In English, they call it “Heavy Load-Bearing Body” which just for once sounds much clumsier that the German version, and the hyphen looks out of place :-).

Anyway, I have been so close so many times, but never actually seen it and decided to drop in on my way to the Flixbus stop in Alt-Tegel to meet my niece and her girlfriend coming to visit for a couple of days.

Later, while waiting in Tegel, I walked a bit along Tegeler See, And finally, after the girls had arrived, we tried out one of the no less than three Indian restaurant in the area, two in Alt-Tegel and one just around the corner. We opted for Darjiling, which I can’t recommend. The food was incredibly bland.

I have never been so badly prepared for an excursion as this one.

I had made a last minute decision to do this tour on Komoot today. But since the weather looked as if it could turn either way, I was waiting for it to brighten up just a little bit.

When I finally left, I was ridiculously unprepared, so for various reasons, the walk was cut even shorter.

As it was still grey and drizzle when I left home, I did not expect relentless sunshine and clouds that were always everywhere but between the sun and me, so I did not apply sunscreen, nor did I bring sunglasses, let alone a hat. Of course with not much in the way of shade from big trees in that kind of landscape, that in itself put a damper on the amount of time I was able to spend there.

Also, even more idiotically, I forgot to put a battery in my camera so had to make do with my phone for photos.

And finally, I forgot to bring a power bank. With my non-existent orientation skills, I am always afraid of getting lost, and if my phone runs out of battery (which of course it does much quicker when I take a lot of photos with it ….), I am f……

Still, I hugely enjoyed the walk, and would definitely like to go back and walk further and spend more time there. And since I now know what blooming heather as far as the eye can see and in all directions looks like, it does not have to be this time of year.

A couple of bonus tips: Take the regional train to Bernau (that really takes no time at all) and bus 900 to Schönow church. From there, it is just a short walk.

There are no toilets, and also no really great options (for women) to go “al fresco”, so make sure to go before boarding the bus in Bernau, which is also the last chance to find something to eat and drink if you have not brought your own. There is a “restaurant” – Alter Dorfkrug – by the church in Schönow, but their opening hours are prohibitive. I did have a cup of the worst coffee ever there, but I saw no evidence of any food being served. However, it did look as if they had good beer.

And finally, leave the road either well before the cemetery, or just after the cemetery. Some maps make it look as if you can exit through the back of the cemetery, but I learned the hard way that that is not possible.

My route on MapMyWalk here.

Once every two or three weeks, I wake up feeling like I have been run over by a bus, and strangely weak. Whether that is one of the many potential side effects of the hormone blockers which it has been recommended I take for five years after the mastectomy, or just a getting-old thing that would happen anyway, it sometimes means a change of plans.

I had been signed up for a 17 km walk – with Empor Berlin, led by Fritz Heiber – in a loop from Kratzeburg, involving leaving home shortly before 8.00 in the morning, and going straight to an internations.org dinner in Alt-Moabit on the way home. I had been looking forward to it (and the destination will be added to my list of places to go to some other time) but it suddenly seemed insurmountable, and I granted myself a slow morning and instead visited the Isa Gentzken retrospective in Neue Nationalgalerie in the afternoon and took my camera on a slow amble through Tiergarten on the way to dinner in Indian vegetarian restaurant Agni in Moabit (with internations.org, organised by Rakesh Singh, and the food would turn out to be very good indeed).

Tiergarten is lush right now – probably having profited from the relatively heavy rainfalls, and although parks are not really my thing, I was wondering why I do not visit more often, given the size, diversity, and relative proximity to my home. My mind was also cast back to last summer, before everything went sideways, and we had some very hot days so I took Max there very early in the morning on his longer daily walks and we saw all kinds of wildlife which you do not see later in the morning. It is a nightmare on weekends, with all the bikes and e-rollers whizzing around all over the place, even on paths which should really only be for pedestrians, but during the day on a weekday, it is quite lovely.

In late winter/early spring I came across a bag of bio sunflower seeds for sowing and thought it might be interesting to try.

Bad idea. They are not suited for pots on balconies. They consume an inordinate amount of water – on sunny days three times a day – and definitely seem to need more soil under their strong roots. Most of them did not survive the unusually windy conditions on my sixth-floor balcony this year – it seems that about every four or five summers it is more windy, and the wind tends to come from an easterly direction directly on to the balcony rather than a more north-south direction which is not felt on this side of the building.

Five of them survived, and grew much taller than I had expected – I think the tallest one may be over 2 m tall.

In any case, they are finally blooming, and finally attracting some insects (and we finally have a blue sky again).

According to NABU, the swifts, of which there have been many around my building this year, headed south yesterday, so perhaps I will finally see more insects making their way all the way up here.

Short walk organised by Museen Tempelhof-Schöneberg, led by Uwe Sawitzki.

Read more about Freizeitpark Marienfelde here.

Most of the route on MapMyWalk here.

First some garbage, since we were on our way up a “mountain” created by garbage:

The view from the top:

A couple of insects – unfortunately an increasingly rare sight:

Passed through one of Berlin’s largest industrial areas on the way back:

And finally, the black and white photos of the day: