By Steph When I first moved to Germany in 2014 it was the end of June and I had just finished my bachelor's degree and an ESL teacher training program, and left a student job that I had somehow juggled with all of my other commitments. I was on a roll, and within two weeks of arriving, I had sent out a dozen job and language school applications. But no one was getting in touch with me!
That's when Malte introduced me to the concept of German summer vacation: everything closes. Families go on three-week-long vacations to the Mediterranean. Emails are left unanswered. Language schools take long summer breaks. When could I expect things to pick up again? It was July...and I would have to wait until September! By Malte At the end of June we are again sitting between moving boxes and suitcases in my parents' house in Emden, choosing between the things we will take on out next journey and those that will get tucked away in the basement. We packed our bags quite a few times last year, but this trip is the end of the line: I found a job in Kassel.
By Steph While Malte and I were traveling last year, I kept noticing animal tracks. At first it was just the obvious ones. But I slowly started realizing that if I took the time to look, there were things to discover everywhere.
We found endless deer and turkey tracks, followed squirrel prints across a golf course in the snow, tracked a raccoon through a neighborhood park and adjacent backyards, and spotted a coyote run on the edge of a cliff in the middle of Madison! But even more often we found tracks and sign that were a complete mystery to us. It was clear that we were only reading a small fraction of the book of nature, and I wanted to understand more. By Steph It is 7am and we have slipped out of the human world for the morning to get some much-needed nature time. The North Sea wind whips against our backs as we walk the fields in an uninhabited area just outside of Emden, with no other people in sight except the farmer.
But uninhabited is a relative term – we've already identified five uncommon bird species, examined an owl pellet, and watched deer grazing in the hazy morning sunlight. |
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