We walked through the Vienna woods with our friends M (husband) and G (wife), and G's sister E. Drove to their house, loaded our packs into their car, and took off. Fifteen or twenty minutes later we found a parking spot and started hiking.
A strange summer this year: cloudy, rainy, then the sun comes out for a day or so, then back to Seattle weather. Today was sunny. For a while. And kind of humid, so there was considerable sweating as we began the first part of our hike, up a steep hill.
Clover in the Vienna woods
B was looking for mushrooms, but not in our usual methodical way because the others mostly wanted to hike, which means, YOU WALK. You don't linger. But after we found a few mushrooms the others kind of joined in and if anyone happened to spot a fungus, it went into the Fungal Collection Bag.
Look at the size of this mushroom. It's edible, according to B, but hard to clean. So we left it.
Walked and walked and walked, got kind of lost, found our way, then spilled out of the woods and walked along a path surrounded by giant fields of soft green grass, sprinkled everywhere with wildflowers. Beautiful.
B stopped along the way to pick wildflowers to take home.
Blackberries are starting to ripen.
When you spill out of the woods, this is one of the views you get...
...this is another. We walked to the treeline, then right another ten minutes to a restaurant.
Suzi, the restaurant cat. A friendly girl.
The sky began getting dark just as we were finishing lunch.We hit the trail again, walking through a couple of villages on the way to the car.
An old factory for sale in one of the villages. Repurposed as artists' space, perhaps?
It started raining. We popped our umbrellas. It was a long walk back to the car but the cool air felt good. We came to a covered bus stop and M and G said they'd walk ahead, fetch the car, and come back for us. So we spent about fifteen minutes watching the rain fall and hearing the liquid WHOOSH of cars as they passed us on the wet street.
Back home, B sauteed some mushrooms, breaded and fried the others. Delicious.
3 comments:
Except that I never BREAD any mushrooms but just dipped the caps of the parasol mushrooms in very little flour...but he'd had a long day, the boy.
B
I love the blackberry picture and the view from the woods reminds me of Sembach!
Michela, I was thinking the same thing on this walk, and on previous walks through this area...
Thinking back on it, I'm glad I spent those years from age 11 - 15 living in Germany. I've thought of visiting the place from time to time but I know it wouldn't be the same all these years later...
Also strange to me is the fact that I was shooting pictures way back then, too...
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