October 2021

We wanted to find mushrooms. After making our way through the thickets, we came out into an open clearing surrounded by pines and immediately found 2 small porcini mushrooms, which gave us hope. After some time, already in another part of the forest, Volchy found one more porcini mushroom, and that was the end of it...

By the end, we were very hungry, but the sun was starting to play tricks on us, and there were no nice clearings or benches either. We sat down along the trail on a pile of fallen logs, drank tea with a baguette. And headed back to the car.

But on Monday I made potatoes with three porcini mushrooms. Volchy was so happy, he kept saying, “Hooray, potatoes.” We very, very rarely eat potatoes here.

***

The second weekend of October was very eventful. They promised sunny weather, and we planned a mini trip.

We set off on Friday evening after work. We had 300 km to drive to the city of Saarbrücken.

In the evening we wanted to go to the German sauna “Saarland Therme”. We had been preparing for this event for a whole week, bought Volchy a bathrobe, and slippers for the two of us. I was a little nervous — it was our first time going to a place like this, and among Germans it is very popular.

We arrived at the sauna building around 10 p.m.

Saarland Therme is a huge building, and everything inside is done in Moroccan style.

On the first floor there are several pools of different sizes.

One large pool inside the building and one large outdoor pool. The water in the pools is warm, around 38 degrees.

There are quite a lot of people, but it is not very bothersome. People don’t swim here; they just sit and soak.

I liked it better outside; it’s so pleasant to feel the warmth of the water and the coolness of the air at the same time.

In addition to these two large pools, there are also several smaller pools.

One of them has very, very salty water; it’s such an unusual feeling — because of the saltiness, it’s so easy to float on the surface of the water, you don’t sink at all.

The special thing about the first floor is that everyone here is in swimsuits.

On the second floor there are numerous saunas. I don’t remember exactly how many, but there are about 10 different saunas. All with different temperatures.

On the second floor, everyone walks around either in bathrobes or wrapped in towels. In the saunas, you are not allowed to sit in swimwear; you must be naked. We visited the hammam (I really liked it, and Volchy thought it was so-so) and the hottest sauna. It said 90 degrees there, but it didn’t feel all that hot.

There is also a small pool with cool water in the center. But after the sauna, you want something very cold, so we used the shower to cool off.

On the roof of the building there are sun loungers in the open air and another sauna. That’s where we headed. At first we were completely alone there, and it was so nice. Apparently not everyone knows about this rooftop sauna. At the sauna entrance, the temperature was listed as 80°C. It felt very comfortable (in Vorzel, it’s like that when the temperature is around 65°C–70°C). Another nice thing was that near this sauna there was a very small pool, but with very cold water. That’s the best part — to plunge into such water after the sauna!

We stayed here for 2 hours, and of course that was far too little. But we still had to go check in at the hotel. And it was already midnight outside :) The hotel is in the neighboring town of Völklingen.

***

On Saturday after breakfast we took a short walk around the town of Völklingen. It’s a small town, very modest. Then we headed to France; at 2 p.m. we had a tour of Hackenberg Fort scheduled. Tours are held here once a week, and I signed up in advance, thinking there would be many people interested. But there were only 8 of us.

Hackenberg is one of the largest forts of the Maginot Line. The tour took 4 hours, and by the end we were of course very tired. The tour was in English, but the guide talked so fast that I could barely understand half of it. Still, it was very interesting. They showed us, and even started up, the underground power station that generated electricity from fuel. We rode an electric train that was used to transport the fort’s personnel. We went upstairs and saw how the gun turret rose and moved.

In 1940, the fort was captured by the Germans and turned into a factory for manufacturing military equipment. In 1944, the Americans tried to take the fort; traces of their shelling are visible on the outside.

Tired and hungry, after stepping out once again into the sunlight, we had a picnic with tea and panettone right by the roadside of a country lane overlooking the fields and a French village.

Volchiy suggested stopping by a French supermarket for a change. The store we found wasn’t very good, but we bought cheese, hummus (by the way, very tasty), and Bordeaux for dinner.

Originally, after the fort, we had planned to visit the city of Saarbrücken. But the tour exhausted us so much that we went to the hotel.

***

On Sunday, we had planned to visit a huge steelworks in the city of Völklingen, which has been turned into a museum. The plant closed in 1986, and since 1990 it has operated as a museum (and in 1994 it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List).

Here is what is written about it on the UNESCO website: “The ironworks, covering an area of six hectares, dominates the appearance of the town of Völklingen. Although production there has recently ceased, it remains the only completely preserved ironworks built in the 19th and 20th centuries in Western Europe and North America.”

I was worried that I would not understand much, since I am so far removed from the production of pig iron, steel, and all that…. But in fact it was really cool. The scale of the plant is astonishing. You can simply walk among these iron monsters and marvel at how people came up with and built something like this.

The museum has a lot of information. It is a bit difficult to take it in in English, with many specific terms that I didn’t even know in Russian. It’s hard to digest so much new information at once. There were more questions than answers. But to see with my own eyes 6 huge blast furnaces 27 meters high, to understand (thanks to clear diagrams) how pig iron is made from coke and iron ore, to see the coke ovens…. It’s impossible to list everything.

We spent 5 hours in the museum, and that wasn’t enough. But we had to go home….

***

On the third Saturday of October, the forecast called for sunny weather. So we planned a trip to the Eifel Forest from the Belgian side.

In the morning, fog hung over Düsseldorf, and there was not a hint of sun. It cleared up a little along the way, closer to Belgium.

The free parking areas near the forest were completely full, so we squeezed the car into an improvised parking spot by the barrier and went for a walk.

The sun came out briefly. At first, we walked through terrible mud left behind by logging trucks.

And then we plunged into the forest. It was the first time in our lives that we had seen a Calocera mushroom.

Then I dragged Volchy into the thicket, and there I first saw one Polish mushroom, then another and another.

Actually, you’re not allowed to pick mushrooms in this forest (since it’s a national park), but we couldn’t resist.

We picked 400 g of mushrooms, including 2 porcini, all the rest were Polish mushrooms.

The nature here is very diverse. Besides the bogs, there are beautiful pine forests, all overgrown with moss. It is so pleasant to step on the soft bright-green moss.

We had a picnic on fallen trees; it was a pity that by then the sun had completely hidden behind a thick veil of clouds. It was time to head home….

Volchiy bought us a bucket. I had been dreaming for so long of a beautiful trash can with a lid.

It’s very successful - the lids close softly and open pleasantly without banging against the wall.

And we also ordered a mountain of nuts at a discount!

***

On October 23, we went for a walk in the center of Düsseldorf — it had been so long since we’d strolled there.

It all started when one of my earbuds began acting up. Volchiy looked online and found out that this is a well-known problem with these earbuds, and that Apple, admitting its mistake, replaces them for free with another pair — also new earbuds, in which they have fixed the issue. I couldn’t believe it, but I made an appointment at the Apple service center, which is located right in the city center, and off we went for a walk.

At the Apple service center, everything is very civilized. They looked at my earbuds, checked something there, said they would keep diagnosing them for about 2 more hours and then write back with the result.

And we went to eat pizza at our favorite pizzeria, Da Noi, where Italians work and bake pizza in a real wood-fired oven.

On Saturday evening, it was packed; they found us the last table and even then asked us not to linger for more than an hour — everything was reserved.

Delicious!

While we were eating, Apple sent an email saying we could come and pick up the headphones. And indeed - they gave me two completely new headphones in exchange for the old ones.

So that’s how it was. I was as happy as a clam :)

***

On Sunday, October 24, they promised a warm sunny day, and that’s exactly how it was :)

Volchiy agreed to drive 200 km one way (400 km round trip in total) to see the Externsteine rocks in the Teutoburg Forest.

I had wanted to go there for a long time; in photos, this place seemed somehow unreal to me.

This is probably just one of those cases where, because of the large number of people, a place loses its beauty and magic.

The towering cliffs, as if grown out of nowhere, really do look impressive, but because of the crowds, we weren’t able to fully enjoy this place.

We took a few photos and then went farther into the forests, which are all around here.

Volchiy came up with a route for us that included a visit to the ruins on the mountain. On the way, we had a picnic in a clearing.

At night, before going to sleep, Volchiy came up with the idea that in the morning we would fry sausages, and then heat them up in the forest using a gas burner :))

That’s exactly what we did, and it turned out very tasty!

We were already returning home in the dark… Volchiy was very tired. But the trip turned out very good.

***

October 30, it’s raining outside. The little acacia growing near our balcony is already completely yellow. Such a beautiful leaf color. A squirrel is running in the grass; the rain probably doesn’t bother it. And I am writing in my diary....