For my third blog entry, I will be writing about my experience in the Berlin neighborhood of Spandau. On a nice day last week, me and a group of my friends decided to take a trip out to Spandau. Spandau is on the far western side of Berlin; hence it took around an hour to get there by train. Prior to going to Spandau, my roommate and I had learned that Spandau is known for its forests, rivers, and lakes that one could swim in. During the trip there, we traveled through dense forests. I attempted to see if the forests along the train tracks appeared any different than other forests I had seen in and around Berlin; however, many of the trees seemed the same due to the high volume of pine trees that I have seen throughout Germany.
Once we arrived in Spandau, we took a quick look around a more urban area before venturing out into the forests. We eventually came upon a small shopping mall and looked at the store names on the outside of the building. Something that I found humorous was that we found a TJ Max here… or rather TK Max as it is called in Germany. This is the first instance of a store that I am used to seeing in the United States having a separate name in Germany. After viewing this store, we attempted to get to the nearby river to go swimming. To get there, we ended up having to take a hike through a forest. While going through the forest, I really wanted to take an up-close look at the foliage and see if it differed from the kinds of plants that I would typically find in America. Many of the small plants on the ground didn’t look particularly different than anything I would see in America, however, there were two things that I did notice. As previously mentioned, I have seen an abundance of pine tree forests throughout Germany, and this forest was no exception. One a side note, the pine trees here do distinctly look different than the ones I would see at home. Here, all of the pine trees have very skinny trunks with no branches or leaves until the top part of the tree. In my region of America, the Midwest, most forests that I have been in have a large number of deciduous trees rather than just pine trees, something that differs from the German forests I have witnessed. The other strange thing I noticed in the Spandau forests were these small red nuts all over the trails. I have no idea what plant these red nuts came from, but there many a lot of them found throughout the forest floor. These red nuts are also something that I have yet to see in an American forest.
Eventually, my group found a lake next to a small harbor. When we approached the water, we discovered a boat docked close to the shore. Upon further inspection, we realized that we found a restaurant that was on the boat! We all thought this was an opportunity that we couldn’t pass up, so we decided to have dinner on this boat. I decided to take a risk with my food and get one of the restaurants specialties, being pickled fish fillets. It was served with potatoes and green beans. The fish was…. Interesting, but I was glad that I tried it! The potatoes, green beans, and table bread with a special roasted tomato butter were all very good though! After leaving the boat restaurant, it got rather windy and colder than it had been before, so my friend and I decided to go home and not try to swim in the lake. After arriving back at the hotel, I thought about my experience in Spandau and realized that it felt significantly different than any of the other Berlin neighborhoods that I had been in. The forests and lakes I saw in this area made for a scenic place that was a nice break from all the concrete of the city.
Here are two pictures of the lake we found in Spandau as well as the food that I ordered on the boat restaurant. 
