Very nice walk which it must have taken the leader, Margot Dietzsch quite a bit of work to organiseFirst about 12 km in beautiful, mostly unspoiled nature, then a nice lunch and a lovely boat tour.
Nowadays, one is grateful for not getting soaked, and on this occasion, it only rained once, quite briefly, on the walk, quite a lot during lunch when we were indoors, and a tiny littlel bit once during the boat tour, so that was a bit like winning the lottery.
Unfortunately, our meal came off to a slightly uncomfortable start when it turned out that the restaurant had misunderstood or somehow or other caused some confusion about the reservation Margot had made, and the waiters took it as a personal insult that we were more people than they had expected. They were snippy and even quite rude in the beginning, despite the fact that they were not even half full, so – not cool.
There is a phenomenon in “the entertainment business” that I have come across many times. It often seems that if a café or restaurant has a particular advantage going for them – an idyllic location as in this case (Restaurant Il Borgo in Grünheide has a beautiful view onto trees and a lake just by the tourist boat we were to take back to Köpenick), or for one reason or another some snob value has been attached to it and never faded, they consider that enough of a “raison d’être” so that they do not have to make any particular efforts in other aspects of their service. Or even consider the fact that their tone can put a bit of a damper on a meal, especially for the person who has spent time and effort into organising it.
My mind was cast back to another walk with Berliner Wanderclub where a very busy restaurant, Restaurant Schlosspark-Grill, welcomed and accommodated a large-ish group of us completely unannounced with nothing but good humour, as described in this post. Guess which restaurant I would make a point of going back to?
By the way, we also stopped for a coffee/ice cream break at “Funny’s Kanuveleih”. One of their canoes, complete with a family on board, can be seen in one of the photos below.
The walking route on MapMyWalk here.
PHOTOS TO COME
First, I am experimenting more and more to see just how many nature photographs work as well or better in black and white:
Colour photos from the walk:
From the boat tour (still dithering between monochrome vs colour):
And finally, a couple of experiments that definitely belong in the “epic fails folder”, but I still quite like them:
