Kostryzn

Berlin lies only an hour and a half away from the border of Poland yet after about four years here, we had never been. A couple of months ago, I started to think about how to remedy that. At first, I thought about a trip to Krakow, but Poland is a big country and Krakow is far away. Not suitable for a weekend trip, but worth a full week at some point.

After deciding that Krakow was too distant for a last-minute trip, I just opened up a map and started looking at the border to see what was close. I quickly discovered Kostryzn/Küstrin at the confluence of the Warta and Oder rivers. It's only an hour and twenty minutes away trains leave from Berlin to Kostrzyn hourly. The town lies next to a large nature preserve and it also contains the leveled ruins of a medieval fortified city.

So, early on the appointed day, we took our sandwiches and went to catch the train.



We left our bicycles at home this time, but if we go again, we should bring them along. There is a generous path through the nature preserve which would make for a great bike ride.

We really had no idea what to expect. I was hoping that it would feel like a foreign country at least, but because it is so close to Germany and Berlin, I wasn't sure it would. Vigo was actually a bit nervous about being in a country where none of us could speak the local language. Kostryzn and Küstrin used to be a single city in Prussia, but the new borders drawn after WWII cut the city in half. I read that the Germans who stayed on the Polish side were driven out or murdered after the war. It definitely feels like Poland there now, and the German side feels like Germany. For example, when we were buying our candy and kielbasa, none of the people we interacted with were able to communicate with us in German. I was surprised by that.

The first things we had to take care of after getting off the train were finding a bathroom for Vigo and getting some Polish money. Changing money was a breeze and seeing that non-euro currency really gave us the feeling of being in a Foreign Land.



Once we had the cash, we popped into a Chinese restaurant to ask to use the bathroom. Is there any country where a Chinese restaurant is not immediately recognizable as such?



We got another injection of foreignness when confronted with the baffling choices of signage on the bathroom doors. Circle or triangle... circle or triangle?



Once those basic necessities were out of the way, Vigo cleverly suggested that we should investigate the local and potentially weird candy. We went into the nearest grocery store. There was a lot of chocolate and many candy bars incorporating wafer cookies. There were also a lot of very nice hard candies and really nothing particularly shocking. The funniest thing we could find was this small bowl of pharmaceutical-looking oblong candies being passed off as some kind of magic bean. Beans... sure.



We walked through the town, spending some time at the local park, to the river and the canal. There were guys fishing all along the banks and the general atmosphere was friendly.



After strolling up the canal a little bit, we decided to check out the ruins of the old city and walk back to Germany and catch the train in Küstrin instead of leaving from the same station we came into. Walking back through the town, we noticed one or two older buildings. 95% of the city was leveled during the war, and the older buildings really stand out among the Eastern post-war boxes.



There used to be a really serious medieval fortification here. Fredrich the Great was imprisoned here by his father when he was caught trying to run away with his boyfriend (sad story, look it up if you want to be bummed out). It was also a major port for a long time.



It was occupied by the French for a while and burned to the ground during Napoleon's retreat, but it's true obliteration came after the war, when the old city was dismantled so that the bricks could be used to rebuild elsewhere. The city gates have been rebuilt for tourists and you can see the remains of the old quais and embankments. Some of the paving stones are still there and some cellars remain. Otherwise, it's all gone and if they didn't keep the flora in check for tourists, you would not know that a city had been in that spot.



After strolling around the old ruins, we headed back to Germany on foot. We were impressed by the old derelict border crossing station.



We saw the best entrance to the nature preserve going over the bridge between Poland and Germany. Next time, we would get off in Germany and walk over to the nature preserve entrance on the bridge.

The exact border of the two countries, in the middle of the bridge, is marked by a German trash can. I don't know why exactly we found this so funny, but we did.



The other highlight of our return trip was coming across this collection of exotic birds on our way to the train station.



In conclusion, here are some tips for anyone who might be thinking about a day trip to Kostryzn:

Bring your bikes. The path in the nature park looks like a great ride.
People will not speak German or English. A couple phrases in Polish are worth the effort.
You have to buy the last bit of the ticket over the border on the train. You actually get the ticket a bit cheaper if you buy the whole ticked on the train instead of just the last leg.
The Brandenburg ticket is good after 6PM as far as Küstrin-Kiez, so if you are returning in the evening with a group of 3-5 people, that would be a good deal.
The fishing must be great. There were guys fishing all along both the river and the canal.

More pictures here

Nice Gets More Respect than Cool

Last night we had a couple friends over to help us eat some of our Thanksgiving leftovers and light our first Advent candle. There were no other kids at the house, so Vigo was stuck hanging out with grown ups. He was very sweet and charming, and he even sang some Christmas songs with us around the Advent wreath.

When Vigo was in bed and I was turning off his light for the night, I told him that I was really proud of how nice he had been with the guests. He said, "Yeah... sometimes nice gets more respect than cool."

Summer Vacation in the Harz

In August, we decided to go check out the Harz Mountains, which are only about three hours from Berlin. I'd love to get Vigo skiing again this winter, and these mountains would be our closest, easiest option. We want to explore Germany a lot more this year and Vigo is very interested in the Middle Ages, so the main focus of the trip was to see ruins of old castles. Vigo and Erik spent part of the train ride from Berlin to Bad Sachsa, looking for castle ruins on the map.



Our vacation rental apartment was fine. The best thing about it was the sauna in the basement. We bought some Deutschmarks from the landlady to use in the sauna controls. For about 1,50 Euros per night, we were sauna-ed to satisfaction. Vigo apprecaited the television. He slept on the sofa bed in the living room and got to watch cartoons on low volume until breakfast every day.

There wasn't much to explore in Bad Sachsa itself, but we spent the first couple days checking out all of the sights that were within walking distance.



The first castle ruin we hiked to was Scharzfels. This castle was built in the 10th or 11th century. Like most castles in this part of Germany, it was demolished by the French during the Seven Years War in the 18th century. The stairs up to the top of the ruin are pretty recent. Once you get up to the top, you have a great view of the area. All of the castles we visited were properly ruined for Vigo's taste. He was very disappointed last year when we visited Wartburg Castle and found it entirely intact.



Just a short walk from the castle, there is an impressive cave, called Einhornhöhle. That means Unicorn Cave. It's the biggest cave in the region, and the guided tour is well worth taking. The guide explains how the cave was formed and how it has been used by Neanderthals, Humans, cave bears, and other animals for millenia. The cave is full of bones, especially from the last ice age. One room of the cave is covered in graffiti, all written in remarkable old-fashioned print or calligraphy fonts. It used to be the done thing when visiting the cave to write your name on the wall in this room. Goethe's name is there, we were informed. Unfortunately, we aren't allowed to take photos inside the cave, so the only photo I can show is one I found on the website of a vacation rental.



Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is responsible for the cave's name. Apparently a better mathematician than biologist, he believed that they had discovered unicorn bones in the cave. The unicorn skeleton which convinced Leibniz had long front legs and a small wheel at the end of its spine. Yes, a small wheel. It had been reconstructed by the mayor of Magdeburg from various prehistoric mammal bones, plus a narwhale tooth.



Leibniz, who was a pretty good businessman, made this cave famous for its unicorn bones and supplemented his mining income selling various tinctures of unicorn-bone powder all over Europe.

The next day we went to explore the dwarf caves and another little ruin Vigo had spotted on our hiking map.

The brick work in the remains of this old tower was pretty interesting.



The dwarf caves are pretty cool. They are just big enough for Vigo to sit up inside.



After a few days of hiking around and exploring the nearby villages and sights, Erik took a train to the next slightly larger town and rented us this car. Those of you who know Erik well will be aware of the fact that Erik hates to look like a tourist. This car blew his cover, though I'm pretty sure every single person in Bad Sachsa personally knows every other person in the town by name, so we weren't fooling anyone.



We took this ambulant advertisement to visit a farther-off ruin which Vigo had found out about on the internet before going on vacation. Burg Hohnstein has a lot of its walls still standing, and much of it has been reconstructed or repaired. You really get a sense here of how uncomfortable and unpleasant it must have been staying there. These are military fortresses, not luxurious palaces.



Vigo and I did a photo series there pretending to be various medieval caslte charcters.

The Thief



The Knight



The Prince/Princess



The Peasant



This castle also had a great view, of course. You can see in this picture that we had pretty iffy weather. It was raining on and off for the whole trip.



The next day, we visited Kyffhäuserdenkmal and the castle ruins it was built upon. This impressive monument was built in honor of Kaiser Wilhelm to express the opinion of Prussians that Wilhelm was the legitimate successor to the German empire, in direct (spiritual) lineage with the medieval king Barbarossa. The whole affair is basically a bombastic love poem to Germany's military strength. Here you see Barbarossa slouching at the base of the monument. This was my favorite part of the sculpture. He looks like some slovenly Greek god, and there is a nice little chasm of raw stones preventing you from getting too close.



The monument was on the Soviet side during the DDR times. The Soviets famously decided not to touch this site, stating that the Germans must learn to live with their history and their monuments.

The monument is connected to two castle ruins. One of them boasts the deepest castle well in the world. The tourist attraction connected to this well is a machine where you can buy Barbarossa's gall stones in order to wake the ghost of the well. You have to roll the precisely-sized stone through a special hole in the well cover. As it falls, it triggers a recording of the ghost. There are three or four sad, comical statements which play in rotation.



On a lot of the tourist sites we visited, we saw signs warning us that we were in mortal danger if we failed to follow posted rules. Vigo and I found these signs kind of hilarious in their overstatement.



I am going to guess that you are starting to be as bored of castle ruins now as I was by the time we got to this place, so I'll just post the pictures of the view and the half-standing walls without further comment.




My favorite part of the vacation came on our last day, when we drove to Shierke and took the narrow-gauge railway up to the top of the highest mountain in the region, the Brocken. The Harzquerbahn has been running since 1897. It was fun standing on the back deck of the old train car, listening to the sound of the machine on the track. When we got to the top of the mountain, it was cold and foggy.



After the train ride, we had enough time to visit one of the other major caves. Baumann's Cave has a theater inside, named after Goethe, where you could see a performance of Little Red Riding Hood, if you were so inclined.



The best thing about the cave are the stalagmites and stalagtites. This cave has been a tourist attraction since the 1500s, so it's got orderly paths and lots of fancy lighting. I felt a little twinge of sadness thinking of all the stalagmites they cleared away to put in those stairs and walkways.

As with the other big cave, no photos were allowed. Interestingly, the guide at Baumann's also claimed that the cave was the largest in the region. Probably depends how you measure it.

Here's a postcard I found online.



We caught our train home on Sunday, the last day before the new school year started.

If you want to see all of the photos from this vacation, you will find them here