Happy Reunification Week - or, boat trips aren't just for tourists

Three days ago, 3 October, was the German Day of Reunification, and everyone except bus drivers, doctors and Angela Merkel was officially on holiday. So although I am currently always on holiday at the moment, I used the time to write rather than answer emails, attend to my website, clean the cat litter tray or do any of the hundred and one other things that a non-employed person has to do. After all, reunification day seemed like a good time to stop and reflect. And in the light of what's going on all across Europe - even here in oh-so-liberal Berlin, with the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland getting seats in the Berlin Senate all across the city last month - reflecting on your history and looking for freedom can't be a bad thing...even without David Hasselhoff at the Brandenburger Tor. I prefer to do it on my sofa for now, gazing out of the window...

After a day of brilliant autumn sunshine, white clouds moving across a bright blue sky and golden leaves falling outside, the sky is now darkening. The wind is getting stronger, the tree-tops swaying against grey clouds. It's a day like our boat trip day, last week when we took the opportunity to jump on the boat that chugs along the canal at the end of our street.

It was the last opportunity this year. It's the end of the season, and the weather was to match: autumnal winds chasing the leaves down the path, conkers smashing to the ground, grey skies but a sense of movement and excitement in the air. And cycling down to the canal is like taking a trip away already. It's just five minutes by bike, but there's a whole country's history wrapped up in those five minutes, if you know where to look.

We jump and trip down the four flights of steps in our house, which is one of many built in Zehlendorf in the late 1950s as part of a 'Siedlung', an estate – or no, that conjures up the wrong image entirely – a settlement in what was then the American sector. And like an American suburb, it's green and leafy, with tidily marked out gardens and huge old trees, wide streets and neat lawns that separate the blocks from each other. Some of the streets are circular, so it's easy to get lost, and the quiet is at time uncanny for Berlin: respectable people walking their obedient dogs pass at a distance, figures moving across the landscape in the silence of the afternoon with just rustling leaves as a background noise.  The summer was noisier; at its height, the balconies, covered in flowers, were like holiday homes with middle-aged German couples sitting eating breakfast amongst the geraniums or calling to each other across the street.

Yet this American suburb is just yards away from what was once the Wall. We wander down to Sachtlebenstrasse and into the paths that vanish off from it, finding our way down through allotments to reach an overgrown lake, filled with reedbeds and sneeping birds and more dog-walkers, or teenagers hanging out, as teenagers do, in groups around – sometimes even on – benches. The sounds of a baseball game reaches us faintly from the nearby pitch, but here, we're already on what was once forbidden territory. Soon we will reach the border itself, marked by a double line of smooth grey stones set into the ground that follow the path of the Wall all through and around Berlin.  Here the neat cycle-path on Sachtlebenstrasse abruptly ends, turning into a gravelly track, dusty cobblestones and overgrown brambles and shrubs. As we continue on down the bumpy path, we cross old iron tracks; to our right, after the goats that peer out at us from the "Small Animals Breeding Centre", is a small, apparently abandoned industrial area, where ancient cars stand anarchically crowded together beyond wire fences, and old brick warehouses and barracks are labelled with mysterious new, post-industrial company names ("SFX Berlin"), although no people ever seem to be actually in them. Contractors sit around smoking outside the fence, while middle-aged men in Lycra or hand-knitted eco-hats pedal at speed towards the canal and grunt incomprehensible complaints or shout business information to each other. Here there was once a "hole" in the Berlin Wall where spies were smuggled through from East to West (apparently there was a good bus service...). Before that, it was a shipping yard with warehouses to load the many cargo ships that went up and down the Teltow Canal to the greater German Reich eastwards. Today ships still come up from what is now Poland, chugging on northwards into Berlin and perhaps further to Kiel.

But this is unknown, still inaccessible country (though there are plans for regeneration), and we are headed for the canal. We swing round through the dark woods on to a suddenly bright pathway where to our left, horses belonging to the Zehlendorf stables graze peacefully in rich green meadows and buzzards call above the trees. To our right, the reedbeds are swaying in the wind and the canal itself is glittering in the sun, until the clouds return and we know it is autumn now.

Sensible clothing

By the time the boat arrives, a whole group of middle-aged people has gathered at the landing station, excited and chattery, sensibly dressed in anoraks, "solid footwork" (as the Germans call it) and with cameras at the ready. Once on the boat, we see that we are among the more recklessly clad tourists; the majority are not just wearing anoraks, scarves and hats but are swaddled in blankets provided by the shipping company. We nip to a seat at the very front, which a gentle German lady offers to us hesitantly: "My friends have been downstairs in the cafe for quite a while now, I don't think I can really keep their seats for them any more." Well aware of the peril involved, we gingerly sit down, awaiting any moment the return of her friends...but for now, all seems to be well.

The boat makes its way down the canal, stopping only to pick up an elderly lady, whose presence is announced by tannoy prior to stopping: "We will shortly be making a stop to pick up an elderly lady who regularly gets this boat to Wannsee from her old people's home." She jumps on nimbly and we're off again. The history of Kleinmachnow, Teltow and the upcoming ship's lock rattles past us; artists, dockyards, airships (the first ones were invented here apparently), new apartments, cronyism..."What was that?" Mel keeps nudging me for a translation, but there is so much history, I can't keep up. "I think she said there was corruption involved in building some of the new apartments..." I hope I'm not slandering someone here; then again, it's always going to be true of some building or other...

Teltow, from the canal, is a surprise. Far from the grey, industrial, half-finished blocks of giant American stores that still stretch for miles along the main road, we now see chic apartment blocks, a new hospital, beautiful balconies and gardens, a snazzy hotel, villas...it looks like somewhere you might even want to live. I never visited it in the old days; unlike Kleinmachnow, it was never beautiful, mysterious or inviting. Unlike Kleinmachnow, it was clearly where the workers had had to live, rather than the Stasi officials. Its crumbling DDR buildings, after the Wende, gave way to huge car showrooms and huge billboards for the newly sprung up hypermarkets alongside desperate, smaller advertising for its remaining little shops; a grey pallor hung over it in the early 90s, a hopelessness and sense of betrayal that I wanted to avoid as much as possible. But in the meantime, it's changed beyond recognition, or at least some of it has; the ancient town centre has been beautifully restored and it has become a desirable place to live, in commuting distance of Berlin yet still fairly cheap, unlike Kleinmachow.

But it's soon past and we are heading into the Machnower See, the Kleinmachnow lake with its castle topping the hill beside it and thick woodlands hiding herons and cormorants. Now we are approaching the lock and watch spellbound as the weights and counter-weights move the doors so that tonnes of water can flood in. Meanwhile, the prior owners of our seats have returned, just an hour after we got on...I face front, pretending I don't understand German as an argument ensues behind me: "Gisele! Why didn't you defend our places? What happened? Anne, look! Our seats have gone!" A tactful response from Gisele: "Ah, well, you see, so many people got on, there was nothing I could do, there was such a rush." "And our blankets? Have you at least saved our blankets from being stolen?" Gisele: "Dear me! They seem to have vanished!" I half-turn and wink at Gisele, who gives me a small smile of recognition.

Heading through the lock

Now we are on our way to Babelsberg and Wannsee. Rusting bridges and a former Stasi watchtower, now turned into a campsite cafe, go past; a quiet cycle track accompanies the canal. Stories are told, but one is missed out: the story of the young man from West Berlin in the 1960s who unwittingly steered a rowing boat, with himself and his girlfriend on board, into Eastern territory and was shot in the back as he desperately tried to steer back to the West. These woods still feel so quiet and hidden that anything could happen...and indeed, on our bike ride here, we did pass a small, mysterious man, wearing a too-big suit, a purple tie and a felt hat, carrying two bulging carrier bags of papers, quite alone, who passed us on the bike track and continued on into the woods...

Rafts for hire

Babelsberg Engine House

Glienicker Bruecke (where the spies used to hang out)

Babelsberg is beautiful – a landscaped park in the English style, with a fairy-tale castle peeping from the trees and a number of less fairy-tale-like, but still lovely, engine houses and brick sheds from the 1800s. We swam here the other week when it was 30 degrees in the shade; now there's a chill in the air and, as we sweep around to Wannsee, the wind hits us full on, waves hitting the bows as we enter the huge lake and look around: Potsdam to the east of us, Wannsee itself to the west, Peacock Island straight ahead. The last half hour passes all too quickly; a sense of enormous space and calm fills these waterways, as if we were travelling across the sea, rather than an inland lake. It is hard to get your bearings, although there is the Heilandskirche where I saw the Blessing of the Boats in July...but that's a whole other story.

Heilandskirche

Descending from the boat in Wannsee, we buy pumpkin and chanterelles at a roadside stall before getting the S-Bahn home.  We smile at each other, overcome by the loveliness of the day. And I am surprised at how much I have learned. When I lived in Kleinmachnow in the early days, back in 1992, 1993, I was so young; I wanted atmosphere, excitement, emotion; I wanted the city. But now when I look back, what I remember is not so much Berlin, but those dark winter days and nights spent in the depths of what was then a semi-hidden place "j.w.d." as the Berliners call it (janz weit draussen, out in the sticks) that no-one I met in Berlin had ever heard of or was the least bit interested in. The glittering stars in the freezing nights as I cycled home at three in the morning (no buses went to Kleinmachnow after 6 pm); the snuffling of wild boar in the tangled trees at the roadside; the hesitant, intensely shy interest showed by the Kleinmachnowers in what on earth an English girl was doing there; the scent of the damp autumn leaves and the bonfires; they all have helped make me into the person I am now.But I knew very few facts.

Thank you, boat trip people, for filling me in on my own history.

Machnower See