Not many people were out rambling around because of the rain and drizzle so I mainly just walked. One man did stop his BMW in the road and talked to me through the passenger window. Of course, his first question was directed towards my fly rod. He was just stopped in the middle of the road and people had to stop and wait until any oncoming traffic cleared before they could go around him.
{As I was walking through a small town I looked across the street to see a big apple tree in someone�s garden. It was not at a house but rather in what seemed to be a community garden area. The apples looked so good and I was very tempted to go grab some. The reason I am mentioning this is because it immediately reminded me of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. I swear that fruit was calling my name, and I bet it was almost as enticing as that beautiful fruit that the serpent was luring Eve with. I knew it wasn�t right to climb into that garden and pick the fruit but I wanted it so bad. The choice was tough, but in the end I passed up the opportunity. If only it would have been that easy back in Eden.
That wasn�t the only time today that I had thoughts of picking forbidden fruit. It is funny how when you don�t have much food and you are on a trip like this, much of your time is spent thinking about food and what you are going to eat. Later in the day I went past a fenced yard that had an apple tree close to the sidewalk on which I was walking. I noticed that there were quite a few apples hanging over the sidewalk so I once again had a dilemma before me. I thought about Isaac Newton and figured that if I picked some of the apples I would only be doing the world a favor. I was pretty positive that not much more enlightenment could be brought from a falling apple causing a knot on someone�s head since we already know about that whole gravity thing. But once again I decided against stealing someone else�s fruit and kept walking. But I will have to mention that I did my fair share helping control the wild blackberry population as I trekked through Germany.}
I took another detour up into the woods today. There was no more path for me to walk on and there was absolutely no room along the road. Luckily I found a dirt trail that went off into the forest. It was a beautiful walk through the hills and it almost made me feel like I was in Colorado or something. I followed the path around the ravines and about an hour later ended up back down at the road. This is when I realized that my excursion had not taken me very far from where I had entered the woods. However, this time I didn�t mind at all. What did bother me was that there was still no place for me to walk. So I just started walking in the middle of the road. I was constantly checking over my shoulder to make sure no cars were racing towards me. When cars did come I would have to walk in the thigh-high grass/weeds between the road and the wall. Then I decided to climb down on the other side of the road to the shore of the river. I figured it couldn�t be any worse. This turned out to be a mistake. The only way it wasn�t worse than being on the highway was that I wasn�t so nervous about becoming human road kill down here. The shore had its own problems. It was made up entirely of large rocks that were very difficult to navigate. With each step I was terrified that my ankle would roll. Not only was it hard on my feet, but also it was very slow going. I eventually bailed on this idea when I realized my pace had probably crawled to less than a mile an hour and the next village was still a considerable distance. So once again I decided to take my chances on the highway. It took me about five minutes just to climb the wall with my pack on and jump over the guardrail. Once I was back on the road I realized that there was absolutely no room to walk next to the train tracks wall. I knew I wasn�t going back to the river so my only other option was the train tracks. I really didn�t like this idea because you can�t hear these trains until they are right up on you, and the go very fast. But this was my only choice so I climbed on up. Once up there I was happy to find a small a small path next to the guardrail where I could walk and be at least ten feet from the passing trains. I was still close enough that I would have to stop when trains passed because it probably would have knocked me around pretty good if I didn�t stabilize myself.
I finally made it to the next village and I knew from my map that there was a camping area near by. I really didn�t feel like having to pay to camp tonight, but by this time I was so spent that I didn�t care anymore. Once I got to the site I hobbled to the office amongst all the stares and questions about my fishing pole, and asked how much it would cost to camp here. The lady told me it would be eight and a half euro. The lady could obviously see that I was exhausted and not happy about having to pay that much, so when I gave her ten euro she just gave me a five and smiled. I thanked her and asked where I was supposed to camp. She said just camp anywhere. This is when I started to realize that I could have just walked in and set up a tent in most of the campgrounds and nobody would ever know that I didn�t pay.
By the time I had set up my tent and cooked my dinner I was too tired to walk to go take a shower. I would find out the next morning that you had to pay for the showers. However, if you turned on the water, it would run�but it was only cold water. So in a since, you are paying for the hot water. I decided I didn�t want to pay so I just took a bone-chilling cold shower. I guess I shouldn�t even call it a shower because an actual shower in the true since of the word would have probably killed me. This was more like a cold-water rub down. As I was walking out of the campgrounds I noticed that it was only one Euro for the showers which I thought I might have paid if I had known, but was glad I opted to the �tough man way� instead.
