11) A Walk Through Memories: Riedlepark

Once again, the skies promised rain for the afternoon. So early in the morning, Jürgen and Huayna packed their small daypacks and set out with a clear mission: to visit a place close to Jürgen's heart — the forest where he had grown up.

Their path led them first down Riedleparkstrasse, where time seemed to have paused. There, Jürgen pointed out an old apartment block, its plain façade weathered but unchanged since the years just after the Second World War. French officers had once lived there, stationed in Friedrichshafen as part of the occupying forces. It had also been home to Jürgen and his parents for a long while — a stone’s throw from the forest that had shaped so much of his childhood.

For Jürgen, the nearby woods had been a second home — a world teeming with life. Deer, hares, hedgehogs, wood mice, shrews, and squirrels had been his quiet companions among the ancient trees. It had been a place of wonder, refuge, and endless adventure.

He told Huayna about Queen Olga of Württemberg — a daughter of Tsar Nicholas I — who, in the 1860s, had saved this precious green space from the jaws of greedy timber merchants. She had bought the land from local farmers, declaring it a public park for the people. Thanks to her courage, generations after her, children could still find magic under the towering trees.

But there in the past, a heavy, mechanical roar shattered the morning’s peace. To Jürgen's dismay, construction machines, with their monstrous excavators and bulldozers, were chewing through the trees like mechanical beasts. The devastation hit him like a blow. He had seen it happen years before — a road carved through the heart of the woods to serve the endless hunger for cars and convenience. Even today he still thinks painfully about the past.

The deer and hares were long gone now. Only the hardier creatures — hedgehogs and squirrels — still clung to the scraps of their shrinking home. It felt, Jürgen thought bitterly, as if someone had torn down his childhood house, brick by brick.

Even decades later, the wound hadn't fully healed. He watched the slow, steady destruction of nature with the sorrow of someone who had loved it too deeply to ever be indifferent. And even though there were now efforts to restore what had been lost, it could never quite be the same.

But Jürgen and Huayna were not about to let sadness carry the day. They focused instead on what remained — the fresh green of the trees that still stood, the cheerful symphony of birds who, no matter the weather, sang their songs without bitterness.

And when they stumbled across an old zip-line standing proudly in a clearing, they laughed like two boys, taking turns racing down it. The rain held off just long enough for those moments of pure, simple joy.

Later, they would realize they had only two blurry photos left from Riedlepark — nothing special by technical standards. But that hardly mattered. The real treasures, after all, were not captured in pixels or frames — they were carried in the heart, alive in memory.

Published: 08/05/2025