The green meadow
“I take a close look at the green meadow passing by my window. It’s so hilly out there. The meadows, where flowers bloom and insects, butterflies, and birds buzz around, seems like paradise to me—untouched nature. But fields are slowly replacing it. They are separated from each other by ditches and rows of trees. It’s becoming clear: what I see outside my window is a cultural landscape—that is, cultivated land; swathes of “nature” arranged by humans, interspersed by bits of wild growth. Now I see scattered buildings as well. They aren’t residential houses like the ones I know from the cities of my reality. But neither are they farmsteads or farms, like the ones I’ve seen in regions bordering my world. They look completely different. As far as I can make out in passing, each group consists of four to five individual, three-story buildings, which are connected to one another on the third story by a kind of glass bridge. From where I sit, I can’t tell what exactly it is that’s moving back and forth between the buildings. I’m about to get out and take a closer look.”
Octavia E. B., Essen, 1993
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Would you like to read a travelogue from another world? Then turn to page 16.
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Are you champing at the bit to get out there and have your own adventure? Then read on to page 15.
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Are you sitting in the tram? About to reach Essen Hauptbahnhof (Hbf) and thus the end of our first adventure together? Then please get off at Hbf and continue reading on page 66.