July has been the month marking another of those summers that get close to breaking temperature records and making people mutter about „climate change“ and „global warming“. What those people seem to forget is the fact that there always have been such extreme summers, and in our region we had hot summers like that in the 1950s already. Anyway, with temperatures often reaching the mid-30s (Celsius scale), it was a perfect time to enjoy barefooting – if one has seasoned soles, that is. For barefoot beginners it might have been hell to try it out on hot tarmac, concrete or other paved surfaces. To me, it was barefoot paradise – especially after a long cold winter, that confined my feet in shoes too often and for too long.

As far as my barefooting experience this July is concerned, it was a routine thing, really. The usual parts of my work days were spent barefoot – the trip to the office and back home, occasional trips to the mall and grocery shopping after work. While some people think that routine is something taking the spice out of life, making it less interesting or intriguing, I cherish this routine, since it also meant that I wasn't hassled about walking barefoot... the occurances of „The Look“® aren't something I would define as a hassle. Same goes for barefoot free-time activities, such as my urban barefooting trips on weekends, visiting friends and taking barefoot walks in the forest and parks nearby.

One noteworthy funny thing happened when I was riding the tram home, and a large group of elderly women (all beyond 60) entered the tram, and were gaping at a barefoot man, sitting there (that being me, of course). Their staring at me like seeing a barefoot alien who had just stepped out of his ship to greet the shod earthlings were one very funny example of „The Look“® happening, indeed. And, of course, I just had to document it by taking a picture after getting off the tram, since the staring didn't subside after I got out, but all of those Grandmas made it their business to stare out of the windows then, too.

June 30, 2010 - Several small mishaps... but also enjoyable barefoot moments

My two weeks of barefoot freedom are drawing nearer to their end, and summer has decided to make a glorious appearance in the part of Germany I live in. But that still has not helped in bringing out more barefooters - at least not where I walked.

Here's what I wrote on HipForums about that on June 28:

Flip-flops killed the barefoot walkers... ...similar to video killing the radio star. Ironically, the video to that song was the first ever shown on MTV. Prophetic in a way, wasn't it? With flip-flops and other types of thin-soled fashionable summer footwear (currently amplified by boho and hippie fashion making yet another return – even Karl Lagerfeld had models walking barefoot in flowing hippie chic robes in St. Tropez) bare feet have become a rarity to spot in my local urban environment. The last two days' counter of other barefoot people in public shows the number two so far – number one being a homeless punk woman asking for change, sitting on her blanket in the ped zone, cross-legged, her dog dozing next to her. Number two was a young boy I spotted today walking the suburban pavement next to his shod grandmother, while I was sitting in the tram. Since I saw him from behind, his black bare soles told me, that he had been walking barefoot for a while, too. Other than that, even those people whom I normally would sort into the target group for barefooting – at least by their dressing the boho/hippie part – are wearing either the foam-rubber sole sweat sponges known as flip-flops, or thin leather sandals. Even though there is plenty of barefoot-positive publicity in health magazines, blogs, this very forum, sports-related articles, etc., it seems that people still don't seem to get it. I guess it needs just more role models to promote the „coolness“ of walking barefoot and swimming against the mainstream, I guess. Plus, even those who might want to walk barefoot are currently taken aback by hot summer temperatures and the sun heating up the pavement to levels unbearable for tenderfoot, untrained non-barefooters. Wiggling bare toes, spreading my own kind of coolness (by wearing a tie-dye skirt when barefooting the town center today... something to really boggle the mainstream's collective mind), ~*Ganesha*~

One more barefoot encounter was just on June 30, where I also reported one mishap happening to me last Saturday on HipForums as well...

Since catching a summer cold (I still think that jerk, who coughed right at the back of my neck in the checkout queue - three times, too... as if to make sure! - deserves to lie in bed with fever and suffer!), I haven't been outside much, just to do some necessary shopping yesterday and buy some drinks at the gas station opposite my apartment house. At least the symptoms of that darn cold have subsided to a bearable level. The barefoot encounter was just when going to that gas station, as a flip-flop wearing mother and her two young daughters came out of the little shop, the younger daughter holding her flip-flops in her hands, walking barefoot. She was just starting a sentence, and suddenly stopped talking, froze on beholding my bare feet, staring at them (well, the two colored toe nails and two toe rings on each foot must have been something new for her to see on a grown-up man's bare feet - just as a grown-up man walking barefoot, too) and then giving me a wide-eyed look of wonder. I grinned at her, passed them and then went inside to get some cold soda stuff and cigarettes. Wiggling bare toes, sniffling a little from that darn summer cold, ~*Ganesha*~

So much for that first mishap... the culprit was standing behind me at the checkout of my usual supermarket last Saturday, indeed coughing three times, not making any attempt to cover his mouth while doing so, or trying to spew his virus clouds in any other direction. But I'm not paranoid enough to suppose that this was a planned act to infect the barefoot weirdo. Nevertheless, before that little disease broke out, I had some nice opportunities to enjoy the summer sun and its warmth on many an occasion, including urban barefooting on sun-warmed pavement, alternating with the cool tile floors inside malls and subway stations, various visits to my favourite lake and my usual park, where I spent a lot of barefoot and skyclad quality time.

One nice visit to the lake was one day before "The Cough Incident", when it was just as warm as the days before (around 30°C/86F), but getting quite cloudy at mid-day, with some clouds even appearing a little scary...

It was on one of those park visits, when the second (relatively small) mishap happened on me, since I lost one of the new anklets I had gotten on the medieval market about a week earlier... the leather one with the shells, which was quite loose-fitting, and therefore must have slipped off my ankle at some point. I noticed its missing on my way out of the park after sunset.

But still, the evening visit to the park was nice, as the day's heat was slowly dissipating into a pleasantly warm summer evening with a slight breeze coming up. I tried to backtrack my steps on noticing the anklet missing, but as it was too dark to find it, I decided to return to the park the morning after and take a look for it - and also to enjoy the sunny morning before the day got too hot.

It seems that this anklet was meant for someone else to be found, since I could not find it on that Sunday morning, but the wonderful time spent sitting in the sun for an hour and then another two hours in my favourite spot in the shade made up for that, for sure.

After returning home from that park visit - and wishing the person who found my anklet luck and happy barefoot steps with it - I felt the first symptom of the upcoming cold, that being a slightly sore throat... at first I thought that could have been induced by the summer heat and raised ozone levels in the urban surroundings I live in (that can happen, too, and a sore throat is one of the symptoms connected with that), and only as I woke up on Monday with a heavy cough and a nose running like a faucet, I realized the viral nature of those symptoms. Fortunately, that subsided by Wednesday, so that the final prolonged weekend (which I have defined starting on Thursday morning) of my two-week leave will be spent as usual, barefoot and skyclad at my favourite places... and the weather forecast is on my side as far as having water to jump into nearby - for Friday, day temperatures at body temperature level (!) are predicted... around 37°C/98.6F. I will most definitely be at the lake for most of that day to have that cool water to spend lots of time in near me.

I'm curious whether I will meet some barefooters on those trips, or if still the flip-flops continue killing the bliss of barefoot walking.

June 21, 2010 - Happy barefoot Litha

Yes, now it's time for some barefoot pagan voodoo. Just kidding - but I wanted to make a little celebration of the summer solstice, taking place in Germany on June 21, 1.28 pm, by going to my favourite park, directing my barefoot steps

over the grass to "The Fairies' Abode" (as I have named that particular tree)

and to turn the base of the tree, which will always remind me of the dancing and festival grounds for the fairies living in that tree, into a small altar and to worship a little there.

Well, it was not much of an altar, but praying to the Goddess does not require pomp and overblown ritual like the Catholics are so fond of. To explain a little what the altar was made of: the pentagram is symbol of the Wiccan faith, symbolizing the invocation of the four elements plus the Spirit as the fifth - also a universal symbol of the Goddess Herself. And cradled in the leather band which I use to wear that symbol around my neck is a little sitting Ganesha figure - that being me, symbolically cradled in Her embrace.

I sat there for a while, relaxing a little, meditating and sending prayers out and having a horn of blueberry wine (from a bottle I bought the day before on the medieval market I visited.), careful to spill the first bit of it onto the Earth to share it with Her.

After that time of spiritual give and take, I went back home, feeling relaxed and refreshed.

June 20, 2010 - next stop: the barefoot Middle Ages (sort of...)

Just as planned, I went to the eastern part of the Ruhr megalopolis, to the city of Dortmund, to visit the "Mittelalterlich Phantasie Spectaculum" (MPS) in a different venue. It was held, as usual, in the "Freizeitpark Fredembaum", a few kilometres north of the city center, and this park surely is barefoot-friendlier than the location in Gelsenkirchen, which I endured on April 24. The paths in the park are made up just like the ones in my usual barefoot sunday stroll park near the place I live: sandy soil mixed with small bits of grit for some pleasant free foot massage. And lots of grass to walk and sit on, too. Since the weather was just as forecast (cloudy, sometimes fully overcast, cool with 15°C, occasionally sunny), I expected to see less barefoot people than usual... however, there were some (but not many) among the visitors...:

...and also among the performers (even though in this case the feet were green, since they belonged to spirits of the forest - those are the performers I saw out of their wonderful costumes a few weeks earlier in Gelsenkirchen, too):

Typical reaction of modern-day humans to Nature: either kill it or take pictures

"What are you looking at???"

Of course, there were the usual performers dressed in style with the theme of the event, but only occasionally dressing their part barefoot. At least the juggler and that band (known as "Schelmish") were wearing medieval-style footwear:

And among the visitors, bare feet were a rarity, as well, mostly due to the comparingly cool weather conditions which are seemingly not too inviting for regular shoddists to shed their footwear. So, even though they looked interesting, as far as their costumes were concerned (including some pirates with a quite convincing Jack Sparrow cosplayer), they were shod. I wonder though, what that blue apparition was, one woman (presumably an elder witch or sorceress) was leading around on a chain... her familiar? One spell gone wrong? I didn't ask, just took the picture. And the merry group of people dancing had a clear number zero on the barefoot dancers counter, too.

(Captain Jack himself was kind of hiding from cameras - in this shot, his back is seen partly behind that bald guy stepping into the picture...)

But I wasn't only there to behave like a tourist from the 21st century and take snapshots, I was there to have a good time and also to look for something to add to my collection of foot jewelry... and for that, I visited the sales cart (well, one cannot call that cute little thing a sales stand, really... and it has wheels and is often pulled to different locations on the market, too) of an MPS regular, known as "Glöckchen" - and incidentally an acquaintance of mine. We greeted each other, exchanged hugs and smiles and stories of recent mishaps - she was footsore as well, therefore only rarely standing next to her cart (as seen below, her back to the camera), but mostly sitting on a small stool next to it.

She had hurt her knee recently from taking an unfortunate fall, and something got dropped on top of one of her bare feet, too... we both chuckled about the irony of people thinking that walking barefoot has to lead to injuries underfoot, pierced soles and leaving bloodstained footprints - but it's rather the top of feet, or front parts or toes that get hurt. After wishing her well and hoping for her poor knee and feet to get better soon, I left her cart to browse other market stands in search of other material to work into anklets. Oh, of course I did purchase something from Glöckchen - a handful of jingly silver bells, which I fastened to two anklets I already wore. At another stand, I saw two bracelets made of braided thin leather bands, with three shells woven into the center - and since those bracelets were designed to fit around slender maidens' wrists rather than big ~*Ganesha*~'s ankle, I bought both, and fastened them together to form a nice new anklet. And while looking for perhaps some more leather bands (different colors, maybe?) to braid into a self-made anklet, I found a thin purple-colored leather band lying on the ground... well, finders, keepers. And so I had a nice little collection of new and some enhanced old foot jewelry:

Since the market closed at 7.30 pm, I had a last cherry beer at my "usual" tavern and then turned my barefoot steps to the park's exit and the tram station nearby, with a small stop at an ice cream car, where I bought me an utterly non-medieval treat for the way home:

I arrived at home happy on dusty, dark-soled and jingling bare feet - those bells made it impossible to sneak up people and were just right to announce the arrival of a non-mainstream person to the world at large.

June 19, 2010 - the start of a fortnight of barefoot freedom

Well, the countdown has come to an end, and this is it: the start of a full fortnight of barefoot freedom (well, 15 days actually, starting from this Saturday).

I celebrated this freedom by sleeping in, and getting up at lunch time, roughly. The usual Saturday plan was the shopping trip in the town center - with the visit to the street café cancelled due to unstable and occasionally rainy conditions. It was a comparingly cool day, not feeling like summer solstice peeking around the corner (which will be on Monday, June 21, precisely at 1.28 pm CEDT), with only 14°C, which prompted me to put on my hooded cotton jacket - but certainly not any footwear.

The shopping trip itself was the usual, including the occurances of "The Look"® here and there, but as I proceeded to shove my shopping cart towards the checkout, one of those rare accidents happened, as I stubbed the small pinky toe (quite hard) of my right foot on the right rear wheel of that confounded cart. So, if people think that it's dangerous to do grocery shopping barefoot due to broken glass or stuff on the ground - that's not it. It's those damn carts that pose a threat to bare toes. And as if to prove that, a small trickle of blood oozed out from under the toe nail, running down the toe and leaving small droplets of blood where I stood. Well, let's hope that this isn't some sort of portent or ill omen for my bare feet during the next 15 days...

Blood on my toe...

Subway barefooting with shopping bags

Well, to answer that instantly: I certainly don't believe that it is - shit happens to bare feet at times, sometimes literally, too, when stepping in dog poo, sometimes by stubbing your toe.
This surely won't keep me from baring my toes and wiggling them happily while they touch Earth in Her different forms.

And tomorrow will definitely be a delightful day, since I will visit another stop of the medieval market tour known as "Mittelalterlich Phantasie Spectaculum", this time in a very barefoot-friendly park in Dortmund. And I am sure, since the weather forecast still speaks of slightly unstable and cool weather (around 15°C) that my bare soles will celebrate the feeling of moist and cool soil and grass beneath them.

I will surely keep you posted.

June 13, 2010 - the barefoot Sunday walk...

Of course, it would not be a proper Sunday had I missed my chance to take my usual energizing barefoot Sunday stroll in the park. Since the weather was not the warmest on that day (cloudy sky, only about 17°C), I did not choose to make it a barefoot and skyclad sunbathing day, but rather chose the evening hours to have some peace and quiet during the time when people were most likely sitting in front of their TV watching the German national soccer team... thanks to the soccer world cup thing currently going on, the streets were almost deserted.

Having downloaded a new psytrance album recently (ektoplazm.com - if anyone wants to know where to get very good free MP3 downloads of good psytrance music), which is quite fittlingy entitled Creatures of the Forest , I listened to some new tracks, while walking barefoot down the street to the park. And on arriving there I realized that there are quite some people not interested in soccer, either... the park wasn't as deserted as I expected - there were still some people taking strolls, one quy walking his dog, two female joggers and an Asian couple trying themselves at throwing a boomerang... and I was the only barefoot person among those. As I sat down on my usual white bench to have a first smoke, a family came near, with a young man asking, where the nearest park exit with a bus stop were... and they were asking about a church, too. Funny, since I really don't know any church nearby. I told them the nearest way out, and off they went (without even so much as a raised eyebrow or comment about my bare feet or my outfit - the usual skirt and Ganesha t-shirt combo).

After listening to the first three tracks of the Avatar score, I stood up, and enjoyed the barefoot walk over the grass to the western corner of the park.

Here, I decided to sit down on yet another bench, an old-fashioned wooden one, as it most commonly used in parks. This one looked very inviting, since it was placed directly in front of some bushes and young trees, making the weary and tired traveller sit in a frame of green (well, not that anyone would get too tired while taking a slow and lazy walk in the park... I just wanted to stick with the imagery. It is just too inviting a place to sit and take a rest). A very scenic backdrop for taking a break, gazing into the park and feeling the sandy soil of the trail under my bare soles

As the seventh track of the Avatar score was drawing near its end - the prayer song to Eywa, as heard in the movie sung by the Omaticaya clan at the Tree of Souls - I decided to stand up, walk a few steps from that bench to the tree that I named "The Fairies' Abode" today (see my last park report from May 30 below about that tree), and place an incense stick into the central platform at its bottom:

(If you look closely, you'll spot a little orange dot in the center, in the bottom third of the picture - that's the incense stick's glow, right there).

I then stepped back to the bench, sat down, looked up and let my eyes wander around all that green in the shrubbery's canopy directly above me. The thought of that tree's base making a very good altar then crossed my mind, and I decided that I would do just that when celebrating the summer solstice, which is also the beginning of my two-week leave coming up (do you hear my barefoot pixie singing merrily...? "Only five days of dull office work... the time of barefoot and skyclad freedom is drawing nearer and nearer!!" Oh, and she's so right...!)

After sitting there for a while, I stood up, walked again over the soft and cool grass underfoot to another bench, this time at the south-eastern end of the park, sat down there to take a look at where I just came from and to take gazes of farewell (for this week) through the park...

After again cherishing the feeling of sandy soil underneath my bare soles...

... I stood up and walked home, relaxed and energized for my return into "the machine", starting tomorrow. But, as I pointed out above, that is also the start of a five-day countdown to the beginning of a beautiful summerly time of barefoot freedom - and nude freedom on many of those days, too, as I will definitely spend a lot of time at my favourite skinnydipping lake.

June 11, 2010 - a little report on last week's barefooting

Last week was a truly gorgeous time for barefooting, since the weather had decided to go full-throttle as far as summer is concerned... temperatures around 27°C in the shade, sun, blue sky... those are the ingredients for a barefoot season (with possible pain to tenderfoot barefooting newbies, if they walk on sun-heated pavement for the first time, burning their untrained soles).

The office days were the usual, with one exception on June 3, which was a holiday in the Catholic parts of Germany, known in German as Fronleichnam ("Corpus Christi" in English... sometimes it just feels that Catholics aren't celebrating their faith, but rather burying it, revelling in some kind of death cult). Since our tenants' telephone hotline had to be manned (we only get a day off on nation-wide holidays), people responsible for training and coaching, personnel planning and reporting also had to be there. And so I went there for a half-day shift of five hours, and left any footwear at home, since none of the big bosses or any prospect customers were going to be there... That gave me the opportunity to spend a barefoot day at work, including barefoot cigarette breaks in the sun. Well, it wasn't a true replacement of a barefoot nature walk or a naturist day spent by and in the lake, but still a little barefoot freedom in the otherwise shod office environment.

The weekend after that holiday was now almost a routine even, too... a very pleasant one, however. Saturday was my day of the barefoot café visit, barefoot shopping and later a barefoot walk to the park and some very barefoot resting beneath a tree, with sunlight filtered through the canopy... it was just too warm to sit in the sun directly. What I saw was that my urban barefooting and sitting in my usual café in broad sunlight had given me a typical "t-shirt tan", with my lower arms and legs (including bare feet) nicely tanned, but the rest of me comparingly pale... kind of vanilla vs. caramel cream.
Well, I know, I am yummy either way, so who cares...

All kidding aside, I wanted to make amends to that bicolor appearance and so the sunny Sunday was to be the naturist day at the lake (the usual favourite lake, that is), and it was there where I spent a bit more than four hours, three of which I was sitting and laying on my blanket in full sunlight, and one hour (in several intervals) spent in the pleasantly refreshing water of the lake. This time, the water certainly was warm enough to take a swim and feel it flow around all of my skin - well, "warm" is a relative term here, since it was still cool enough to properly refresh me after basking in hot sunlight for about an hour, but not too cold. After that half-day at the lake, my skin was getting a little darker in the vanilla places, but the difference was, of course, still there. So, as often as I can I will make sure to get out into the sun skyclad to get me evenly tanned.

Barefoot encounters by that time so far: one on Saturday - on my urban barefooting shopping trip I met one barefoot young man passing me on the ped zone on my way to my usual outdoor-seating café. And two barefooters on Sunday - as I walked back from the lake to the small train stop nearby, a trio of fashionably dressed teenage girls was coming from the train stop, with one of them walking barefoot, holding her ballerina slippers in her hand. As they passed me, one of the other two shod girls was taking a look at my tanned and adourned bare feet, and then looked into my face with a mixed expression of shock, wonder and awe. The other barefooter was a young man, whom I saw walking through the basement of the neighboring city's central station. He looked like a regular soccer fan with a soccer club t-shirt, baggy shorts, baseball cap... and bare feet. Normally, those kind of people wear fashionable sneakers.

The rest of the week was again the usual routine of pre- and after-work barefooting... until June 7. That day I saw something weird, since the barefoot person I saw wasn't barefoot at first. When I had finished the office day, waiting for the bus to take me to the town center, I watched as a silver VW van (newer T5 model, no cute old T1 or T2 hippie van) stopped at the bus stop on the opposite side of the road, about 50 meters away. The side door slid open, and a young man stepped out, wearing bermuda-style baggy shorts and a T-shirt, and went to the waste-paper basket at the bus stop, stuffing something inside. The weirdness started, as he then pulled up his right foot, pulled off his sock (only then I realized he stepped out of the van sockfooted), stuffed that into the trashbin, too, repeated that with his left sock, then stepped into the van, barefoot, door slid shut and off it went.

That was something to leave me stare, open-mouthed for a second.

It might well be, that before taking off his socks he stuffed his old shoes into the trash... I didn't go and check, since my bus arrived only a minute afterwards... but that truly was a first-timer as far as watching someone get barefoot in an unconventional way is concerned.
Other than that, no other barefooters around, though.

The rest of the week went by without any barefoot encounters, sadly, but another portion of weirdness on Thursday, June 10...

This time, it happened at the bus stop where I do indeed stand regularly and wait after work to take my bus on the way home, that someone must have thought "There's that barefoot guy standing here every day... Let's give him a gift" and left - as you can see in the picture - a cardboard box with a pair of hiking-style sneakers. Well, OK, it might not have been aimed at me, but rather a rude example of littering, but again, a strange coincidence after that weird incident two days before... losing footwear at a bus stop - again.

And those were the barefoot key events of last week... Will there be more weirdness waiting for our barefoot hero? Tune in and find out...