On a December afternoon two years ago, blue lights flashed in the Boberg dunes. The sandy heath in the east of Hamburg lies under a white veil, an ambulance drives slowly through the snowflakes along a dirt road. The vehicle stops, the window lowers. "Where is the lake from here?" the man behind the wheel asks the writer of this article. At the same moment, an announcement comes over the radio: "False alarm, the lady is known to be an ice swimmer." The driver shakes his head with a smile, turns off the blue lights, turns the car around and drives back to the operations center. Walkers had observed a woman in the lake and suspected an emergency.

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