I awoke in the morning to find a German stabbing me in the back with her finger. "Get up you lazy shit! It's a sunny day, they're pretty rare in Hamburg. I have a surprise for you". For weeks I'd been hearing all about this "surprise". My only clues were that it would have to be a sunny day when I get it, otherwise it wouldn't work very well. I didn't know if it was an object I'd be getting, an experience, a new friend, a story...Who would know. After a brilliant breakfast (Sonja told her mother that Australians eat bacon, eggs, sausages and toast every day for breakfast, so that's what they bought me to eat) we set out on our big adventure to whatever my surprise was. As we were leaving the house, Sonja gave me a big bag which weighed probably 6-8 kg's. I wasn't allowed to look in it though, otherwise it would ruin the surprise. After getting on a bus for 20 minutes, then a train for 10 minutes, we found ourselves walking for about half an hour. We went past her old school, a couple parks and ended up walking around the most prized and loved natural landmark in Hamburg, the Lake Alster.
While we were walking through the parks, I decided to sneak a quick feel of the bag...Maybe I could make out something. I felt a couple pole-like objects, I thought maybe it was a set of goals and she was going to take me to a park to play soccer...That wouldn't explain why it was so heavy though...And I couldn't feel anything ball shaped. She caught me feeling it and got angry, so I just had to walk along thinking about it.
Eventually, we arrived at the point of the lake and Sonja said "Ok, so I do have with me...An INFLATABLE BOAT!!". Words cannot describe how excited I was at this point, I could not for the life of my suppress my smile. Our only problem was that there seemed to be nowhere to launch the bloody thing, all around the lake seemed to be dangerously sharp rocks, or it was just far too shallow. Unlike in Australia where you just take off your shoes and push the boat out, here you would have to take your shoes off, roll up your jeans, somehow not get hypothermia and die, and avoid stepping on any broken glass or whatever else is floating around in the lake. Therefore finding a good take off point is critical. After walking and walking and walking, we finally found somewhere that looked relatively suitable.
Sonja went for a pee in a cafe, and I pumped up the boat. It's ok if there are two people pumping up an inflatable boat next to a lake, but I looked like a lonely loser. Anyway, when she came back, she had with her a little feast from the cafe so we could have a lovely lunch out on the water. As soon as we got the boat in the water and launched with the pair of us in it, the clouds came...And the wind. For starters, I've never rowed a boat in my life. I've been in canoes and kayaks, but never a row boat, so paddling this thing was challenging enough as it was, let alone the fact that the bloody oars were only slightly bigger than my hands. I couple times I thought whether I would have just been better off paddling with my hands. Oh well.
Shortly after making it into the water, it was decided that we go to the very middle of the lake, and there we could sit somewhat peacefully and eat our food. After a painful and exhausting paddle, we made it and ate our sausage meat with salad. It quite lovely sitting there then, the waves were only gently rocking the boat and the sun would spit through little bits of open cloud.
After lunch, it was time to paddle again. Sonja had a plan of paddling to a particular end of the lake which connected to I guess the other half of it. This was against the current and due to my lack of fitness, lack of experience and teeny paddles, there was no hope, so we just made our way to a little bridge and it looked like it would have started raining soon. My lack of experience definitely showed when the waves pushed us to the other side of the lack, when we were getting dangerously close to the jaggered rocks. Through this bit of the ordeal, the waves and wind had gotten stronger, and water was now spilling over the side of the boat, onto me and running down into my bum. Everything on my lower half was wet. In a hot place, this is fine, and even refreshing. In the September temperatures of Germany, it's bloody outrageously cold and uncomfortable.
Some of the people standing on the side of the lake were staring at us, probably wondering if I had some kind of disability due to my paddling skills. They looked genuinely worried and I'm sure if I saw someone in our situation, I probably would have been too.
Somehow, I managed to get out of that, and we made it to the bridge, just as it started raining, so we camped under the bridge for a while and when it started to clear up, we went beyond the bridge. Contrary to what we though was going to be beyond the bridge (Another lake), it turned out to be a long canal that stretches through the whole city. This was the highlight of my day.
With bugger all current and the sun finally out, Sonja cracked open a couple beers, whipped out her mp3 player with speakers and we floated along the river listening to The Beatles. Although still bloody freezing, I was happy as a pig in mud.
Paddling past house-boats, ducks and swans, children who pointed and stared and trees that tried to eat us, we eventually reached a point where we had to get out. It was getting late, cold(er) and the speakers had run out of battery. Just like getting into the lake, getting out of the canal isn't an easy task. You can't simply find any wall and just climb out of the boat. We went past a couple ladders, a couple more bridges and we considered climbing onto one of the house boats to escape. By our luck, we managed to find a little jetty/dock thing. Getting out was probably more stressful than getting in, because we had to somehow make sure that the boat didn't float away. No way was I swimming after it, I was wet enough as it was.
We managed to get ourselves, our bags and the boat out after a little while...But to a place we didn't know. We had to ask some strangers for directions and eventually we found a train to get home. There was dirt, water and grass all over us, and the bag with the boat had stuff coming out of it, because we couldn't get it back in properly, so I'm quite sure we probably looked homeless walking around the train station...I didn't care though, I just wanted a shower and a soup.
After an hour or so journey home, we gave our boat a wash, deflated it and roll 'er back up for next time.
All in all, I had a pretty good day I like to think. That being said though, I wasn't in any hurry to jump back in and do it all over again.
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