Achternmeerer Straße
The Achternmeerer Straße (Straße is street in German) in Hundsmühlen, the village in which I grew up, is obviously not a popular tourist attraction. In fact, the street is open to local traffic only. It connects Hundsmühlen with one of the neighboring villages, Achternmeer, a place even smaller and more rural than Hundsmühlen. It runs through what used to be a bog which has been converted to arable land by the 1930s. The street runs for a length of about 3.5 kilometers and except for a small stretch at the beginning, it still retains all of the old cobblestone. As a child, growing up in this area and riding my bike on the bumpy cobblestone, I did of course not fully appreciate the appeal of it. Today, I hope that the street will remain this way for a very long time. A popular walk of the local population starts on the southern end of Hundsmühlen and follows the Achternmeerer Straße until a street called "Am Querkanal", which is next to the Querkanal, a canal which was used in the peat-cutting days to transport the peat out of the bog. Passing a bridge across this canal, the ramblers find their way back into the village.
This street is very dreamy during the short winter days, when it gets dark in the early afternoon, and it's refreshingly cool during the summer, when the huge old trees lining each side provide some shade. This particular picture, hiding the end of the street in the fog, I think captures that dreamy mood.
I took the picture to the right on New Year's Day, January 1, 2009 during a Christmas and New Year's trip back to Germany. The camera used is my Canon EOS 40D and a Canon EF 70-200 ƒ/2.8L IS USM at 70 mm for the lens. The exposure is a shutter speed of 1/80 second, an aperture of ƒ/3.5 at 100 ISO.
