This was at the train station in Duisburg where I had to change trains. I took the train from Cologne, changed trains in Duisburg and went to Rheinberg, where I started to walk. The destinaten was Airport Weeze.

When I got off the train in Duisburg, my first struggle was to get out of the town. Towns can be like mazes. But I had downloaded a GPS app for my phone (MapFactor, really cool), so it was no big deal. I found a grocery store and bought some food.

Even with GPS I ran into some dead-ends because I thought maybe there were just dead-ends on the map and that I could still somehow get past. Well, I couldn't. At least not in this case.

Finally leaving the town after about an hour.

Another dead-end. This time I couldn't tell from the map though. Also, if you look closely, you can see that the road continues on the other side of that thing.

Literal shitbags.

I thought I had left the town, but I still had to walk through a business disctrict. It took me a few minutes to cross this intersection because the signal button didn't work properly and it took me a while to figure out how to press it so that it would actually register it. A few minutes of listening to car engines and getting even more eager to get out of that town.

It looked like there was no other way to Xanten, my destination for that day, so I had to follow this street.

Not quite what you would imagine a trip into nature to be like.

It's getting Dutch.

Crossed another town and finally got to more quiet places. That's cows in the background. I literally saw a few hundred cows during this trip. They were everywhere. Also interesting to see that even a region as densely populated as Northrhine-Westphalia has enough space to let cows graze instead of feeding them junk and keeping them in stables for most of their lives.

Can you spot it?

I had thought I could walk along the Rhine like I did on my last trip, and I actually could, but it looked like a detour on my map, so I decided to walk past Wesel instead of through it.

A cute house for people with a cute last name. "Gurke" means "cucumber".

These are my favorite kind of views. The road looks like it might just go on and on behind the horizon and never end. Who needs destinations anyway? A direction is the only thing you need to keep going.

Found a petting zoo at the edge of a town. In case you're wondering, city people: No, that's not a dog.

They even had llamas! I tried to get them to pose with me for a selfie, but they weren't very compliant.

One of these ducks seemed to have a broken foot, and his buddy walked at the same slow pace and paid attention that he wouldn't get left behind when they crossed the street.

A rock shop. Not sure why you would buy rocks, but I guess it's nice to know you can.

This sign said Xanten, my destination for that day.

More cows and a little lake. They had a bunch of those lakes around there and a few of them even formed a pretty big island in the middle.

Heading onto the island.

Probably had a fight in their nest and fell both out of it. That's what you get for fighting, people!

They had these cabins near the shore of the lakes so people would be able to look through the holes to watch the lakes without disturbing the animals.

The view from one of those holes.

The cabin from the outside. It would have been a nice place to sleep, but it was still too early in the day, and I wanted to reach Xanten first.

Heading deeper into the jungle on that island even though I knew I would have to walk the whole way back because there's just this one path connecting the island to the other side of the lakes. It really sounded like a jungle too. The birds were even louder than in regular forests and I wasn't even sure if those noises all came from birds.

Another cabin. This one shows the height the water of the lakes had in 2002 and 2003. The island must have been pretty much flooded.

Another hole, another view.

And the one on the other side of the cabin.

This was the only place I found where you could actually get directly to the shore.

Those trees all looked like they were chopped with axes. I guess they do it that way because machines or even electric tools would be too loud.

Nightmare Bush.

Home of the King of the Jungle from the looks of it. And that wasn't the only house in that jungle. There were a few other ones too. Pretty cool place to live.

Left the island as the sun was setting.

And finally reached the Rhine.

Naming your boat after a book for kids and people with chuunibyou...

Entering Xanten. There we go.

Had dinner (yogurt with oats) and watched the sunset.

It was getting darker and I still had to find a place to sleep. I guess it would have been the perfect time for asking those restaurants for leftovers they could give me for free, but I still had enough food, so I didn't bother.

The church of Xanten. I thought about sleeping inside that church, but it was locked.

"Don't you DARE let your son read a book with a pink cover!"

I keep finding myself on the Way of Saint James. It's everywhere.

Perfect form, Jesus. Keep going.

Front shot of the church.

I left the town looking for a quiet place to sleep. I started to rain pretty heavily, so just sleeping outside on a field was out of the question, so I decided to check out the Roman open air museum at the edge of the town.

I walked along the walls and hedges of the museum park and finally found a spot where I could slip through into the park. By that time I was already soaked. I walked around a bit but couldn't see much in the dark. Eventually I found a nice playground building with a roof and slept there.

Waking up at 4 in the morning after just 4 hours of sleep. What better time to continue the journey? Well, actually I had no idea when the park was opening, and I didn't really want to get kicked out by security, so I played it safe.

I found these ruins of a Roman bath, which would have been a much better place to sleep. It was a few degrees warmer in here than in my cabin thing and I would have been protected from the wind.

I left the park and went back into town. Decided against a quick stop in Santiago.

The town square at day.

Showing temperature, air pressure and humidity.

This guy is Saint Antony of Padua. Patron saint of shotacon.

I was pretty glad to see the sun rise. I keep getting surprised by how cold it can get over night.

This is one the many roads leading back to the park.

And this is the park by light. You can even see a few rabbits on the other side.

That building in the background is where I spent the night.

A map of the park. The white parts are accessible, the other ones only by breaking the law. Unfortunately I was right at the parking spot, and the only way to follow this road out of town was to break the law one more time.

The park was opening at 9am, so I would still have a little time to look around I thought.

A better picture of the place I slept in.

I guess I could have seen some cool stuff at that museum, but I didn't feel like running into someone, so I stayed away.

A maze and some ruins in the background.

I had actually visited this park with my middle school class before, and I remember sitting under these trees playing F-Zero with some classmates on our Game Boys because it was too hot to walk around that day.

This theater seemed worth risking running into someone.

I actually saw a car parked next to the theater. It was probably someone preparing the nearby restrooms for the day.

Better view of the ruins.

Left the park through the same entrance I had entered it through the night before. And I picked a pretty good time, because just a few minutes after I saw someone driving their car up to the entrance.

One last view of the ruins.

I put the address I originally meant to upload this album to on that gate tower door, but that site went down forever a month after, so I guess I'll have to pay the park another visit someday to update that address.

Got my food for the day. ja!

Also upgraded my style for the cold morning hours. Haters gonna hate.

I left Xanten, and the only road to the next town was super narrow and had no bike lanes, so I had to keep dodging cars. It also started to rain again. The start of a pretty shitty day. But after about an hour someone stopped their car and gave me sandwiches and coffee. Morale restored.

Finally found a forest path that was leading into the same direction as the road.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one that didn't look like it was frequently used by cars.

Purple foxgloves.

More of them.

And peas, I think?

The forest path ended and went over into this road under construction. Can't leave anything unpaved I guess.

It will probably still take some time until it's finished tough.

The Lower Rhineland in all its flatness.

Looks like some kind of tram line used to go through this forest.

It was actually more like a dam with trees than a forest at this point and you could look down onto the town it crossed.

Some information on the tram.

It was getting warmer again and you can kind of tell from the state these horses are in.

Construction stuff.

These houses are like compasses, with the solar panels always pointing South, which was actually pretty handy.

The town administration made the residents pay 4-digit amounts for road restorations, and they seemed pissed enough to put up signs all over their lawns. Dozens of them, with the exact amount the respective house owner had to pay on them. Roads are pretty expensive.

Getting closer to my goal.

Town square in Uedem.

And the town's church.

That's a life-sized Dobby figure in the window, reminder not to mess with Harry Potter fans. They're a crazy bunch.

Not a love poem.

Oh, I was so pissed off at everything at this point. I had spent two hours walking along a highway and had a car rush past me every few seconds. That was the worst part about it. Then I found a little forest and the map at the entrance showed a path leading straight to Weeze, but the actual forest was a terrible maze, so I was actually glad to get back onto the highway.

Thankfully it didn't take long until I reached Weeze.

Weeze is a really cute little town, but I had still a few kilometers ahead of me until I would reach the airport, so I just crossed it without looking around.

I was wearing different shoes than on my last trip and hadn't gotten any blisters, but they weren't proper hiking shoes and my feet were still killing me. This train station could have been the easy way out for me, but I still hadn't seen what I wanted to see, so I kept going.

I followed another (more quiet) highway and reached this fork after a while. The left road lead to the airport, the right one to a homeless shelter. My plan was to first try to get a free room at the homeless shelter and sleep there, or if I couldn't get a room, leave it again and sleep at the airport. The forked roads actually reunited about 10 kilometers in, so I could reach the airport from the other side too.

It had gotten even warmer and I really needed to use a restroom, which kind of distracted me from the fact that every step felt like my feet were getting pierced by a thousand needles, and I eventually made it to the homeless shelter...

...where I met my savior.

I hung out at the main entrance and talked to the people who lived there. A cool bunch. One of them was a successful rock musician in East Germany, but fled to the West and started a company as an independent truck driver. After problems with women and alcohol, his ex and her new boyfriend somehow managed to send him to that shelter. He has his own room, food and utilities included, and the costs of 1200 euros a month are paid by Christian welfare organizations for the rest of his life. Pretty sweet deal. No surprise he has no intention of ever moving out. A golden cage, just like ours, only both more golden and cagier.

The people at the shelter told me there was a shortcut to the airport I could use instead of following the road, and I thought it was this one, but I must have been wrong, because I ended up in a huge sand pit.

I seriously had no idea how to get out of the pit, and I didn't want to turn back, so I just kept going. This pit is apparently used by people as a ghetto motocross track, and they were the ones who are responsible for the "shortcut" I took.

Thankfully I met a hunter who could tell me how to get out of the pit and to the airport. Back on the road.

The hunter did tell me about this gate, but he was "pretty sure" it wouldn't be locked. Well... Time to risk breaking my arms.

I survived climbing the gate and was rewarded with this cutie.

Reached the airport before it got dark. Lucky me.

Yep. Looks like an airport.

Inside the airpost building I found this cozy corner with a bench and made it my bed for the night. It was warm enough to sleep even without a sleeping bag.

I woke up in the middle of the night and decided to take walk around a little. The bench next to mine had already been claimed by another sleeper, and all the other ones on the other side of the building too. There were about 20 people sleeping in the airport.

This is pretty much everything there is to this airport. It doesn't even have separate arrival and departure areas.

In case you need a tablet computer to go.

These are all the flights of the next day.

I managed to sleep some more and finally left the airport as the sun was rising.

I didn't follow the highway that would lead me back to the fork from yesterday but took a shortcut through a forest.

Looks like an old landing strip, now used by absolutely no one except people like me.

This road was actually looked pretty accessible on my map and it would have saved me a few kilometers, but there was another one that was good enough too, so I took that one.

A sign telling stalkers to get out of there.

Free shelter pretty much in the middle of the forest. Going to have to keep that in mind. Could be my humble abode someday.

This house looked like it was used as an art gallery, but the rest of this town was pretty much deserted and only used as an army training area.

There wasn't much to see there, so I left for the highway that would lead me back to Weeze.

An old reception front desk, looking like it came straight out of Silent Hill.

Got it. Not too keen on getting blown up.

You can't really tell with this terrible picture quality, but one of those signs said Cologne. Cologne was still a 100 kilometers away though, but I guess it can't hurt to know in advance.

This might have been a rabbit once.

Back at the train station in Weeze. My feet were saved.

A shot of the station in Krefeld from inside the train.

And finally back home. This trip was definitely less fun than the last one along the Rhine between Bonn and Koblenz and into the mountains of the Eifel, but that was to be expected. What I didn't expect though was that there were hardly any roads that weren't used by cars. That was the worst part about it.