Above Water | Me and the Great Crested Grebe

A great crested grebe eyes me from the side. It's very close. I examine the pointed red beak beneath the folded crest with growing suspicion. It's a male; the smaller female stays a few meters away. Just as I'm about to warn my swimming friend that a beak could strike us at any moment, the grebe, in its breeding plumage, silently disappears into the lake...

A cloudy Friday morning in Berlin. It took me just under an hour by S-Bahn from the north of the city to Mexikoplatz in Zehlendorf, then I walked to Schlachtensee . Dirk's favorite spot is a pale lawn beneath magnificent trees—frequently occupied by students and truants in the heat. Joggers pass our benches at quaint entrances. While we change, Dirk tells us about a swan that died from a dog bite here at the lake. We stow our valuables in buoys and inflate them. Dirk brought two with him. Equipped with swim caps, goggles, a bright orange buoy, and a faded buoy, we descend a wooden staircase into the mild-green forest lake.

An elderly lady glides into the water with us and sets off. We swim leisurely breaststroke and chat. Cormorants are sitting in the dead trees further back. Should we target them? Stand-up paddleboarders circle us at a wide angle, young people in rowing boats noisily conquer the tube-shaped lake. Our buoys swing on oars behind us and provide effective protection against collisions. I've read that lifebuoys are even compulsory for river swimmers in the Seine . Dirk is complaining about the catfish that was brutally shot in a Franconian lake . He saw two catfish over there last week, he points out. About a meter long and standing in the water. Catfish are completely harmless if you don't get too close to their spawning nests . "They need peace and quiet, so you have to design the bathing situation differently," he says.

I observe the great crested grebe next to us, watching it dive. The visibility in Schlachtensee is fantastic: Since 1981, approximately three million cubic meters of water from the Großer Wannsee have been removed of phosphate annually at the Beelitzhof treatment plant and then pumped into Schlachtensee at almost drinking water quality. The great crested grebe has escaped; I look at the fibrous plants, the yellow sandy bottom near the shore, and the small fish all around. I lie on my back and push my goggles up onto my forehead. We won't be able to catch the cormorants today.

The sun is shining, and it immediately gets a few degrees warmer. Dirk says the water temperature was already 24 degrees this morning, four degrees warmer than the air. We've been out for half an hour, Dirk's watch tells us, and the route also shows it. He's already completed a five-kilometer lap this week and is swimming back with me, relaxed. The rowboat kids are gone, we're paddling silently, and the colorful buoys are multiplying. As we share a piece of apple pie at the " Fischerhütte " with a view of the lake, a cormorant catches a fish a few meters away and devours it.