An ice cream truck, bright orange slugs and a nude beach are just a few of the things you’ll come across when biking through the German countryside with no destination in mind.

I started my Sunday morning by deciding that I’d go on a bike ride through some small towns and bike trails in the area in an attempt to add some excitement to an otherwise uneventful day. I spend most Sundays bored in my tiny apartment, as pretty much the whole country of Germany closes, but as I buckled my helmet and took off down the street, I had no clue what I was going to come across in the following hours.

Of course, when I decided to combat my usual Sunday blues with a relaxing bike ride to a neighboring town, I never anticipated that it would turn into a six-hour trek up mountains, past castles and through fields of horses, sheep and goats, but when a closed portion of the bike trail led me up a small mountain path, I found myself grateful for having left my apartment in the morning. 

What started as a relaxing jaunt quickly turned into a day-long excursion as I approached the top of the mountain and took in the sights of the Swabian Albs and Schonbuch Forest. To my right, I saw a fully-forested peak of the Albs and to my left, a small town in the valley. 

I knew immediately that I couldn’t just turn back then, as there were surely so many more beautiful sights ahead. I looked to one of the many small, crooked signs displaying city names and distances that scatter the trails and decided on aiming toward Nurtingen, a smaller city just outside of Stuttgart and only 20 more kilometers, or roughly 12.4 miles, ahead.  

Throughout my trip, I passed hundreds of other bikers, joggers and even rollerbladers. As we all stopped for breath atop mountains or to take in a particularly breathtaking view, we had the chance to meet and talk a little before going our separate ways, sharing a tiny part of our day taking in the beauty that a random decision to go out on a sunny day has to offer.

— Shannon Rabotski is a 2016 graduate of Monroe High School and is a junior at Drake University. She is spending the year studying abroad in Tubingen, Germany.