Frozen! aka A Trip to Kladow

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!"

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."

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.