Hiking around Wetter

We can lament the end of summer because of the temperature, but the arrival of winter marks the arrival of sheer misery in Germany, at least in therms of weather. The thing is, somehow the weather is pretty okay during the week, and it falls off the cliff when the weekend comes. This typical picture was very much the case this weekend, with the worst day being exactly Sunday.

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Wetter, which ironically means weather in German, is one of my favourite areas in this region, because the nature is not as wild as the southern side of the Ruhr river, but then it’s not like the industrial area of the western part towards the Rhine. It has forests (even if they are not the the original ones) and fields on nice hills, a perfect area for hiking. But maybe for this reason, it’s unfortunately not very easy to reach by train, and therefore the possibilities are quite limited. It’s kind of a pity that we did such a precious one on such a horrible day.

There was literally no one in the street when we arrived at Wetter. We crossed the first street and almost immediately we entered a forest. The paths were like they were just exactly nicely going up and down with no spot being too complicated, but still not too easy, just as I had expected from Wetter. I could only continue lament the weather.

There was a small cave on the way. Sometimes around the Ruhr area you can find this kind of stuff. It’s usually connected to the mining industry to a certain extent. I don’t know what this one was used for.

Actually this morning, I called the restaurant which I planned break for from the train, to make sure that they’d be open, or to make sure that we don’t have to sit outside freezing. Whereas it was indeed open, I didn’t make a reservation, since I didn’t know what time we’d arrive and how many people would be interested in entering the restaurant. When we arrived at the restaurant though, it was raining quite heavily, so that we were sort of all forced to enter the restaurant, which quite obviously freaked the staff out. Well, the thing is, they absolutely wanted to make someone responsible for the chaos (which was me) for not having made a reservation beforehand, which is a very German thing, especially regarding the fact that whether I had made a reservation beforehand or not wouldn’t have really changed anything, as they probably wouldn’t have turned other customers away or they wouldn’t have been better prepared for that. Anyway, we could sit inside. It was almost too hot inside, but I was still glad that we didn’t have to be wet outside.

The second half was probably even worse. It simply continued raining all the time. Luckily, going through the forest allowed us to avoid the wind, so that my poor equipment, namely my rain jacket and umbrella, allowed me to stay more or less dry till the end.

Unfortunately Wetter was too hopeless to find a place to have a cup of coffee afterwards. We essentially finished the hike and almost directly went back home. I didn’t quite want to know that the weather got much better from the next day on, pretty much the entire week.