and pointed to the hill above and he understood perfectly. Then I passed another old guy and he seemed excited that I was walking over 1 km, and said hello in German.

So, invigorated was I by my support group I walked even faster up the hill which my friend from home advised me to do. It was one very long and quite steep hill. Today after 25 kms (on the flat mostly of course) I decided to give my pack another go over a short distance of 12 kms to our next town, and take pain medication earlier. If that doesn’t work it will be back to what we’ve been doing, which also works quite well for us.

We later walked around a now much quieter town with two peaceful platz, and streets with little traffic, had a chat with a local three year old in one of many tired supermarkets; walked past a crowd of about 60 who were getting part of their twice weekly food provisions; and laughed, but in a good way, with a woman with two walking sticks carrying a plastic bag full of shopping round her neck. This town had signs of being a very busy bustling town by the look of its huge abandoned railway station. It still operates but the grand buildings with its large services area, only serve history today.

I told you two days ago about these small house size blocks of land and instead of houses they grow things. Well thanks to our fabulous neighbour who knows about things like this, they are called Schrebergartens or less sophisticated sounding – ‘allotment gardens’. I’ll give you the link but in short they are pieces of land away from your home and people buy them for varied reasons. If you want more on this I would recommend this link which I hope you will find very interesting: 

https.//www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/09/millennials-gardening-mentalhealth-plants/

If the link doesn’t work for you just type in Schrebergartens.