LEHDE, Germany — Andrea Bunar had been waiting for months for the arrival of spring and the day she could finally deliver the mail by barge again through the narrow waterways of the Spreewald Forest delta southeast of Berlin.
On Wednesday, the 55-year-old German postal worker stood at the back of her boat again, using one long oar to row, steer and navigate her boat through the shallow waters.
“The start of the season is always special for me,” said Bunar, as she embarked on the yellow barge in her postal worker uniform.
“After the long winter break, I enjoy being in the nature and back on the water.”
Bunar has been delivering mail and packages to the villagers of Lehde, which is located about 100 kilometers (around 60 miles) southeast of Berlin, for 14 years.
During the winter she brings the mail by car to farms and homes, but it’s often cumbersome as roads are icy and takes much longer than in the summer. From April to October, she’s back on her nine-meter-long (29-foot-long) barge and just drops off the mail Monday through Saturday in the mailboxes that the residents of Lehde have put up right on the banks of the river.
She also sells stamps to the residents living along the remote route and they can send their own mail with her.
The Spreewald is famous for its network of 300 kilometers (about 185 miles) of waterways, many of them leading through lush forests and wetlands. As an inland delta, the Spree River, which also runs through Berlin, branches into hundreds of small canals in the forest.
It was also designated a UNESCO biosphere to protect its ecosystem, including the region’s diverse fauna and flora.
Lehde is the only place in Germany where the mail is delivered by boat. In fact, the village has been getting its mail for 129 years by boat.
Before that, villagers picked up their mail once a week on Sunday in a church after the service. But as people moved away from the countryside to cities, the need for more long-distance communication grew, and thus the German postal service started to deliver mail more often — and in the case of Lehde, which looks like a lush Teutonic miniature version of Venice, deliver it by boat.
Every week, Bunar delivers around 600 letters and 80 packages. She needs about two hours to steer her barge through the 8-kilometer (around 5-mile) route.
Recently, it’s been less letters and more packages for the postal worker.
“I already delivered an e-scooter, a lawnmower and a fridge — sometimes my barge feels like a little container ship,” she said. On Wednesday, her first day of the spring season, she had to bring one resident a big saw — in addition to the usual bills, registered mail and letters.
“This is and has been my dream job all along,” Bunar said with a smile. “Being on the water is just so relaxing — it slows down life.”
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