Wanderung 32

Eberhard and Birgit invited us to go with them on their weekly walk in the country. Since Hermsdorf is a far-North section of Berlin, you don't have to walk very far to the North from their house to be out in the countryside of the Brandenburg District.

Shortly after passing the Waldsee we crossed a rather interesting swamp section on a boardwalk and were soon in the meadowlands that stretched to the North.

Part of the reason the swamp (wetlands?) was so interesting is that we traversed it on a boardwalk, and some considerate person had placed informational placards at regular intervals along this boardwalk. The placards mostly described what we were seeing right in front of us (that is, swamp stuff), but one placard gave me completely new information about the cuckoo bird. Now you may be excused for thinking that cuckoo birds only exist on cuckoo clocks, but yes, there really is a cuckoo bird in Germany and it really does give a fairly piercing two-tone call that sounds a lot like "cuck" followed by a "oooh"!

Now, I vaguely knew the cuckoo bird survives as a species by placing its eggs in the nests of other birds, and then making sure that its offspring are in fact raised by the other birds. But I did NOT know that different varieties of the cuckoo are genetically keyed to lay eggs that almost exactly mimicked the eggs of a specific targeted species of host birds! So the distinct varieties of cuckoo bird HAVE to find the correct species of host bird in order for their eggs not to be rejected by the host bird and thrown out of the nest. Who knew? (While we are at this, Australia has real "bell birds" that have a call that is a single, pure note just like the ring of a bell, and they are a joy to hear. If you don't believe me, look it up, mate!)

We continued walking past an equestrian school that seemed to train hunter-jumper types of horses and riders. The riding school had the practice fields in the valley below the town, and those fields led upwards to some large brick stables in the center of the town. We curled around the far side of the farm area to come back down the main street of Alt Luebar, a village that is also technically a part of Berlin, according to Eberhard, who should know, because he's a lawyer!

Alt Luebar had a fair share of pretty old buildings, including the village church and the old schoolhouse, which had since been converted into a private residence, I think. Those were the kind of interesting German village buildings that I had come to expect based on seeing towns and villages all over Germany.

But almost every village in Germany also has some surprising, unique and unpredictable qualities to it, too. Alt Luebar was no exception, as it had a really good ice cream parlor which featured home-made ice cream specialties! So we paused there for a nice ice cream snack--Yum!

But the second unique thing we found in Alt Luebar was even more unexpected: a reconstruction of a reed hut or house apparently used by the first settled residents of the town back around 1247 or so. The curious thing was that when you look at the hut, the reed thatching came all the way down to the ground on the sides, and thus the thatching apparently functioned as both the roof and the walls of the domicile. The placard in front mentioned that the reeds and oak for the basic framework were both easily available from the surrounding area, which minimized transportation and costs. But I would also think that such construction would make the house very vulnerable to destruction by fire, which I suppose did happen in those long-ago days.

The final thing that I was surprised and for a while was completely puzzled by, was an old motorcycle standing in front of the hotel that had been adapted to pull a small garden-sized type of cart. The cart made sense, but the surprise was that it looked almost exactly like an old BMW motorcycle, right down to the shield on the gas tank, but it wasn't! Looking very carefully at that shield or emblem, it was the same pattern as the BMW shield but used red rather than blue, and the surrounding wording was "Eisenacher Motorwerk" (English: Eisenach Motor Works) rather than "Bayrische Motorwerk" (English: Bavarian Motor Works), which you find on all old BMW motorcycles. But son of a gun, it otherwise looked like an exact double of Merlin's old 1956 BMW!

Checking it out later, I found that there was apparently a BMW motorcycle plant in Eisenach during WWII, but when the Russians took over East Germany, Eisenach was in their territory. So after WWII the plant continued to make an East German counterpart to the BMW motorcycles made in West Germany! Good heavens, the oddball things I serendipitously learn whilst travelling!

After meandering through the old village, we cut back to the fields and retraced the part of our path through the wetlands (i.e., the swamp) back to Eberhard and Birgit's home in Hermsdorf. All together that day, we had walked several hours for a total distance of 10-11 kilometers.

I was curiously tired, so I turned in for yet another nap while Monika chatted with our hosts, but then I was awake to go out to dinner to celebrate Birgit's birthday! Yay! We had a really nice dinner at a very fancy place featuring Italian specialties. It was, however, within easy walking distance from their home and that was a good thing as my feet were just tired after our long walk earlier. During dinner, Birgit gave me a taste of her fish dish, which was excellent, and so as was my noodles-scooped-in-cheese with mushrooms entree.

Returning home, we chatted while Birgit answered the phone repeatedly for "Happy Birthday" wishes from her friends and family, which is more the custom in Germany than sending cards, emails, or Facebook posts. But we had to leave for the airport early the next morning, so we reluctantly turned in for the night about 10 pm.