Spree 1

Real River

It's almost summer. Time to tackle the Spree! 

This is going to be a bit of a project: forty-four kilometers from one side of Berlin to the other. The river loops and dribbles across the city, with side-arms sprawling off in all directions: the Old Spree, the Lazy Spree …. And the old and lazy me--I do not get so far in one stage, so this will be slow. 

I used to like to march across the map, eating up the kilometers. But now, there seem to be so many stop-and-look moments, it takes a very long time to go 10k. Look! A heron fishing! A barge unloading at a flour mill! A Russian Orthodox church with gold domes! An interestingly decorated garbage truck!  

I used to bicycle more, in the US, and I really ought to get back to it here where there are so many good bike paths. But increasingly I find it too fast. Not enough time to take everything in before the scenery has flown past.  Someday I will probably just root like a tree and stare around ....

But for now: the Spree is exciting. It's a real river, a working river that carries coal and grain and bricks and people--in contrast to the Panke, which wouldn’t carry a rowboat for much of its length.

I spent part of yesterday evening putting more tape on my Twenty Main Greenways map, which has been worn to tatters over the last several years. (The greenways are pedestrian and bicycle routes through Berlin that mostly keep you out of the auto traffic.) Main Greenway number one is along the Spree, and I’m trying to figure out how best to work through the industrial stretch at the mouth of the river.

Some portions of the greenways appear as dotted lines on the map, which means that they are unrealized ideals. A thin purplish line on the map indicates reality: the alternative route that's actually accessible at present. I have an experience-based bad feeling about thin purplish lines, and the Spree route is rather strewn with them. There are a couple of kilometers of ideal dots and purplish reality out here by the river-mouth, alas.

Spree-mouth. Photo, Axel Mauruszat, Wiki Commons.

Here we are in Spandau, out on the west side of Berlin, where two channels of the Spree empty into the Havel. The Spree proper is on the left, but there seems to be no hope of getting close to the bank there for a long long way. The right-hand channel is the Ruhleben Old Arm (Ruhleben is a neighborhood south of the river), and the reality-line on the greenways map says to go along the south bank of this arm, or as close to it as you can get.

There's actually a nice little scrap of park, the Stresow Park, on the reality-line near the meeting of the rivers. The damp mild breath of the waters makes things bloom madly here (think how things bloom in England, think how things bloom in badly ventilated espresso joints, where the steam lingers in the enclosed space). 

Spirea in Stresowpark, May 2014. My photo.

The spirea is bursting its buttons in this sunny spot. There are red tulips in a white arbor, and the ground cover that runs along the stairs down from the bridge is full of little deep-blue flowers like flakes of sky. 

But we definitely can't go on this way ...

End of Stresow Park, May 2014. My photo.

Here the riverbanks are occupied by industries that need water delivery: cheap transport for things with a high weight-to-value ratio. There’s a big power-plant complex here; there's a cement plant and a flour mill. There are sand-and-gravel businesses, a water-treatment plant, a big asphalt producer. The deliveries come along the river, heavy and slow and silent.

Stray pedestrians would be a nuisance at the freight piers, so the thin purplish reality-line on the map takes us south, down to the Freiheit, the street that runs by the front doors of all these industrial establishments that have their back doors on the water of the Ruhleben Old Arm. 

I like industry, as long as it cleans up after itself and doesn't barf toxics into the river. Industrial architecture is interesting, industrial cityscapes have some zip. So let’s give the Freiheit a try.

Here's the big asphalt producer (a firm called Deutag), which livens up the street a bit by parking a lavender-blue antique steam-roller by their front door.

Deutag steam roller on Freiheit, May 2014. My photo.

Although much of the business out here is of the heavy and simple variety, it isn’t quite an industrial monoculture. This is, after all, Berlin. Here are a couple of fashion designers tucked in between the asphalt producer and the sand-and-gravel companies. 

Fashion firms along Freiheit, May 2014. My photo.

Here’s a co-generation plant that makes heat and electricity from garbage: off to the right, out of the picture, the orange Berlin garbage trucks are rolling up to unload. 

The Berlin sanitation department is a set of witty fellows: the little orange trashcans on the lampposts have amusing remarks on them, and recently I saw a garbage truck with Kernergie painted on the side. Normally this means nuclear energy, Kern means core or nucleus. In this case, a picture of an apple core on the truck neatly disambiguated the word. (They don't burn the bio-trash: somewhere down here close to the cogeneration plant they make it into gas, to run the garbage trucks and send into the city's natural-gas network. The remains of the process are sold as compost for sale to farmers and gardeners.)

Müllheizkraftwerk (trash-fueled cogeneration plant), Ruhleben, May 2014. My photo.

Not far away there is an immense water-treatment plant. The air smells sulfury here, like the peculiar well-water that used to eat up the plumbing fixtures on my grandparents’ farm. Then, momentarily, the air smells much worse--maybe this is a burp from the biogas facility--but in a few meters we’re past it. 

Let us pause to praise those heroes, the scientists and engineers and politicians who created modern water treatment facilities, and the people who still run them and do the dirty work. City life would be (was) vile without this. Dear sanitation engineers and workers: we ought to cheer you like football teams, we ought to send you champagne! 

**

The Freiheit has its visual pleasures, like this painted smokestack behind blooming tamarisk trees:

 Along the Freiheit, May 2014. My photo.

But it gets tiring. The street is hot and bleak and trucky and utterly without fellow pedestrians. 

Then suddenly--and how sudden the Berlin cityscape often is--things change. Freiheit becomes Wiesendamm, which looks even bleaker. The street gets itself up on stilts to cross a mess of old railroad tracks. A path plunges away from it on the left. And then here we are, suddenly back by the water, suddenly in a different world. 

Along the Spree, between Ruhleben and Rohrdamm, May 2014. My photo.

There is a stretch of Kleingartencolonien here [see Berlin-Spandauer Schifffahrtskanal 3, March], with a small path running between the gardens and the water. The river feels hidden down here, secret. Occasional cyclists spin past, and there is barely room to move aside for them in this tree-tunnel.

Along the Spree between Ruhleben and Rohrdamm. May 2014. My photo.

At one gap in the trees I see a gravel barge going past--and going past and going past, running downriver. The barge is so long it takes a full twenty seconds to pass the gap in the trees.  

Then the density of the trees eases off: we're getting further into the city, and the sun comes pouring onto the path. 

Along the Spree near Rohrdamm, May 2014. My photo.

Almost summer.