Germany has been unified for 30 years now, and to celebrate, the German canoe association created a paddling challenge. To complete it, you had to either have taken part in an official competition or paddled at least 30k in each of the 16 Bundesländer (counties). There were seven counties I'd never competed or paddled in, all in the north of Germany, so I did a couple of 30ks in November (complying with all covid rules and taking extra precautions). I enjoyed this so much and am super grateful for the opportunity, especially as there were no competitions at all in 2020. I also liked the idea of paddling to celebrate the reunification, particularly with Brexit looming -- that was a very sad thought that accompanied me on these paddles.
I started out with Hamburg - I'd planned a route through the many canals that start right in front of my friends' house to the Alster in the inner city, called the authorities to make sure I had permission to paddle there, but forgot to really check on the locks. I assumed I'd just be able to portage them, but ended up being trapped on the grounds of the wholesale market and walking for more than a mile to find a gate in the fence, which was basically next to the next lock. This one couldn't be portaged either, and I hadn't brought any money to pay for actually using the lock. So I changed my plan and just stayed on the other side of those locks where I paddled up a canal until the very end, then paddled the River Bille until it got too narrow, and back again. There are a lot of spice and coffee merchants in Hamburg still, so the smells while paddling on the canal were amazing.
The next county on my list was Bremen, which I decided to paddle on a Saturday. This meant my friends were able to come with me, so that I could just paddle between two points, rather than doing an out and back course. I ended up just doing a 20 Mile stretch on the Weser, which was super cool, but I should have probably been in my surfski as the flatwater kayak isn't really suitable for waves as big as there were on some of the stretches. I was wearing my buoyancy aid of course and would have been ok had I fallen in, but it would have been a huge hassle to swim along with the boat to find a suitable place to get out etc, so I was very relieved I managed to use all my surf-ski skills and stay upright.
I had paddled in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern as a child and had a map where I'd drawn in the route, I checked how far that paddle had been and was surprised that it had amounted to 26k. This meant that I was only missing 4k in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which I thought I could tack onto my 30k for Schleswig-Holstein, paddling on Schaalsee, a lake that's right on the border. It was phantastic to paddle there, super beautiful, but the only access point was at the southernmost point of the lake, meaning I'd paddle with the wind first and against it on the way back. This paddle was really chilly, and the wind kept on getting stronger, almost too strong to get any useful speed paddling against it. It was really tough, but I managed to get back to the car in time, passing one really eerie place where the water was very dark but clear at the same time and I could see the tree roots at the bottom like skeletal hands.
I was quite tired after that, but it felt good to tick off two counties at once. I was now missing Brandenburg, Berlin and Thuringia.
I'd learned my lesson about being very mindful of the wind and made sure the direction was right for Brandenburg, choosing two connected lakes, Kyritzer Seen. I basically just paddled around the top lake, portaged into the short, connecting canal and then paddled around the bottom lake. There is a little restaurant on an island where you have to ring a bell to be fetched from the bank with a little cable-ferry (closed, of course). It was very cold but sunny that day, everything went well and the whole thing felt super easy compared to the last one.
Berlin was the furthest trip yet, three hours away from Hamburg, but I planned it for a Saturday again, so my friends could come with me. I'd planned a circular route through the city, but this time, for some reason, forgot to check paddling permissions because that bit had been so easy everywhere else. But I got on the water to paddle towards one 'no sport boat access' sign after the other and pulled in to phone my friends and ask them to wait for me to come back and regroup. In the rush, I didn't attach my phone properly and dropped it into the canal as I was getting out. It wasn't even that deep, but I never managed to find it again. I ended up paddling a really nice out and back route starting on the canal and crossing the Havel, and I met two other paddlers who were doing the same challenge. I paddled along with them for a bit. It was dry and sunny again, with only two stretches with a significant headwind. No phone, no photos, but a really lovely picknick by the side of the canal at the end!
Thuringia is in the middle of Germany and a four hour drive from Hamburg, so at first I thought I would have to plan a different trip for it, then decided to do it on my drive back. This was a little tricky, because Thuringia doesn't have big bodies of water. I found several potential paddles on the Werra, but they were always downstream, which wasn't possible for me to do, as I needed to start and finished at my car. As expected, it was quite tough paddling upstream on a smallish river, and the coldest day yet, but it worked, with only a couple of portages. Fittingly, my starting point was Brücke der Einheit, Bridge of Unity. There even was one proper rapid I had to portage on the way up and decided to shoot on the way back downstream, even though, again, this would have technically required a different boat. I then drew the usual stares when I made some pasta on my camp stove before I tackled the rest of my drive back.
