This was a short week – Ascension Thursday is a public holiday here and on Friday I celebreated the good old tradition of Brückentag and took the day off. For quite a while it seemed like it wasn’t such a good idea – the weather looked like it would turn out to be a bit shit, so it would basically end up being me wasting a day off on moping around at home. And I can do that for free on the weekends, thank you very much.
I did some shopping as soon as the shops opened on that day and when that was done way too fast, there was still quite a lot of day left. So I decided to go somewhere where I haven’t been since the early 90s: the Grand Ballon in the French Vosges mountains. It’s about an hour drive, the last half an hour is a pretty spectacular (and frankly dangerous) small country road through the Alsace forest up the mountain, shared with many cyclists, bikers and RVs.

It was pretty fun to walk the short one-hour hiking trail from the car park, ambling around in my “civilian” clothes in the middle of geared-up serious hikers, who probably did a big multi-day Vosges hike.

The rest of the weekend was pretty much spend in front of the TV – the 24 hour race at the Nürburgring is happening this weekend and that’s always something I like to watch. Some day I might even make it there in person.