A Typical April Week

Germany is not the only country where April is seen as a month of extremely varied weather - sometimes having everything from snow to sunshine to hail to thunder and back to sunshine within a couple of hours. We have a rhyme "April, April, der macht was er will", meaning April does as April wants. Last week was a typical example of that.

After the summerly weekend with highs of 25C/77F, Monday (15 April) was much cooler at 12C/53F. It was also very windy, if not to say stormy, making for rapidly changing light and a quick succession of showers and sun. After a quiet day working from home, I went for only about an hour's walk to the Old Cemetery and back; it was just a little too windy to make being outside a pleasure.

I passed through this part of town often on my way to the hospital in autum 2022.

Tuesday (16 April) was more or less the same in terms of weather and temperature, but I was lucky: After my quarterly eye examination in Stuttgart, the sun was out and the wind not too strong, allowing me to walk the first part of my trip home, getting on the local train at the third instead of the first station from the surgery. 

Like most big cities, Stuttgart has several parks and other green spaces. Starting from the Schlossgarten (palace grounds) in the middle of the city, one can walk through parkland for miles without having to battle the constant flow of cars; foot bridges (also used by cyclists) cross the big roads that cut through the parks at some spots.

In my teens, I often had a special ticket for our local trains available to students during school holidays. Sometimes I would use that ticket to take a train into Stuttgart and then walk through the park(s) until getting on a train back home at another station. 

I'd not done this particular walk in many, many years, and with it being such a beautiful day and no pressing obligations for the rest of the afternoon, I decided to walk.

The map - courtesy of Google maps - shows two red circles added by me. The one in the bottom left corner shows the train station where I usually get on and off for appointments with my eye doctor. The one at the top shows the station where I boarded a train back to Ludwigsburg, after having walked for about 1 1/2 hours through the parks you can see on the map, starting with Schlossgarten.

Here are the pictures I took along the way:

Wednesday (17 April) was spent at the office. At 4C/39F, it was cold enough in the morning to wear my padded winter coat and a warm scarf again. Once more, there was a mix of wind, rain and sun, with the odd clattering of hail against the window. But it remained dry almost until the end of my walk home from Kornwestheim.

A second day was spent at the office this week on Thursday (18 April), and the evening at my Mum's where the three of us enjoyed another delicious meal cooked by our Mum. In line with the wintry weather, she made a classic: mashed spuds, Sauerkraut and "Schäufele" (a dish of meat popular in my and O.K.'s regions).

It rained most of the day on Friday (19 April), and at 3C/37F, time to put the heating back on except for when I did my cleaning round in the afternoon. O.K. arrived shortly after 9:00 pm.

Saturday (20 April) was going to be a mix of rain and very little sun, according to the forecast. We still ventured into town after a leisurely breakfast, visiting some shops in view of O.K.'s upcoming birthday, and did not need our hoods or an umbrella (which would have been useless with the strong wind anyway).

I'd ordered food at the Indian restaurant in our neighbourhood, and at 6:30 pm O.K. and I went to pick it up and take it to my Mum's where the four of us (my sister was there, too) tucked into our delicious spicy food.

After I'd been struggling with a headache (coming from my neck/shoulder area) for most of the day, shortly after the meal I really couldn't keep going, and we went home unusually early. At 9:15 pm, I was in bed, knowing that only sleep would really make a difference.

And so it was; waking up on Sunday (21 April), I was right as rain again. 2C/35F was cold, but we just wrapped up well and went for a good long walk on the fields in the afternoon. 

Snow, maybe icy rain and slippery roads were threatening, and therefore O.K. drove home about 1 1/2 hours earlier than usual on a Sunday night. 

We ate early; I made green asparagus tarte on a base of puff pastry. The pastry was bought ready, everything else was by me after a recipe I'd taken out from a magazine many years ago and had always wanted to try. It turned out really nice, I think - a dry white wine would have been perfect with it, but of course O.K. had to drive and so we stuck to water.

My week ended with an early retreat to bed with my current read - the fourth installment of Richard Osman's Thursday Murder Club series (brilliant!).