By Julian Loevenich
The water pipe system in the Großer Tiergarten measures a whopping 60 kilometers. With him it always stays green in summer.
Pierre Caffart (57) and his colleagues are something like the water dispensers in the Tiergarten park. Day after day, from April to autumn, the landscape gardeners water the areas in Berlin’s green lungs.
Sounds unspectacular, but it’s not! Because: Under the Tiergarten runs a network of around 60 kilometers of pipes with 1000 tapping points where sprinklers can be installed – a construction from the 1930s.
The water for the zoo comes directly from the Landwehr Canal Photo: picture alliance / photothek
The procedure is just as old as the system. “We have to do everything by hand,” says Caffart. In concrete terms, this means: lift the manhole cover, connect the hose, set up the sprinkler, turn on the water.
If the area is sufficiently watered, everything has to be dismantled again. Then it goes on to the next position. That’s how it works every time. And that on an area of over 205 hectares! After all, Caffart and his team are only responsible for part of the zoo.
Pierre Caffart and his team are also responsible for the English Garden around the teahouse Photo: Ufuk Ucta
How does he even know where the taps are? There is a plan – but it is from the 1970s. “Some of it is no longer correct, there are missing positions or there are still some that have been eliminated,” says Caffart’s colleague Sandra Nicolaus (28).
So sometimes they roam the meadows with metal detectors and look for them. “We are currently working on a new plan,” says Nicolaus. Not only the search costs time: also cyclists who complain that the path is wet. “But then they want it to be green,” says Caffart.
He has been working in the zoo since 1998 – and that can sometimes be dangerous. The reason: the black flies. The animals don’t sting, they bite. A bite can cause nasty swelling and blood poisoning!
The mosquitoes are a real plague, says Caffart. Twice he had blood poisoning after bites. “The only thing that helps is a lot of mosquito spray.”
So that it can be used as a water dispenser again the next morning at 6:30 a.m.
