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OWL Tour 2010 – Day 2: In the morning we got up early and were back on the road while most other people were still sleeping in their motorhomes. We wanted to visit two gardens in Bielefeld and one in Bad Salzuflen to get some ideas for our own public garden which we are planning.

When you drive through Bielefeld you don’t really think of gardens, but Bielefeld is not only situated beautifully in the Teutoburg Forest nature park, it also has some gardens which are worth a visit. To start with we went to the botanical garden. The botanical garden of Bielefeld is a municipal botanical garden of 4 hectares located on the hillside of the Kahler Berg near the town center and is open to the public for free.

The garden offers an extensive plant collections and a wide variety of landscaped gardens. Highlights are the traditional Westphalian farmhouse from the year 1823, the rhododendron and azalea displays, and the presentation of different natural settings such as rock gardens, alpine beds, medicinal and herb plantings, heather gardens and beech wood flora.

Next we went to the Japanese Garden, which was opened 2003. The Japanese garden in Bielefeld-Bethel is a traditional Japanese rock garden according to ‘Kare san sui’ principles.

Visitors experience the garden with their eyes only, they do not walk through this idealized representation of the natural world. Next to a series of photos we also created a short video of this special garden.

Japanese Garden Bielefeld from Harald Walker on Vimeo.

OWL Tour 2010 – Day 1: In the middle of July we wanted to go back and visit the Lippe region again, including Ostwestfalen which is on the way. Ostwestfalen-Lippe is a region in the federal state North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. The area of Ostwestfalen-Lippe is congruent with the area of the administrative region Detmold and includes major cities such as Bielefeld and Paderborn.

We left late on Thursday to avoid the Dutch traffic jams and stopped for the night at the camper park of Bad Bentheim, just a few kilometers behind the German border. While the camper park at the foot of the castle officially has room for 22 campers, also the parking ground next to it was occupied by a large amount of campers already. Since we only wanted to spend the night here, we picked a place and went to bed, trying not to make too much noise.

Winter Tour 2008 – Day 1: After having coffee and pie in Bocholt, we wanted to make some kilometers but stopped in Duisburg at the Duisburg-North Landscape Park for dinner. The landscape park Duisburg-North is a former metallurgical plant in Duisburg-Meiderich, which was shut down in 1985. Most of the plant was saved from demolition, and each weekend at night the light installation of the British artist Jonathan Park transforms it into a surrealistic post-industrial landscape. Access is free and there is also a camper park for those who want to stay longer.

Solar Tour 2008 – Day 9: Soon after Trigance, we reached the Verdon Gorge, the world’s second largest gorge with a length of 25 kilometers and up to 700 meters deep. We’ve visited this impressive canyon a couple of time before but each time it is worth the visit. It is just breathtaking to see the ravine, which the turquoise-green Verdon river has cut through the limestone.

The Verdon river flows into the artificial Sainte-Croix lake, which was our final destination for the day. In les Salles-sur-Verdon we wanted to stay on a campground were Chris and I have been many years before on one of our first trips.

Solar Tour 2008 – Day 5: In the morning we took the bikes and went into the center of Freiburg to go shopping and take some pictures. Freiburg is really a bike friendly town and reminded me a lot of Amsterdam. With the bikes we also went to the Ökostation, an ecological eduction center not too far away from the motor home parking. Later we went to the Solar Factory. It has a small cafeteria but otherwise there is not much to see except for the interesting building. It would have been nice to see how solar panels are actually being made.

Nearby is also the Solar House Freiburg of the Frauenhofer-Institute, which is a completely self-sufficient house. Next stop was at the Sonnenschiff (Solar Ship), an apartment, office and shopping complex. On the roof, 1000 square meters of solar panels generate about 100.000 kW/h electricity per year. Directly next to the Sonnenschiff one can see the Solarsiedlung, an ecological housing project with 58 family houses.

After this much inspiration it was time for us to move on and after a short stop in Breisach am Rhein we were heading towards Switzerland.

Solar Tour 2008 – Day 4: In the afternoon we arrived in Freiburg im Breisgau. In Germany Freiburg is known as ecological solar city and because of that we were looking forward to visit it.

On our way to the motor home parking we already passed the apartments on Wilmersdorfer Street with their solar front. Those buildings have been refurbishment in 2001. Next to solar architecture Freiburg also has a solar panel factory and is the hometown of some ecological organizations.