Hiking around University of Bochum
If two years ago was a horrible winter and last year a good one, this winter has been somewhere in between so far. And today’s weather was a quite emblematic one for this – cold, endlessly cloudy, but no rain.
While the forecast weather was not nearly as good as the one last week, we saw the number of participants soar right before the hike, maybe because the weather was pretty okay in the few days preceding the event. While I was happy to see this happen, I was a bit wary of possible problems related to the “winter hikes”, as I call the ones in winter. It’s just simply not quite the hiking as you would normally call, at least in the summer. So the new people might have different expectations, which would be the right ones only the season had been the correct one. Well, let’s face this simple fact: hiking is more fun in summer. With this in mind, these hikes in winter are for me merely some exercise to fully enjoy the ones in summer. I’m sorry if you had had a different idea.
Nevertheless, this area around the university of Bochum is a wonder. You go one step from the campus and you’ll enter great nature surrounding it. Well, “wonder” might be exaggerated, but that’s simply how it feels when you live in Düsseldorf otherwise.
Trees got a really nice color now. It’s a pity that the sky didn’t offer a nice color in the same way. This being said, I’m glad it didn’t rain though 🙂
As I mentioned above, it was a winter hike today, and mostly the trail was asphalted. In the summer, you’d see a lot of cyclists around this area. Today, there were a few of them (maybe slightly more than I had expected), but they were not like the summer E-bikers who don’t know how to ride a bicycle. We had to make some space, but there was nothing stressful associated with it.
We had a break in a small park along the Ruhr, where there were a few restaurants. I had some stuff to eat so I stayed outside first. It was freezing cold today. While I was eating outside, some people got into a nearby restaurant, which turned out to be a Chinese restaurant. Just like many Chinese restaurants in Germany, this one was a European Chinese restaurant of all you can eat, and a very crowded one. Luckily, I didn’t have to wait for long since I ordered only a cup of coffee, but those who ordered something (and did not get buffet food) had to wait for more than half an hour, which was then too long for those who stayed outside. In the end, the group split up in this moment. And I was somewhere in between: I saw some people leave before me, but then I left the restaurant while others were still staying there.
This photo shows how we played frisbee outside, or maybe rather: this is how we tried not to freeze outside.
Anyway, the second part was slightly more interesting. We went up a small hill along the river, a bit unexpected given the area being known for nice cycling trails. But then from this moment on, there was essentially no cyclists anymore (or rather, the cyclists were on the cycling lanes).
Since I had to go back to Düsseldorf early, I didn’t join for coffee or whatever at the end. Well, since we arrived at the university (which was of course closed today), there was really nothing to see there today. The Christmas market must have started, but I don’t know what other people did in the end.
