Above water – me and the hood intake

A diver looks at me on the side. He is very close. I look at the pointed red beak under the hood covered with growing distrust. It is a male, the smaller female remains a few meters away. When I just want to warn my swimming lover that a beak could hit us at any moment Lappa diver in the magnificent dress silently in the lake …

A cloud -covered Friday morning in Berlin. I will be on the north of the city to Mexicoplatz in Zehlendorf in just under an hour by S-Bahn and on foot on the Schlachtensee got. Dirk’s favorite area is a pale lawn among magnificent trees – in heat gladly occupied by students and school tails. Jogger pass our benches on rustic entries. As we change, Dirk tells of a swan who has succumbed to a dog bite here at the lake. We stow our valuables in swimming booths and blow them up. Dirk brought two. Equipped with bathing caps, swimming glasses, a bright oranger and a faded buoy we climb a wooden staircase down into the mild green forest lake.

Over water

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Anne Hahn is the author of novels and non -fiction and swims through the waters of the world for »ND«.

With us, an older lady slides into the water and pulls away. We swim comfortably and chat. There are cormorants in the dead trees further back. Do we take them as a goal? Steh paddlers turn around farm, young people in rowing boats loudly conquer the hose -shaped lake. Our buoys swing behind us and effectively protect against collisions. For River bathing in the Seine If lifeboys are even mandatory, I read. Dirk scolds the brutally shot Catfish in a Franconian lake. Over there, he saw two catfish last week, he shows. So one meter long and standing in the water. Catfish are completely harmlessIf you have yours La Skieg brief does not come too close. “They need their calm, you have to design the bathing situation differently,” he says.

I look at the hood for us, look at him when diving. The view in the Schlachtensee is fantastic: Since 1981, around three million cubic meters of water from the Großer Wannsee in the Preparation system Beelitzhof freed from phosphate and then almost led into the Schlachtensee in drinking water quality. The hood intake has escaped, I look at fibrous plants, yellowish soil near the shore, the small fish all around. I lie down on my back and push the swimming goggles on my forehead. We don’t create the cormorants today.

The sun is shining, it gets a few degrees warmer immediately. Dirk thinks that Water temperature I was already 24 degrees in the morning, four degrees more than the air. We have been traveling for half an hour, Dirks knows, and the route also records it. He has already completed a five-kilometer round this week and swims back with me. The rowboat kids are on, it is paddled silently, the colorful buoys are increasing. When we are at the »Fishing hut«A piece of apple pie with a view of the lake, a cormorant catches a fish a few meters away and devours it.