I have had my first horse riding lesson in Germany! Consequently, I also have my first post-horse-ride arse ache this morning. The adventure began by my taking a bus to a village called Niederbachem, which despite having plenty of timber-framed houses like this…

… feels rather built-up. The state where I’m living, Nordrhein Westfalen, apparently has 18 million people, or 22% of the entire German population, so the population density is rather high. Anyway, fortified by an excellent bread-and-seed roll from the Local bakery that must have deprived some unlucky budgerigar of his lunch, I left for the hills above the village where, dodging several enormous dogs (people seem to keep wolves and Baskerville-esque hounds here as pets; very scary), I came to my new riding school.

Here is a picture of me cooling down after doing a few jumps:

I’m joking of course. Actually I was inside clinging to a horse on a lunge (essentially a horse on stabilisers). I had a lesson along with what looked like a seven-year-old girl, which illustrates my aptitude, I think. Actually it wasn’t so much a lesson as an endurance test: trotting like buggery (not literally) and trying not to fall off for 30 minutes. At the same time I was trying to understand what the teacher was saying to me (basically “kick the bastard”, I think). Maybe my poor language skills were a reason for the lack of instruction, but I hope they teach me a bit more next time, because without learning delicate equine skills to build up an intimate relationship and be at one with the horse (again, not literally), it feels a bit like I’m using the horse as an exercise bike. Oh well, I have a lesson booked for next week so will consult my German ‘riding for seven-year-olds’ book and try to learn a bit more of the parlance. I should buy some proper riding boots too, but I am not sure if you can buy knee-high black leather boots in this country any more…

I also had my first German lesson this week, held in a building near this quite high tower (something to do with the German postal service):

It was a group lesson with people from Spain, Bosnia, Chile and Burkina Faso. It was OK, but I’m afraid I found other people’s German accents super annoying and nearly impossible to understand (no doubt they felt the same about mine). So I am wondering if I should get individual lessons instead, if I can afford them. It’s not so social, but then I’ve never found language evening classes to be a great way to meet people. No one ever seems to say, “Enough declension of German nouns: what say we get out of here and go listen to some cool jazz in a smoky underground bar I know?” I did, however, learn the extremely cool word ‘Oniomanie’. This is not, sadly, onion mania but shopping addiction. I cling to the hope that it could mean compulsive shopping for onions.