The Swans of the Landwehr Canal

Whatever the season the swans of the Landwehr Canal gather at Kottbusser Brücke at night. In summer they’re scattered across the water in two’s and three’s, the more distant birds luminous in the darkness. In winter they cluster close to the arches of the bridge itself, where people throw food, bread and buns, over the balustrade. Here the water remains a black pool even on the coldest nights, the frost and snow-covered ice stretching away on either side, to right and left, east and west.

Sometimes two or three swans come flying down the straight, over the bridges, Hobrecht and Thielen, and you can already here the whirr and whine of their wings a hundred yards away before you turn to see the long necks pushing the bills forward, wing blades to the rear. I always think of Sibelius, the swans of his 5^th Symphony. Yet the stately theme towards the end of the 3^rd movement doesn’t capture the speed of these low-flying swans. Sibelius must have seen his swans high above, the distance lending grace to their power, slowing them down, wings beating silently, perhaps indeed slower because these were migrating birds, pacing themselves on their flight across the continent. The swans of the Landwehr Canal don’t migrate, they feed and mate and raise their cygnets here between Urban Hafen, Kottbuss Bridge and the Neukölln Canal.

The canals have been frozen for six weeks now. One afternoon I saw a swan walking on the ice, slowly, lurching from side to side like a wind-up toy running down, the yellow-orange webbed feet leaving a monster’s trail of triangular footprints.

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