Spazieren

I think the first time I really took a walk was at 17 years old while I was an Exchange student in Germany. I don’t think it’s that common here to go on walks, I mean, we can walk, but it’s usually a way of going from one place to another, and not just for the sake of walking.

Now that I think about it, I did walk up the hill at my grandparents house, but we were always going somewhere or doing something, even if it was just picking apples in the summer.

Back to Germany. I was in the north, in a Little place called Stäbchen, which meant “Little stick”. It wasn’t really a village, there were a couple of houses, not all of them inhabited, and 17 inhabitants, 18 including me. It was in the middle of nowhere, and we didn’t have that many hours of light. At 5pm it was already dark and naturally I wanted to go to sleep. Of course there were many cultural differences, as it was cold and dark, all I wanted was to stay inside. But germans would say “there’s no bad weather, only your clothes are not the right ones/not warm enough”.

So I remember one night they said we were going out, and I didn’t really get where we were going, but I had to follow them. I was quite annoyed, but I put my shoes anyway and a big jacket on, and we went. We walked to the “main Street” kind of, as there were only two of them, and then we continued till we hit the road. I was freezing, and still didn’t understand where we were going, as we had already passed the house of their family Friends. After we turned back, I asked what we were doing, and they said we were just “spazieren” which meant, taking a walk.

I couldn’t believe they had droven me out of the house for “fun”.