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Two weeks ago we woke up and the sun
was shining, a fairly uncommon experience right now. We did our daily checks to see what enormities we
now have to integrate into our world view, and decided that rather than succumb
to depression (the usual result), we should go out, and defy the
misery that is threatening like a oil slick to coat all our good experiences
with the knowledge of bad things happening elsewhere in the world. Our good
experiences are still ours. (An existential question for another day: What
happens to good experiences when the premise they are built on disappears? Shut up, existential questions. I promise you I'll get around
to you soon).
It was a beautiful day, with a
hard frost shining bright white from the rooftops, a dazzling sun making it
hard to peer out of the kitchen window, as I did, to check whether the
woodpeckers were still there. They've suddenly all decided the last two days
that it is Time To Find A Tree, and have been squabbling, bickering and
generally flying madly about from one pinnacle to another, hoping to find their
dream home for the coming spring. "Hey, I'm loving this one! It's
so....hollow!" Even a green woodpecker arrived on Friday, but remained
cautiously hidden in the shade, unlike the red and black Greater Spotted ones,
who like to hang out at the very top of lopped branches in the sunshine,
preening and I have to say, showing off to each other like crazy. So we
followed their example – not by climbing trees, but by deciding it was time to
go out in the sun and claim the almost-feels-like-nearly-springtime for
ourselves.
I'd looked in the guidebooks,
and remembered that we've never yet done the ferry crossing to Kladow, a strangely
neglected peninsula on the other side of Wannsee. It's not a boat trip, but a
bona fide, real BVG (the Berlin TFL) trip that is planned to actually help you
get to real places rather than just as a day out. Commuters can take the ferry,
if so inclined, from Kladow to Wannsee station in the mornings to catch the
S-Bahn into work. There is a more prosaic route via a bus, Spandau and a VERY
long train ride...but if you could get a boat instead, why wouldn't you? And
today was an especially beautiful day for a boat trip. "It's like going
for a walk, but without having to walk anywhere," I persuaded Mel.
Woodpeckers or no woodpeckers, it still feels like minus 15C out there, and the
ground has been frozen for weeks now, so without ice-skates or crampons walking
is not really an option. But anyway, Mel doesn't need much persuading and
within just an hour we're on the S-Bahn and off to get the boat.
At Wannsee, we make our way down
to the ferry terminal, and in the distance can already see the boat
approaching, the only boat on the lake today, where usually there are dozens.
It's silent but for a strange rumbling, cracking sound. "I love that
noise!" Mel enthuses. "What is it?" I ask. "It's the ice of
course," Mel replies. "Look!"
At the edge of the lake,
by our feet, are sheets of ice rolling and sliding over each other. Ducks
scramble up on to them from the places where the ice has thawed, slipping on
the unaccustomed surface and then standing quite still, their reflections as
bright as they are. The lake isn't frozen solid. But it's covered in these ice
sheets, two or three inches thick, sharp as guillotines, reflecting and
refracting the sunlight, and this is what the boat is travelling through, or
across. The sheets of ice bump against each other while the boat's stern shears
across them, and this is what is making this curious, lovely noise. But I have
to concentrate. The crowds are gathering. It's not only us who want to go to
Kladow. And soon the ferry arrives and we make our way on to it. Then the journey
begins. |
Gulls fly around us. There are
flocks of geese paddling in between the ice, all facing the same way (why do
they do that?). Cormorants swoop across the bows. A buzzard flaps by. It's a
beautiful day and we are out on a boat. Just below us, we can see the ice
breaking up as we pass through it, and the crackling, splittering noise gets
louder, the only noise in the utter silence that surrounds us. It's almost like
the boat is sliding across the ice
rather than through the water. Ravens and crows march around the glittering field
that the lake has become, looking for food, or enjoying the sun. We feel very
small, alone in the middle of this huge frozen world.
But some things here look
surprisingly big, out of proportion in this new landscape. What on earth is
that for example sitting over on the lake? Hunched over, like little old men
squatting on the ice, with what now look like miniature ravens, gulls and
crows pecking busily around them, they sit on, statuesque, unmovable..."Oh
my God," Mel exclaims, "It's two sea eagles!"
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| Imchen Island (eagles hidden in trees) |
Our beautiful eagles, our Rum
companions, now here in the middle of Berlin? Well, not the actual birds from
Rum of course, but their majestic cousins: the biggest birds, almost the
biggest creatures, you are likely to see out in the wild in this country. We saw one months
ago, gliding far above us in the sunny blue skies of Brandenburg, but these are
just five metres away, probably flown down from the Baltic to look for food....We
get up and run about excitedly with binoculars while I try to tell the three
little boys at the front of the boat what we're seeing. "Look over there!
It's eagles!" The oldest boy pauses from eating his crisps and looks at me
pityingly. "They're not eagles," he replies laconically,
"They're water fowl."
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Quenched, I return to my seat,
while the elderly, Chinese lady who is looking after the boys on
their trip struggles in her broken German to explain the situation to them. The
eagles are flapping slowly up into the trees, disturbed after all by our
clattering little boat. I don't think the boys have seen the eagles, and surprisingly,
no-one else seems to have either. What is it about wildlife? Why is it so
fascinating, yet, on the other hand, somehow so difficult to notice if you
don't train yourself to look? Maybe the eagles were just too unexpected to be
seen. Things sometimes are. The older I get, the harder I find it to let myself
be surprised. But on the ferry to Kladow, I was surprised the whole time. A day
of wonder in the middle of days of anxiety. Now it's back to normal. But I am
trying to keep our day of ice and eagles in mind.
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