There were lots of volunteers to join me on the final two legs of the 66-Lakes-Trail. Everyone who had been promising to come all along knew this was one of their last chances to join 🙂 We met at the Südkreuz train station to head towards Trebbin together, where I had previously left off. This tour had the largest participation so far: my colleagues Tülin, Pauline, and Roland, and Roland’s friend, Willy. This hike would also turn out to be the most leisurely of all, and not in a bad way!
Once the train stopped in Trebbin, we sauntered through the tiny town . Along the way we passed by the Rathaus (town hall) and the statue of Hans Clauert, the town’s rather interesting claim to fame – a man who was a notorious pest and conman. Before long, we crossed a creek at the edge of town and were in the woods. Traveling up one of the steepest and highest points on the trail, we reached a lookout tower. We spent some time taking in the view and taking pictures before continuing on.
A few kilometers later, we were out of the woods and on a sandy path bordering the forest and a wheat field. We took a lot of silly jumping pictures together, but trying to all be in the air at the same time proved to be difficult.
Shortly thereafter we arrived at the Blankensee. Although the lake is enormous, we only walked along a small section of the lake before wandering through town. The whole time, I couldn’t stop commenting on cute it was! All of the little Dorf houses were just so perfect, with a cute little church, and an old stone fire house. Completely quaint and adorable.
From Blankensee, it was just two more kilometers to Stücken, where we stopped at a lovely restaurant/café/biergarten, the Fliederhof (the lilac farm), to have a refreshment. Sitting in the yard behind the restaurant, we had a view of a stork and his nest on the top of the chimney of a barn. It was such a hot day, we all decided to forego a beer and had some kind of schorle instead. Schorle is usually some kind of fruit juice, most commonly apple, mixed with seltzer water. We all had either rhubarb or elder flower schorles and then ice cream to go. I had a scoop of rhubarb and a scoop of strawberry, a delicious combination reminding me of my mom’s strawberry rhubarb crumble.
From this point, we were just about half way through our journey. There were roughly 12 more kilometers to the train station in Seddin. Although tired, we tried to hike a little quicker so that we would eventually get home to Berlin. Before reaching the Großer Seddiner See, we passed by an extraordinarily large field with cattle which were grazing from a hay bin under the wide-reaching shady branches of an oak tree. A great big group of school children with bright yellow shirts and their chaperones passed us on bicycles. Then we walked by another large field filled with beautiful red poppies and a variety of purple flowers.
Once on the lake shore of the Großer Seddiner See, we hiked by a private beach or two before coming to some public beaches. We stopped at one of them so we could all go in for a swim or at least to put our feet in the water. After cooling off we continued hiking, following the northern shore of the lake westward, although the lake wasn’t always in view. It was a really hot day, so even though I had jumped in the lake with my clothes on they were dry in no time.
Before reaching the end of the lake, we took a slight detour north to take the shortest course to the train station…just 2 more kilometers instead of 8! To finally reach the station we had to go through a long tunnel that had a huge railyard above it, which was surprising considering how small Seddin is. On the returning train to Berlin, I noticed the cars were much fuller than any I had experienced while hiking the trail so far. Everyone was out to spend this sunny Sunday at one of the many lakes in the Berlin area.
With more participants, this tour took a lot longer than usual, but it was really a pleasure to have so many people to share this trail with. There were many great sights and it was such a pretty spring day. I really enjoyed the company, being able to soak up every minute of the day, and stopping to smell the roses along the way, instead of just being focused on completing the tour.