The last couple weekends I spent a bit closer to home in Juelich. It was nice to relax and regain my energy, as well as do a bit of exploring around Juelich/cities nearby. One Saturday I went to visit Burkhard (a friend who used to work with the UBC group) and his family in Bonn. They actually live in a very nice house in a very pretty little town just outside of Bonn, which has nice rolling hills, forests, and off in the distance the Siebengebirge – or 7 mountains. From Juelich, which is almost totally flat, you can't see any (real) mountains! Unfortunately I also couldn't see them in Bonn because the weather wasn't great and it was too foggy – but I heard they looked nice :). I had a nice visit with the whole family, and then we went into Bonn with Burkhard and his daughter Sophia to do some sightseeing there. As Sophie has lived most of her life thus far in Canada, she was very excited to speak English again.
We started at the university, which had some nice old buildings (which were once a castle, or at least belonged to some very important leader in the past..?), and then walked along the Rhein River. Apparently there are lots of castles on that part of the Rhein, but I also couldn't see those. I would really like to go back and visit and take a boat trip down the river to see them, and do a hike too. I hope I have time to! Afterwards we wandered down some cute old streets in town. I tried some currywurst for the first time and it was delicious! It's a sausage cut into small pieces with a ketchupy/spicy/curry sauce drizzled over top. Unfortunately I had to return to Juelich that night to meet up with some friends, so the visit was a bit short, but I really enjoyed it and hope that I can find time to return once again before I leave.
Sunday I biked up the river in Juelich to see a lake I was told about. It was really nice. I would love to live by a lake like that in the summer. It was surrounded by forest with a few little beaches scattered around it, and a nice path circled it. There were lots of birds (such as Canada geese - ???) and I saw a few rabbits too. It was a really nice area. I sat on one beach and read my book and had a picnic lunch. I was thinking it would be a nice place to go camping, and indeed I saw several tents there when I returned the following Friday after work. Oh how I wish I was here in summer! I would go swimming there every day after work! I should mention that the lake was actually a mining hole that was filled water – seems like a nice use of a mining hole!
This past weekend a few of us decided to check out the “mountain” /slag heap - Tagebau Hambach – the only larger hill that can be spotted across the horizon from Juelich. It is man-made and produced from all the dirt dug out of the ground beside it for coal mining. We were more excited about seeing the giant gaping hole, which you can actually see on google maps if you look east of Juelich. Since we don't have a vehicle and the others didn't have bikes, we walked there. It was about 1 hour to the bottom of the mountain. Then we followed a winding path up the mountain, which now is covered in trees and vegetation. It's kind of nice to see that destruction caused by mining could produce such a nice wildlife habitat. One friend at work had said that she went up the mountain but couldn't find the hole and it was getting dark so she left without seeing it, and we found that hilarious and laughed at her. However, once on the mountain, we totally understood how that could happen! The mountain was huge – not too tall but very wide – and paths wound all over it! The top was quite flat, so the “lookout” point only looked out over another expanse of flat land, and you couldn't see the hole. That's because they keep adding more and more dirt to the mountain, so it keeps getting wider! (In fact, they are continuing to expand the hole and mountain, and in order to do so, they are relocating entire towns!!!)
Since our original plan was to see the hole, we set out for another hour of walking just to get to the edge of the mountain. We walked past a number of hunting...tower like things, made of boards precariously nailed together. We didn't see any animals though. Finally we arrived at a few dirt roads that looked less traveled. Two roads had signs saying access was forbidden, but one didn't, so we followed that one. We ended up in a lunar/Mars like landscape with heaping mounds of dirt, which stretched on for several hundred barren metres. From then we went off road - with the edge in clear sight, we climbed over the mounds of dirt until we could see the giant machine they used to dig up the ground on the other side, and eventually we came to a lookout where we could see the hole. It wasn't as deep as I expected (although I have been informed that it's at least 300 metres deep), but it was vast and very interesting. We realized we definitely weren't supposed to be there, because walking to the edge on these mounds of dirt probably wasn't the safest! However, we had seen what we came to see, so we were happy. On the way back we saw dark clouds looming in our path, so we stopped for a break in a hut. Fortunately in our 15 minutes sitting there we completely avoided some absolutely pouring rain, and after it stopped we continued on our way. We saw an enclosure containing the ancestors of goats, which look like a cross between deer and goats. I have to check what they were called. We also saw giant ant hills, which were covered by man-made pyramid enclosures. 5 hours after we had left Juelich, we FINALLY returned, exhausted and sore-footed! It was a really interesting adventure though!
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