During these 10 days I moved from Nierstein, a nice and small village along the Rhine, and the locationfor the best Riesling wines, to the heart of Schwaben, with Tübingen as a famous university city. The landscape changed fromwinefiels to woods, valleys with little currents and the initially small rivers Neckar and Würm which grow in size. The ´Fachwerk´ houses in the various villages are beautiful. Heppenheim with its superb market place is certainly a village I would like to go back to. But it is now often raining and no people at the terraces outside.

Heidelberg, also a famous university city, bordering the Neckar with the playing fields/meadows alongside. People jog, walk, and lie in the grass and just relax. I am crossing the European water barrier line where on the one side rainwater will enter the Neckar and later will join the Rhine to end up in the North Sea. Just one centimetre further a rain drop will flow into the Danube and follow its way to the Black Sea. A very normal, but nevertheless special phenomenon, which strikes me every time again. It could also saysomething about how people, which seem to have the same chances initially, might grow up differently because of tiny differences in their environment and end up either succesful or the opposite.

Later I am in Tübingen; famous people studied and worked here, such as the asronomer Kepler, who described the routes of planets, and the philosopher Hegel. Tübingen is as Cambridge. Gondolas with tourists arefloating over the Neckar, steered by students.

The body and especially the feet are aching, also because the daily distance has increased somewhat: 25 - 30 km. I hope I can handle it, we have to see.