modern villa at the outskirts of wiesbaden-sonnenberg.
by march 2020 it was clear that the virus that swept over the world from china, would be of pandemic character and the world suddenly stood still, but at the same time absolutely went crazy. suddenly people isolated themselves, office workplaces were orphaned and home office became the new rage. people applauded health professionals and retail workers for their outstanding braveness and tireless work to keep people alive and fed ( but soon forgot about it again - and nobody got any raises or better work conditions ). toilet paper became gold for a little while, highly sought after, as were things like tinned food, noodles, oil, flour and everything basically. people prepared for a complete shut-in, masked up without much fanfare and began to learn how to spend their time without constant socialization.
i remember the streets being utterly empty, cars were not around much for the first few weeks, too, and my brain was like, this is great, i love it, can we have this forever please? while most people thought of the sceneries as spooky, i was enjoying it a lot, people-free places are my favourite thing, obviously. while work was hectic and people were ravaging the aisles, i could absolutely deal with it and internally was snickering about people panic-hamstering. finally, i thought, finally people will learn to be more respectful towards people that hold up the system, finally people would learn to be more mindful of others, finally people would start unlearning that everything needs to be available at all times, they would stop beefing and griping about useless shit, they would appreciate life more and the work that has to be done to ensure they could live comfortably.
my snickering soon stopped as it became clear that people were actually not changing their ways and overtime became their old selves again, now only even worse. they got more iffy about things, more skeptic, more stupid and paranoid, more rude even as they realized they could either hide their faces behind masks, or not wear some at all - those people to me are still the worst - having no conscience for the lives of immunocompromised people and the elderly or possible longterm consequences even for the people who were healthy still. or maybe the missing air, the need to show their ugly faces to the world and the concision of their freedom to do things, mingling and banding with other humans, made them stir-crazy and volatile. i don't know, really, but it affected everyone. craziness in people increased, that was a fact.
the only thing for me that kept me sane from then on were my walks and hikes, nature and urban landscapes provided me with the mindset to get through the work stress ( as it had always done even before the pandemic ). i continued to choose places that were less explored, walking along the fringes of society to get away from it, something that was not new to me, but deepened even more throughout the years the virus has been up-ending our lives.
while the world had stood still for a brief moment, life didn't and people only stopped and stared for only a little while before adapting to their new reality. and that reality brought new problems with it, something that even looked like an increase in the division of society. family and friends suddenly became enemies over personal preferences whether to believe in the credibility and severeness and high adaptibility of the corona virus or not; whether to do the sensible thing and protect other people's health by simply doing a small thing like masking up and keeping distance for a bit or not. and that divide, i believe, prolonged the duration of time in which we would have to continue to fight the virus. even now, as states are slackening rules and laws and people get their supposed freedom back, the virus doesn't care about these animosities and is rampantly infecting the whole world. maybe not as severe as before, thanks to vaccinations, but it is not gone, it still adapts, it still finds ways to get to you and create problems that you don't know yet, but will maybe learn of in the future, by which it will maybe be too late to blame anyone anymore. ( though people will do it anyways, i am sure ).
curiously, this would've been the chance for people to prove, that with resiliency and some mass effort, we could've been able to overcome ourselves and recreate us in new ways, change our mindsets and start thinking about our relationships with this world and the connections to it and invent new ways to interact and co-exist. but curiously, and disappointingly, nothing of this sorts really happened. maybe i am looking at this too much in negative light, but to me, it feels like we failed massively and continue to fail. people could have the power to change things for the positive, but only a small portion ever tries it for real and gets stumped and kept in their places until they give in to the louder, screaming voices and give up on believing in positive change. happens time and time again. will probably happen forever until our lights get blown out altogether.
yay!
now onto my futile attempt to make sense of my own life, here's some images from a walk at the fringes of wiesbaden on an early spring day two years ago. it led me to the outskirts of wiesbaden sonnenberg - an area that's called bahnholz which expands into a little valley - the goldsteintal. there's some expensive housing going on in that area, the hills are highly sought after because it's quiet up there and there's woods right around the corner. totally would lease a house there, too, if i had the money.
another modern bungalow, this one being more up my alley than the first one. the size is much better and it reminds me of early bauhaus architecture, clean-cut and easy-going ( and very importantly - not oversized ).
i found some blossoming crocuses that served as a feasting spot for bees and bumblebees! i lingered there for a while watching them and enjoying their buzz ❤
this big boy dove right in headfirst! i am sure he liked it lots and couldn't get enough of the delicious pollen of life 😘
cutiepie posing for an exemplary portrait!
the purple goodness of these crocuses was very pleasing to the eye.
when you walk on the fringes of sonnenberg you are bound to get views of rambach ( and the kitzelberg ). these two districts are very tightly knit into each other. i am not sure if you can make it out, so i will make you aware of a certain detail. can you spot the tower of st. johannes, a former catholic church, now turned into a climbing club's headquarter? i visited it in january of the same year. let me zoom in a little more.
it's still blending in well, but is a little bit better to see...
there it is, with its distinct campanile and the honeycomb windows!
i passed by allotment gardens that abloomed with early blossoms, forsythias, crocuses & snowdrops everywhere. also, this garden shed looks very homely and i wanna move in there in the summer!
wonderful views onto the surrounding forestside! even though it was still very bare, the trees not having grown their lush summer dress yet. the valley below is probably the goldsteintal, though i ain't so sure about that anymore. the extensive woods in the back are part of the taunus mountains, the general direction being towards the rassel & kellerskopf peaks. i definitely need to head to this area in the future again, i haven't been doing walks in the goldsteintal for ages. it's a rather cute little valley with many glades and streams meandering through the landscape.
old orchard meadows can be found on the hills above the valley, too, and many allotment gardens now reside where there once had been extensive cultivable land before.
i'll never get tired of finding romantic little huts on the edge of the woods. fringe findings are gold to me :D
descending down to the lower goldsteintal. this is the goldsteinbach flowing through it.
it's only a very short stream about 3,25 kilometers long, but it's definitely adding to the beauty of the valley.
there are several fish ponds in the valley, too, but not all of them carry water or fish. i think this one belongs to the city and is kept as a natural habitat for the local flora and fauna.
a little foray into the nearby woods. it still felt very winter-y in them. but the sunshine helped creating light and shadow play, and made it feel like spring was just around the corner.
the goldsteinbach empties into the rambach further down the valley, but not without having had absorbed other little rivulets.
right next to this bridge was a little well, which unfortunately yielded only small drips of water. it's named 'geißenbörnchen', but the water is unfit for drinking purposes.
semi-natural stream course, semi because it is not its natural course but channeled by humans. the natural aspect is only reached because of the surrounding nature creating some sort of a romantic environment ;)
one of the fish ponds near the geißenbörnchen. they're officially called 'panzerteiche' after one of its former owners.
this pond here ( and the one in the back ) are called stickelmühlteiche, and are stocked with actual fish! though they are mainly not native to the area, because these ponds seem to heat up quite fast and are unsuitable for german brown trouts for example.
hello, cute pilewort blossom! these plants were historically used to prevent scurvy as they hold a good amount of vitamin c. there's one catch, though, it's toxic after blossoming and only edible in small amounts before florescence.
this cormorant enjoyed the sun ( probably also looked out for the fish in the ponds ;P )
mirrored symmetry!
a tree that grew sideways and straight into the water. i reckon this should be a good sun spot for pond turtles, too!
left the stickelmühlteiche for the re-entrance to the city again. the ponds were named after the stickelmühle ( a flour mill ), seen on the left corner of the image. some old ruins were right next to it, probably part of a former millwheel? as i can't no longer make out the goldsteinbach, though, my guess is that these belonged to other outbuildings.
nature loves claiming its place back!
nice tree growing on foundation walls.
the final two images exclaim my love for typography and design. möbel vogel is a small furniture store at the fringes of sonnenberg & rambach. they offer leolux & tecta furniture, high quality design pieces! i love the bird sitting on what looks like a sofa.
the furniture store. it reminded me of mid-century architecture, and i strongly feel that it was build around that time, too.
with that, my fringe walk at the beginning of the corona pandemic along the outskirts of sonnenberg and rambach ended and i made my way back into the city to face the madness of civilization again.
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