Along the River

Last week saw some of the coldest temperatures we have so far experienced this winter - not extremely cold, but since we're not used to it anymore as much as in the past decades, those 5 Celsius below freezing felt face-crackingly cold. 
One morning it almost looked as if it had been snowing, but this was just frost, not snow, and gone an hour later:

View from my kitchen on Thursday morning, just before 8:00

Most days were beautiful and sunny, though, and the weekend was again were good for  walks.
I had been to a friend's birthday party (the fourth out of the five in my diary this month) on Friday evening and therefore travelled to O.K.'s only on the Saturday, arriving there just after lunch time.

We wanted to make the most of the daylight hours and headed out straight after a quick coffee and some (very delicious!) apple cake.

The milder days and weeks before were still obvious around us - look at how far birch and hazel trees and bushes already were!

On Sunday morning, we met with a group of friends for brunch at a village a 15 minute drive from O.K.'s. By the time we finished our leisurely meal, the sun had taken care of the dense fog, and we decided to walk along the Rhine, just outside this village (Ichenheim).

I'd not been to the river in about two years and enjoyed our walk a lot, even though it was relatively featureless and not as varied as the walks and hikes we normally take. The sun and fresh air felt good, and without having planned it, we ended up walking about 13.5 km.

The Pierre Pflimlin Bridge is a 957 m long motorway bridge over the river Rhine between Germany and France, south of Strasbourg/Kehl. It is named after a former French prime minister and was opened in 2002. It was funded by France, Germany and the European Union.

Right beside that bridge is a large modern building containing a café, shop, Japanese restaurant, architectural office and a theatre which puts plays on stage written by German and French authors of this particular border region (Alsace on the French side, Baden on the German side of the river). Most important for me that afternoon was that there are toilets in the building, accessible to all visitors without having to eat at the restaurant or buy anything from the shop.

On the map below you can see our starting point (bottom red blob/arrow) and where we turned round (top red blob/arrow); that stretch along the river is somewhere between 6 and 7 km. You can also see on the map how wide the river is there - it almost looks like a lake in some parts.

Walking back was towards the sun, and as we were getting closer to sunset (and to where we had parked the car), the light was even more beautiful.

We had a few more hours together at the cottage before O.K. took me to the train station. All went well with the three trains, and I arrived at my place just after 10:30 pm.