Wansee Strandbad or things you don't want to be faced with

This Monday was a 33 degree day, so Julia and I decided to go swimming in a nearby big lake Wansee. The morning was spent bathers shopping (Julia) and learning German (Polina). We then had an abundant lunch of fried chicken and ventured off. Because I haven't been to this beach before I just assumed that it would be in the S-Bahn station by the same name, but after having got off at Wansee station and walking to the lake we saw it being full of Yachts and not full of swimmers. So we worked out from the nearby kiosk that the beach is actually on the previous stop Nikolaissee. So we went back there.

Being a pretty hot day, we were reasonably tired by the time we got to the right stop and when we walked out and saw that it's another kilometer walk to the beach we gave out a group sigh. But our will to swim was strong so we walked. It was actually a very pleasant walk through a little forest and in the shade the temperature was almost bearable. As we got to the entrance we were unpleasantly surprised. Greedy Germans expect you to pay 4 Euros to swim. And thinking that we were going to the beach we didn't take our wallets and between us had only 10 cents which just wasn't enough. We decided to pretend to be silly tourists and just walk through the gate behind someone... Julia managed to sneak through before it closed leaving me behind. But the checkout woman started screaming "karte - wo ist ihre karte?!" Julia put on a very good show looking honestly confused and not understanding what's going on... so the woman yelled "Ticket!" "Ticket!" and after a while Julia had to retreat.

Of course being Russian 'predpriimchivie i nahodchivie' (clever) women we were not going to quit so easily, especially after spending most of the day getting there - by this time it was almost 4pm. My suggestion was just to ask for money from someone, but thinking about it that there probably won't be that many people who'd want to part with 8 EURS we decided to walk along the fence and see if there is another way in. After walking for a while we came across a little clearing with an old twisty gate. It had squished old barb wire on top which didn't look too bad so we decided to climb across. After my school excursion to Pentridge Prison I remembered that it's wise to put something on top of the wire to prevent it from scratching our legs (wearing skirts left us somewhat vulnerable in that department). So we put a beach towel on the wire and successfully climbed over.

With victory exclamations and giggles we approached the beach... only to be faced with a bunch of totally naked old guys! Part of the beach was FKK (Frei Korpe Kultur - Free Body Culture), which strangely mainly contained only old people. After the initial shock we proceeded to have a swim in a beautiful 23 degree lake water, in which we saw a bunch of big fish. However the naked oldies almost paralysed us and we continued to stare at them swimming, floating, sun baking and hugging each other, for quite a while. It's the sort of thing you don't want to see but can't help looking... The End.

Oh, we also got a bit of a tan :)