If you’re just joining me on the 66-Lakes-Trail (Sechsundsechzig-Seen-Wanderweg), I’m on a 416km long journey around Berlin. Find out about the first few tours.
Tour 6: Melchow to Leuenberg
Tour 6 was the longest thus far at 29 km from Melchow to Leuenberg, but one of my favorite days. The fall colors in Germany aren’t as impressive as the ones in my hometown in New Jersey, but this day was the absolute best for seeing the beauty of the Brandenburg fall. I took picture after picture because the colors in the forest were so bright against the light gray cloudy sky.
For the first time on the trail, I knew where I was headed when I got off the train, since I had ended at this train station the hike before. I walked the main street right out of town and then through several kilometers of bright yellow forest. When I got to the 800 year old stone bridge, I hooked right to take “Option B” noted by the guidebook as the “best option.” Although not the actual marked trail, it was easy enough to follow and certainly a pleasant trail. For a while I followed the Nonnenfließ (Nun’s stream) in the woods before coming to the fields of a former palace garden. With the sky imminently threatening rain I didn’t see a single person, but I did see quite a variety of mushrooms.
The first 6 kilometers of this detour I managed pretty well, but going through the former palace garden I lost my way a bit getting to Trampe. Like in the last tour, I was stuck going through ditches, marsh, and brush, so I decided to cut over to the road. When I got there, an elderly couple picked me up saying they saw me coming out of the woods and stopped to see if I was ok. They drove me about half a kilometer to the main road through Trampe from which I could find my way. They were also headed in the same general direction as I was and offered to take me closer to my destination. I tried to explain to them that my goal was to walk so that’s why I already wanted out, but they didn’t really understand. Once through the town, I continued another 5km west, unfortunately roadside, until I reached the shores of the woodland Gamensee and finally began to trek southward. For some reason, I hiked the east side of the lake instead of the route-marked west side, but whatever.
After the nearly kilometer and a half long Gamensee, I continued through the woods, passing by many small ponds including the Teufelsee (Devil’s lake), Buchsee, Dümpel, Langer See, Röthsee, and other unnamed puddles. During the day, I had made pretty good time but somewhere along the last few lakes I realized I might reach the bus stop a few moments too late and have to wait another two hours for the next bus back to Berlin. When you hike with someone, waiting for the next connection isn’t so bad, but to spend two hours sitting by myself would be too much. I picked up the pace, ran into a few spiderwebs on the way through the last field, and reached Leuenberg’s bus stop with a few minutes to spare.
Tour 8: Strausberg to Rüdersdorf
I took a long hiatus until I hiked on the 66-Lakes-Trail again, but on a cold Sunday morning in February I managed to drag myself out of bed for the 21 kilometers from Strausberg to Rüdersdorf. I skipped tour 7 because of the poor connection to Leuenberg in the morning. In the last leg, I learned that the bus only runs every two hours on weekends. 7 will have to wait until the daylight hours are longer and I won’t be risking hiking in the dark – although this tour during the day ended up being creepy enough. Instead of beginning at the south end of the Straussee (Straus lake), I got off the train at Strausberg Stadt to walk through the old town and along the west banks of the lake. It was half frozen and so foggy that I couldn’t see across to the opposite side.
After leaving Strausberg, I hardly saw another person all day – or maybe I just didn’t see them through the thick fog. As if that wasn’t creepy enough, the crows and ravens cackled at me all day long like the flying monkeys at Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz when she’s trying to find the Wicked Witch of the West’s castle. When they weren’t cawing at me, the day was peaceful. It was one of the more difficult days of hiking because I was either trudging through a few inches of melted snow and mud or trying to keep my balance on large patches of ice covering the trail. Moving kept me warm, but the fog, snow, and puddles quickly had me soaked through to the bone from the knees down, which wasn’t the most pleasant way to travel.
Despite being wet, slippery, and strenuous, the hike wasn’t without some noteworthy sights. I went through a farm that had horses, sheep, and large cows with long-horn style horns. Before reaching the Kleiner Steinitzsee (small Steinitz lake), I walked by an old mill and a watch tower. Then I walked along the shores of the Grosser Steinitzsee (large Steinitz lake) for a while before coming to some open fields with a couple of very curious horses – I worried they would hop the rope fence if they decided to get any closer. I followed the creek flowing out of the Steinitzsee through some villages as it turned into more of a river. Once I crossed the railroad bridge over the water it wasn’t too long until I reached the end of tour 8 in Rüdersdorf.
Tour 9: Rüdersdorf to Hangelsberg
It only rained for about 2 hours of tour 9 from Rüdersdorf to Hangelsberg, but was otherwise an agreeable day for the 23km hike with my coworker, Iris. It was by far the easiest stretch of trail to follow – we hardly ever consulted the guide book because the markers were everywhere and easy to find. Maybe we talked too much and I, therefore, didn’t notice much, but I didn’t find this stretch of trail to be particularly interesting. Perhaps the beauty of the Brisetal and the “8 lakes in a day” spoiled me.
We started off by following the western shore of the Kalksee (Limestone Lake) and in no time had arrived at the locks in Woltersdorf. There, Iris and I took photos of the café with her last name and the goofy looking sign about not falling through the ice on the water. Too deep in conversation, we didn’t realize we had missed the turn off for the lookout tower until it was too late. Maybe we would have decided to go back and check it out if it hadn’t been raining, but we carried on.
After walking along the Flakensee we followed the Löcknitz, a peaceful, slow moving stream. A little hut beckoned us to stop for lunch and to get out of the drizzle. Energized by full bellies and the lack of raindrops, we left the stream’s shore to walk around the Wupatzsee. Further on, we crossed under the Hubertus Bridge and encountered the “possibly 4 biggest frogs in the world” (according to the guide book) – 4 frog statues guarding the bridge on either side on each bank. We continued along the Löcknitz, albeit not always in view. The final landmark along the way was the fish farm Klein Wall (little wall), which, for a fish farm, smelled surprisingly deliciously of smoked fish as we walked past. The rest of the hike was an easy straight shot on a forest road through rows of pines until we reached the Hangelsberg train station. All in all, this stretch of the 66-Lakes-Trail wasn’t dazzling, but was indeed a pleasant jaunt through the woods.
