Picture Book...Germany's Far North-East and North Poland

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Forget the family dog...it's family geese here!
At least they fit into the oven at Christmas!





Sadly the pattern repeats eastwards with former German seaports and "colonial-style" coastal resorts still being essentially the same 1000 years later..... just under the Polish flag and jammed with gaudy, trashy tourist flimflam broken by vast stretches of coast locked away to old/ new military installations and some small nature reserves.













There IS some stumping (and deserted) coast and beaches just east of Ustka though...the old Stolpemuende.

You guessed it... where the river Stolpe enters the Baltic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ustka









Everywhere around northern Poland....stork's nests!






There isn't much more to say about those ~300km of Polish Baltic Coast, which came as a disappointment after listening to family-stories for the last 60 years who had spent their adolescence through the WW2-years up here and told of their most disparaging as well as their most impressive years of their lives in this part of the world.

I can maybe understand one, but certainly not the other... looking at the place today.

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The Major von Schill Pill- Stralsund, Germany



Map https://bit.ly/35Ck5Uw





Quite a European affair, the Schill-Days Of Living History are a bi-annual historic festival drawing big crowds from various North-European countries in a historical re-enactment
of a battle to keep the city free of the advancing French troops. Essentially a freelancing mercenary, he'd managed to combine a colorful band of FreeCorps from various European Regions under his command...and their descendents still gather from Sweden, Norway, Poland, Hungary, Denmark etc. for the Knickerbocker + Blackpowder raid every 2 years.

It sure is a colorful event and the highly engaged locals make for quite an "electric" long-weekend in the Old Town and foreshore.

Here's a Google-translate Wiki-page https://bit.ly/2YVBxCe
























The big banger...




...and one for the kids


























The bloody French...always on the food!

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Was that the Norwegians storming the marketplace?













They gotta come through that city gate...





....and here come the Swedes....





...while the Frenchies also brought the pipers + drummers.





No idea what motley crew that is...





...but at least everyone's having breakfast together.

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Now for the serious sh^t and how to blow the bell out of the churchtower!

How was that again with that tacky black stuff and cotton balls and all that?










Christ, did anyone actually hit anything?
Anything at all?






Here's one for Willo....THIS is what proper Shire Offices look like!!

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Keeping those Frenchies outside the city-walls is sweaty work...








The Old City the way it was then...








Underneath the Council Chambers, 800y/o oak still doing its job.





Goes to show that what's "good for your back" is also good for yer gut, yumm!





The Little St. George Monastery





More afternoon delights: Granny's fruit-flan and a " pot of filtered coffee"




Art Nouveau just outside the city walls








Gotta go now....