On Sunday we had excellent company, who came on bikes with an enormous haul of bakery treats. There is seriously nothing like Germany for bakery treats. The plan was to go for a ride through Grunewald, a huge forest that just happens to be half an hour from the centre of Berlin. I don't even know how Berlin gets off being so fabulous: bakeries, clubs, amazing public transport infrastructure, enough shops to cater to millions of people, and then a forest of all things. If I were Berlin I'd be very smug, but it's remarkably humble for a capital city.
Humble and rainy, however, the latter of which being not the best attribute when you've planned a bike ride. I have no particular fear of melting if rain touches me, but I do have a fear of repeating a certain incident that happened in high school. The rain was pelting down around home time and I rode downhill from the school on my supposedly trusty black Malvern Star that I'd bought with my part-time job earnings (ah, memories. I loved that bike). There was a staircase at the bottom of the hill that was protected by a fence so people like me couldn't accidentally kill themselves. Probably for the best. At any rate, it turns out that the brakes on that particular bike didn't work at all when trying to stop from a fair speed whilst riding downhill in the rain, and I did the only thing I could think of: I abandoned ship. School shoes are, unfortunately, about as good as Malvern Star brakes and there was no way I could have stayed upright. I slid down that bitumen and I slid hard, my navy blue drill school skirt riding up to provide maximum skin contact with the bitumen. I shredded my right thigh, butt, and hip that day, and lost my glasses to boot. I even had to face the humiliation of asking somebody for help--double the humiliation, in fact, as without my glasses I had no idea before I spoke that the person I happened to approach was my arch nemesis who, of all things, called me a poor thing and actually helped me. The shame, I tell you!
To procrastinate instead of embark on another adventure like the aforementioned we went a-planting! Our delightful company had happened to bring a number of plants that had outgrown their balcony garden. We're a tad more suburban than they are and have actual ground (rather than footpath) around our apartment, so Jill set off with her trowel and supervised as my friend dug her a hole to plant our new sunflowers (pictured), and another little garden around the side of the flat. Jill then made a wee garden edge with pine cones.
At length we realised that Berlin was just threatening to rain and wasn't actually going to do anything about it, so we set off on our bikes to Grunewald. The sky cleared up as if by magic the second we got into the forest--doesn't it look amazing?--and we trundled through the paths to find 'Die Sandgrube' (which google rather hilariously translates to 'the sand pit'), sand dunes which stand on a site which is apparently an abandoned gravel mine. 
This is the view from the top of the highest sand hill.
Die Sandgrube is a brilliantly family friendly place. Apparently the wildschwein--wild pigs--make actually camping there a rather bad choice, but there were heaps of families: kids running up and down the sand dunes, people playing football, various games of catch, frisbee, and even one person with a kite. We chose to sit on a makeshift picnic blanket and eat apples while the kids made a cubby house in the scrub, but it was super. It was also a really peaceful retreat from the city, unless of course the wind blowing just so and we could hear the roar of the Hertha football fans at Olympiastadion as their team won a game which qualified for them to gain a league promotion of some sort.
After a final trip up and down the biggest dune we set off so we could be home in time for dinner. The Grunewald s-bahn station is a kilometre or so down another track leading from die Sandgrube, though we stopped off at a lovely little cafe (sporting a biergarten, naturally) for ice cream on the way.All in all another fabulous outing, and I'd absolutely go there again. There are signs and maps all through the forest to help you find die Sandgrube or any of the other gorgeous Grunewald attractions. The tracks are wide and quite fine for walking, jogging, or riding either bikes or horses!
The path from the main track to die Sandgrube is not wheelchair friendly, and we couldn't find a lift at either Grunewald s-bahn station or a working lift at Westkreuz s-bahn station, but there is parking and the paths, albeit slightly gravelly dirt, are wide and seem to be fairly accessible.
No comments:
Post a Comment