A Lot of Walking

 June 13

Ezra was off work today. We’d planned a picnic for dinner, so we went shopping. For something like €50 (I checked my withdrawals, and the Euro is currently about $1.60 CAD, a highter rate than I’d though), Ez bought what would have cost probably $150 back home. Things are generally cheap here. 

I nosed in some shops for a bit, was tempted by a shirt and a dress, but only bought some Fisherman’s Friend lozenges, which will get me through the flight home, when I will wear a mask. Masks always make me cough.

Ez and I went for lunch at the Café Bildebuch, a favourite haunt since John and I first started coming to Berlin. There’s a smoke-filled front patio and a fairly smoke-free back patio, where we chose to sit. 

My egg sandwich, not at all like "egg salad"

After lunch, it was time to pick up Brookie at the train from camp. It was at the same S-Bahn station I’d arrived at from the airport, and the one I'll probably leave from to get back to the airport, so I recorded the walk on a GPS track. It’s 2.2 km from here, and it took us 20 minutes at a good clip. Hauling my luggage might take longer. I could take a closer train and transfer but this one is non-stop direct, so the walk is probably worth it.

By 2 o’clock, I’d put in more than 10,000 steps and had plenty more to do today. Last time I was in Berlin, I averaged 13,000 a day. At my age, 6,000 is considered the sweet spot. I wonder if I can slack off all winter if I double up my steps in summer. Nah, I know the answer to that. It hardly seems fair.

In my “Berlin 2025 Wishlist,” which I think I got from a NTY article months ago, one idea was to picnic on the Insel der Jugend. Katharina has been doing her best all week to make all my wishlist items happen. She takes the list way more seriously than I do. So she arranged that Ezra's sister Maria and her partner Francie would meet us there, and away we went. Ezra rode, with the kiddie wagon in tow, holding two girls really much too big for it. Katharina and I took the S-Bahn. Then walked. And walked. And walked. Well, I asked for it, didn’t I? 

Typical S-Bahn station. Bland, but efficient

Here’s the thing about Berlin: it’s very rough-cut. That’s a big part of its charm, I think. Where other cities might have pristine gardens and smooth public lawns, Berlin’s spaces are weedy, and the grass, where it survives, is going to seed. In public recreational places, whatever grass there might ever have been has long since worn away, leaving large patches of bare, dusty ground, littered with cigarette butts and other detritus. That’s okay by Berliners. They spread their blankets in the dust and enjoy their picnics as if they were parked in a corner of paradise. In large, open spaces, people plunk themselves seemingly at random. Oh, there’s a patch not occupied, let’s occupy it. Think of yourself walking into the middle of a scrappy field and just lying down there, to catch some sun or read a book. That’s the aesthetic. 

Entrance to Insel der Jugend (Island of Youth), which you can see has been re-named Insel Berlin, but nobody calls it that. 

Set in the walkway leading to the Insel, there were stones naming what I presume were sponsors of the bridge. This was my favourite. Lucy is Stephen Hawking's daughter.

By the time Katharina and I had walked enough kilometers to up my annual daily step average by several thousand, the others had already found a seemly patch of dust, and the picnic was spread out. There were low trees around, and we were quite close to the river, so it wasn’t completely random. We pretended the cigarette butts were part of the natural landscape. The girls, they can make beautiful things out of anything, I swear, and we were served delectable frisbees of “pizza,” and “French toast,” made with mud, stones, tiny blossoms, and big juicy leaves. I wish I’d taken pictures of these unlikely works of art.

It was great to see Maria, after some years of crossed wires, but it wasn’t really enough time. It was nice to meet Francie at last. (I probably spelled her name wrong, sorry.)

Francie, Maria, and Brookie, with Ezra and the kiddie wagon bringing up the rear

Picnic over, while others sailed away on their bikes, Katharina and I retraced the kilometers back to the S-Bahn, and rode home watching the sun set at 9:15. Summer!

Oh, and my step count, since you’re dying to know: 21,954. That’s about half of what a Camino pilgrim will walk in a day. But I feel pretty good about it. 

This was before my last 26 steps to the bathroom and back