By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER<\/p>\n
LEHDE, Germany (AP) \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe start of the season is always special for me,\u201d said Bunar, as she embarked on the yellow barge in her postal worker uniform.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the long winter break, I enjoy being in the nature and back on the water.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
During the winter she brings the mail by car to farms and homes, but it\u2019s often cumbersome as roads are icy and takes much longer than in the summer. From April to October, she\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
She also sells stamps to the residents living along the remote route and they can send their own mail with her.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It was also designated a UNESCO biosphere to protect its ecosystem, including the region\u2019s diverse fauna and flora.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 and in the case of Lehde, which looks like a lush Teutonic miniature version of Venice, deliver it by boat.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Recently, it\u2019s been less letters and more packages for the postal worker.<\/p>\n
\u201cI already delivered an e-scooter, a lawnmower and a fridge \u2014 sometimes my barge feels like a little container ship,\u201d she said. On Wednesday, her first day of the spring season, she had to bring one resident a big saw \u2014 in addition to the usual bills, registered mail and letters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is and has been my dream job all along,\u201d Bunar said with a smile. \u201cBeing on the water is just so relaxing \u2014 it slows down life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER LEHDE, Germany (AP) \u2014 Andrea Bunar had been waiting for months for the arrival of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5,2381,42,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-8862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-germany","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}