Havel 4

Upstairs and Downstairs and Through the Woods

I'm heading south from Spandau, out of its relatively dense flat urbanism. Presently the land is going to heave itself up into steep forested moraines and dunes--thousands of acres of forest, the Grunewald and the Düppeler Forest and the Potsdam Forest--and the Havel will slop out into bigger lakes. Here it's just a modest well-mannered city river with little park-patches like this along the banks. How the water sparkles in the September morning light--lots of beautiful days in this early autumn, perfect days for working through the woods.

Under-bridge view, Havel in Spandau, September 2015.  My photo.

By the time I get to the next bridge (or is it the second-next?) the land is getting less domesticated. The Havel splits and sprawls: in the stretch shown below, it blobs off to the left in a big bay called the Scharfe Lanke, and blobs off to the right in a fat side-channel called the Stößensee. Down the middle comes an artificial-looking straight channel, which I think is the truck route, so to speak: idle sailboats fill the side-blobs of the river while earnestly industrial barges make what speed they can down the middle channel. (The map is from the district website for this part of Berlin: the district Bürgermeister used to lead hikes for the citizens, and the red line on this map was the route for one of them.  The big blue line down the middle of the water is the border between Berlin and Brandenburg.)

River Havel, south of junction with Spree.
From Berlin.de portal, Bezirksamt Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf.

The bridge that runs across this industrial channel and across the little neck at the top of the Stößensee is the last bridge there will be over the Havel for a long long way. We are leaving the Berlin flatlands: there's a longish stair from the bridge down to the water here. Later there will be stairs through the woods, up the moraines and down the dunes. (Horrible stairs, actually: rail-less, broken, tilted out of true, choked with sand and slithery with fallen leaves. I'm not tackling these forest stairs again without my Tennessee walking stick.)

Stößensee bridge.  My photo, September 2015.

My route here is pretty straightforward (I think, although this turns out to be mildly wrong). It's pretty much the same as the Bürgermeister's hike on the map above, and then I go further south along the water to the end of the Grunewald (the Berliner Forst in the map above). 

I always feel as if I'm missing a lot, though, along the Havel. It's such an indefinite-infinite river, it seems as though you could wander around just the Berlin stretches of it for years (happily). Attempting to proceed from north to south down one side of it is semi-impossible, and the closer you come to doing this, the more you miss.

Just before the starting-point for today, for example, is a fine water-labyrinth, nothing but water and light and green. These are the Tiefwerder water-meadows, which I missed by coming down the other side of the river in the last stretch (must come back here sometime):

Tiefwerder Wiesen. Photo, Lienhard Schulz, Wiki Commons.

Then there is the wooded high ground between the Stößensee and the central channel, which used to be an island before the Berlin water table fell so much. Numbers of hikers are disappearing up the paths there on this fine day (must come back here sometime).


But now I want to make my southing, just keep going and get some orientation along the main line of the river.  So: down the stairs to the water, and turn left.

The river here is fantastically full of boats (I begin to wonder if there are more boats than cars in Berlin, as it is not much of a car-owning city). There are a handful of sails out already on this cool weekday morning, as the breeze thins the last of the morning mist over the water. 

Sailboats on the Havel south of Heerstrasse, September 2015. My photo.

On this stretch of the river there is an ongoing controversy--not of a very violent nature--about the treatment of the banks. Some stretches of the bank are closed off for re-naturing (with very polite signs on the fences saying Dear visitors and visitoresses, we are trying to let the natural vegetation grow back here ...). The boat owners are worried that this movement will get out of hand and start taking over the boat harbors. But really, there seems to be plenty of room along the water. (Though perhaps a lot of it isn't deep-water harbor? Just shallows and numberless little coves where you can lie in the sand or swim near shore or even light a fire to heat your lunch.) 

Re-naturing means letting the reeds grow back, big-time:

Reeds along the Havel, Grunewald, September 2015. My photo.

On the right as you walk south there's this flat bit of shore--reeds, yacht harbors, coves, what-have-you--and then the Grunewald rears up on the left ... 

Fallen tree, Grunewald, September 2015. My photo.

... and rears up and rears up, and after a while the blaze for the path I am more or less following (greenway number 12, along the Havel) suddenly points up one of the stairways. 

Why should the path go this way?? It means going away from the water, which I do not especially want to do--but then, the main greenway markers are generally reliable, and we may be going off this way because there's a dead end along the water further up, at some place where there isn't a stair or any other way to go forward. 

So, up we go, clumping and slithering, and regretting the absence of the Tennessee walking stick (which is leaning up against the last bookshelves in the study, by the novels T through Z, the math books, and the old theater programs and old maps).

Ah, here we are: definitely a worthwhile detour. Maybe the path just takes us here for the view?

Havel from Grunewald, September 2015. My photo.

It turns out that the path is taking us up to the Carlsberg (second highest point in the Grunewald) and the Grunewaldturm--which is one of those silly silly objects that the pre-World-War-I generation strewed across the German landscape as monuments to national glory.  There is an over-life-size marble version of Kaiser Wilhelm I in it, and probably a very fine view from the top, but I'm not a big tower-climber.

Grunewaldturm.  Photo by Times, Wiki Commons.

So let's go down through the woods and back to the river. I hope there is some alternative to a steep stair ... and so there is. Path down, more path down, shallow steps, and then what could be more inviting than this long carpet of green through the trees? Gently, gently down.

In the woods near the Grunewaldturm, September 2015. My photo.

This is very far from being the wilderness out here, it's city forest with bus stops in it; but it's not exactly sidewalk-land either, and I do like to get out away from sidewalk-land every now and then.  Where did I get such a taste for country walks? It's not so easy to acquire in the US. But we did walk, my mother and brother and I, just ambling down roads that weren't much used, or along the tracks by the irrigation canals. Out on a fine afternoon, with the family knapsack packed with apples and crackers and sardines. (I'm sorry I lost track of the family knapsack in some move or other; it had belonged to my mother's father in World War I, and it showed every indication of lasting in good condition to the end of time.)

It's sad, in much of the US it's hardly possible just to take off across the fields and through miscellaneous patches of woods on foot. Sure, you can drive to a state park somewhere and go round on the little loop trail with its excessive signage and possible pavement--and this is better than nothing, but at some level this is stupid, it's like being in the gym, it's like being a dog that's never allowed off the leash. But here ... ah, we can go where we want. 

What a very beautiful day this has become. The leaves have started to turn, just a little here and there. They don't turn all at the same time here (one linden tree may change color weeks after another linden tree) so the forests don't do the big sheet-of-flame act that they do in the US at this season. But it's handsome enough:

Along the Havel, September 2015. My photo.

And here's a little bay, the Lieper Bucht, which looks suitable for lunch. Here's a not-too-damp fallen log where we might sit with a sandwich, admiring the impressionist-looking fallen leaves in the shallow water in the cove:

Shallow water, Lieper Bucht, Havel, September 2015. My photo.

Then here come the little white afternoon clouds, with reflections in the bay that look solid and deep, deep under water, as if you could pass over them in your boat without scraping the keel:

Lieper Bucht, Havel, September 2015. My photo.

And across the sky they look like stepping-stones to the other side of the water, a sky-route to Brandenburg in this long unbridged stretch:

On the Havel, September 2015. My photo. 

(Isn't this a wonderful river?  I love the Havel.) There's a swan far out on the water; I whistle to it and it comes. Swans will often come if you call, and will appear to listen--though with an appearance of rude swan-like skepticism--if you talk to them. (Ducks are not attentive in this way; they just bobble around hoping for treats.) However, swans like treats as well, and since I have neither treats nor conversation when the swan arrives, it pretends to be interested in other matters. 

Swan in Havel, September 2015. My photo.

So we forge on for a bit; and then the path leads back to the Havelchaussee, a small street that runs through the edge of the Grunewald not far from the river. It's not at all a busy street, especially if you don't count the bicyclists puffing on the hills. It has some rather spectacular mushrooms along the streetside, which are not without interest:

Mushroom along Havelchaussee, September 2015. My photo.

But I don't want to be on a street. Besides, after a bit it angles off the wrong way: it crosses the forest to meet the freeway on the other side, and if you follow it you have the joy of walking right beside the freeway for the last kilometer or two before the S-Bahn station where I am planning to pick up a train home.  Ugh: no freeway-side hiking for me. So ... could I just cut through the forest for the last few kilometers? 

There are of course paths. Equally of course, the map is unreliable with respect to the paths, I know this from past encounters. I also have doubts about the truth of my compass. But it isn't far; and look, there's the sun, if I keep it just at my left shoulder like this--if I can find a path straight enough to allow this--it should be easy. Besides, once I am well into the woods, I can hear the distant murmur of the freeway. It's faint, but it's there; if I don't seem to be getting where I want to go, I can always head in the direction of car-murmur and I'll come out of the woods in some quasi-useful, identifiable place.  

The great thing is to avoid long nasty stairs, so I keep on the (descending) road until I'm a little lower down, and then head off on a big track through the forest. And--oh, this is excellent, there's a sign on a tree showing a little horse icon. This is a bridle path, exactly what we want. Horses do not do stairs.  

And in a kilometer or so we come to a very handsome signpost in the middle of the woods:

In the Grunewald, September 2015. My photo.

Hmm. So if we go off one way here, we hit the freeway (that's the Avus), but if we go off the other way we land up at the back of the big Wannsee swimming beach, which is not really that entertaining either. The ideal would be to angle between the two, stay in the forest as long as possible, and come out somewhere not too far from the S-Bahn. According to the signpost and my map, this is not an option; but one can't take these things too seriously.  

It looks as if there's a species of path that goes at the desired angle here--and more spectacular fungus, this time on a load of fallen birch trunks that the foresters have been cutting up:

Fungus on birch log, Grunewald, September 2015. My photo. 

It's a bit dark here, as you can tell from the shadows in the photo. But let us proceed ... and eventually, up ahead, I can see the light getting broader where the trees thin out, and the sound of cars becomes more pronounced. It will be interesting to see just where we are coming out. 

And what is the first thing that hoves into view?  The big green-and-white S marking the S-Bahn station.  Perfect landfall. Time to go home.