Day Trip to Liepnitzsee

John had proposed that I make a trip to a beautiful lake near Berlin while he went to the Freie Universität. The Liebnitzsee was a favorite haunt of big wheels in the old East Germany. (The word for lake in German is der See. This is confusing because one of the words for sea is die See, the other one being das Meer.) The aerial photograph below at the left shows the whole lake, with the island called Großer Werder. The other three aerial pictures show increasingly more area, until the last one has the lake near the middle top, while the center of Berlin is marked with a green arrow.

The lake itself has beautiful and clear water, with no motor boats allowed. One time when John came, he swam to the island (several hundred meters), and he and friends explored the island, which is huge: more than a kilometer long, and up to 73 meters high (according to Wikipedia). There is a ferry to the island that operates from April to the beginning of November.

To get to this spot, I took the S2 S-Bahn from Friedrichstraße out Northeast to the Karow station. There I switched to an elegant 2-car regional train (see the bottom right picture below), the N27, and took it out to the Wandlitz station. The town of Wandlitz has a lake, the Waldlitzsee in its midst and to the West, while the lake I wanted was to the East of my stop. I knew all this, but I didn't have a map, so I just headed East from the station and hoped for the best. Fortunately I was rewarded with a walk through lovely, groomed woods leading to the lake. Then I walked all the way around the lake, and back to the station after the one where I got off. Then back with the train the way I came. The walk around the lake was about 12 kilometers -- further than I had originally intended to walk. I saw the dock for the ferry, but I didn't try to take it (and indeed at that time I didn't know it was running).

Liebnitzsee (aerial views)

Liebnitzsee (ground views)