Schwan lake

We were out of ideas for what to do today, but decided on "the lake" over brunch. (I still don't know the name of it.)

We stopped at the Berlin Hbf to get our train tickets settled, since I'd only booked them through Berlin; Andie wanted a human to help us with the rest. We stood in a line for a half hour, then created another half hour delay ourselves as we subjected the poor, patient man at the help desk to our travel whims. We knew what days we wanted to go and where, but he had to find the schedules and click through every reservation individually-- and then I got confused about the plan between my 5-day ticket and Andie and Aaron's 6-day, and we had to shuffle things again. (I thanked him for his patience during one computer wait, and he answered that this would be a bad job for someone who wasn't.)
So now, we have reservations (required) for each train throughout Italy, the correct number of Eurail Flexipass days in which to use them, and extra tickets for one short Italian leg (me) and a sleeper train back to Paris (Andie and Aaron). It's done.

Finn was at the end of his patience with us after this hour of scheduling drama but we still needed lunch supplies, so he ushered us to the train station supermarket for food (since the train station is practically a mall). We loaded up a few bags of picnic fare, then took another hour of multiple trains, buses, and walking to arrive at a large park that surrounded a lake. Finn wanted a paddleboat rental, so we sprung for one, and then pushed off. Out on the lake for a picnic.

We had bread and pretzels and yogurt (WITH spoons, Finn remembered plastic spoons) and paprika-flavored chips (they taste like barbeque, but less sweet) and cookies and gummies and sodas, plus Finn's personal Leberkase supplies and Aaron had an enormous chunk of cheese. Finn also brought a beer, but no bottle opener, which led to an experimental 10 minutes of trying to whack the cap off against various boat surfaces. The boys sat in the back of the four-seater paddleboat actually paddling, while Andie's and my seats didn't have pedals... so we had a lovely time. We just sat and ate.

We got all the way out to the center of one arm of the lake and then drifted closer to shore while eating. We finally moved when we got close to a family of swans: two adults and about 5 cygnets. The boat turned and we left them alone-- or thought we had, before one adult separated and started swimming after the boat.
The boys paddled a little harder. The swan did, too.
We didn't know what to do about this, except try to get away from it; swans are big birds that can pack quite a punch, and though we weren't sure how we'd made it angry, everyone was silently remembering that tv show "When [insert animals] Attack". The evil swan chased the boat for 5 minutes solid, gaining the whole time as Finn and Aaron became increasingly more frantic and paddled faster-- sitting in the back of the boat, they'd be the first targets. Amid their hilariously panicked calls to either abandon ship or fight it off with a pocket knife (and they were funny, Andie and I couldn't stop laughing), I tossed a piece of pretzel over the side. The swan immediately stopped and went for the bread.
It had been trained to follow tourists until they fed it. The attack subsided.

We (read: Aaron and Finn) ended up paddling around the stretch of the river for a full two hours, then booking it back to the dock when we realized time was almost up before we'd have to pay for the three hour mark. We got a little turned around coming home (a few false starts and one wrong bus) and met Rolf and Rena at an Indian restaurant around 8. It took forever to get our food, which turned out to all things Andie recognized and gave her approval for-- I'm told it was good. Then we went over to an ice cream shop across the street which displayed pictures of the biggest, most decadent and exotic sundaes I've ever seen. We stuck with small cones.
After thanking the parents for dinner, w split off to go to another supermarket for marshmallows and last-minute chocolate gifts; then came home, lay around for a while, and made rice krispie treats. We've finished all of our laundry, now to fold and pack it away in the morning-- when we leave.