Autumn is coming. Definitely. After a couple of really nice, warm late summer day, things have changed. Sweater weather is what I would call it. In fact, we’ve started heating up the home because it’s been so chilly outside. But I thought, it was a perfect opportunity to make a little field trip to our backyard …
September is showing itself from its nicest side, or should I say – it’s showing the sunny side up? Whichever way you say this, I couldn’t help myself … I had to get out and about, get that last bit of blue sky and sunshine that I may have in a while. (Not being pessimistic here, just really realistic in knowing that I’ll be heading out East again soon, where gray skies compete against gray skies everyday. So here I’m quite happy about the last days of summer!
We survived the storm of this past night (not that I thought we wouldn’t, lol). And we survived it without any damage to our belongings (though during the night I kept wondering whether the wind would sweep away my pants which I had hung outside for drying after it hadn’t gotten a bit wet yesterday when we played at the beach). It was still there this morning. And now, the time has come for us to move on. So today, we packed our things and headed back home. But not before I took one last little stroll at the beach to say good-bye:
Sadly, I have to say that our time at the Baltic Sea is coming to an end. And since we’ve been out and about every day this past week, for once, we decided to stay and spend a lazy day at the beach. And while the morning was nice and comfortable, as the day progressed, the wind began to pick up and by nightfall, the beach was just one windswept strip of sand, with whitecapped waves rolling in and crashing against the shore. But I’m not someone to complain. I love conditions as these, and so I had my fun watching the white crest waves heading towards the shore, and allowing the wind to tousle my hair.
Fehmarn is just a small island off the Baltic coast. It’s not even very special except for the fact that the majority of the traffic going to Denmark, Sweden, and beyond has to cross Fehmarn to get to the ferry (and in the past, I’ve done that quite a few times). Today, however, we decided to make Fehmarn our destination, thinking there must be more to this place than just that famous major transit route. And right we were! After visiting a large underwater world, we ended up in this tiny town, which is nothing more, really, than a pit stop for sailors on their way to some place else. We’d just stumbled upon that place, after we’d taken a wrong turn, turned around, and then reconsidered, turning yet again, curious where that wrong turn would take us. And it took us to the quiet little harbor of Orth, where we spent a perfectly tranquil afternoon. Finally, we moved on, and on our way back decided we’d like to make a detour to a tiny little …
They call it the “murder(0us) wall” – the Eiger north face, one of the six great north faces of the Alps. When we made the Eiger our hiking destination for today, we had no clue yet, how close we’d come to experience this mountain’s treacherous reputation for ourselves. You see, everything started out just lovely. All we’d wanted was a fun day in the mountains, with a bit of hiking, and a lot of grand views of the mountains and the scenery around. And with dear cousin living so close to the famed mountains of Eiger, Monk, and Virgin (Eiger, Mönch, Jungfrau), our day’s destination was pretty clear to start out with: the Lauterbrunnen valley, from where we would decide what and where we would hike. (Last year, I’d hiked the mountain ranges across from Eiger and its two companions.) So, we parked the car in Lauterbrunnen, and decided to hike up to Wengen (more like walk, because there’s no trails; just follow the road). The weather was glorious (warm, the sun shining happily all …
