Chapter 1

Actually, that shouldn’t have happened.

In the countryside and small towns, you know, everything moves in a fixed circle. Only in big cities people one chooses a new route every time, while in bucolic landscapes every person, like a planet in the solar system, moves along its orbit without deviating. If I, say, am used to walking to the local supermarket on the asphalt path along the river, I would not think of going straight through the woods. And as a result, even after living in this village half my life, I have no idea what is happening a stone’s throw from my fence. Simply because I take a other path.

But I’m not really a villager. I bought a house in Eichholzhausen after a falling out with my girlfriend in Cologne. I was fed up with all these discos, rock concerts and clubs, where I was forced to meet people I was at least not interested in. So I made a decision. In these days of the total web for my work as a programmer it is not necessary to be exactly in the center of the boiling supermodern metropolis. It is enough to have an Internet connection and a high-speed train station nearby - the whole world is at arm’s length, even in the middle of the countryside, where the roosters crow in the morning.

After buying a house I was mentally online, in constant contact with colleagues and customers, and somehow completely inattentive to my physical surroundings.

I knew the paths to the store, to the gas station, to the gas station and I had laid out a route for my daily bike rides. And that was the end of my familiarity with my surroundings.

And everything would have gone smoothly day after day, year after year, if one day a timber truck hadn’t gotten stuck on my bike route, turning sideways.

What was I to do? I turned aside and rode through the forest, along a little-noticed path, hoping that it would not disappear after half a kilometer. The ride got a little longer than usual, but I was in no hurry.

I was riding quietly, pedaling, when a woman wearing only sneakers ran out from around the corner toward me.

From surprise I lost my balance and together with the bike flew into some overgrown ditch. Bang! First I fell into the nettles, then the bike fell on my back. Threw it aside, I tried to get to my feet and collapsed again, crying out in pain at my ankle.

- Are you all right? - A worried woman’s voice sounded above my head. I mumbled something and started to climb out, trying not to step on my sprained leg. I do not know how long I would have had to dig in the weeds if the woman had not come down to me and helped me out on the trail. It was a real self-sacrifice on her part, because the ditch was overgrown with nettles, and the woman was completely naked. But she didn’t pay the slightest attention to the nettle bites, dragged me out and went back down to get my bike.

Don’t get me wrong - I’m a modern man, and I’ve seen a lot of naked women on nudist beaches, and in the sauna, and in the solarium. But here, in the middle of the forest, I least expected to encounter something like that. I was embarrassed. And she acted so at ease, like she was wearing at least a tracksuit.