The German Spring

Screw the German Autumn, all hail the German Spring!  Large parts of the nation are turning into paradise.  All over -- but especially in cities full of beautifully-landscaped parks -- sallow natives pour out of their cramped apartments, beaming innocently.  Children kick soccer balls at passing cars.  Lovers dawdle in the long, fresh grass.  Long chains of bicyclists thread between the trees.  Drunks begin quaffing Beck's (or Oettinger, if they're unlucky) at around 10, working on their summer tans.  Gnats hover crisply in the air in fighter-pilot formations.  Geese go to sleep in the middle of a path, and don't budge.

And everywhere you look, all possible shades of green.  Here are a few pictures I've taken in the past few weeks.  First, from the Roseller Heide:

The grounds of Schloss Kalkum (g):

A meadow in the Eifel:

And finally, the sculpture "Harmony" by Aristide Maillol, erected as part of a monument to Heinrich Heine in the Duesseldorfer Hofgarten:

Comments

[doppelfish]

Hurra, es wird Sommer! Da kann man wieder draussen trinken! (Zitat eines Komilitonen)

Beautiful, Andrew, thanks for sharing. It's as beautiful as North Carolina in April when the wild dogwood begins to blossom. Sprays of white in the woods. The cherry blossons in Washington DC have nothing on dogwood, particularly when one considers the lack of tourists and their traffic jams. I always thought dogwood season was a Japanese aesthetic.