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

glitch

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


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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.


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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


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



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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. W-)
 

glitch

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The Major von Schill Pill- Stralsund, Germany



Map https://bit.ly/35Ck5Uw


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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



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The big banger...

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...and one for the kids


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The bloody French...always on the food! :bs

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glitch

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Was that the Norwegians storming the marketplace?


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They gotta come through that city gate...


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


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


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No idea what motley crew that is...


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


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glitch

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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?



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


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



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glitch

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


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The Old City the way it was then...


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


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


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The Little St. George Monastery


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

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Art Nouveau just outside the city walls


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Gotta go now....


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glitch

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Crossing Western Poland


Map https://bit.ly/2WoKt14


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Running out of time and curiosity to follow the Polish coast further east towards the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad (former German Koenigsberg) we aimed for the historically significant Oder and Neisse rivers junction near the German border again, die Oder river marking today's border for about 150km or so.

Didn't expect to find the sole North-Polish ski-resort of Koscalkowo barely 50km from the Baltic seaboard though...and amidst a rolling but mainly featureless landscape packed with the waterways and lakes of the Radunia river, the "red string" of the far-flung Kashubian Outdoors and Holiday areas (mainly local tourism).



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Thanks god for Google Translate, that pizza-menu is a handful with all those "c","z" and "s" in a row...


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Stumped!!

With another couple having stayed overnight, this is breakfast-for-4 :wot::wot:
Oh...I missed the sweet-selection in that shot...W-)


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Needed a walk after that...


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glitch

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Drifting further west through small towns, taking the backroads towards the German border and the Oder River


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The small village of Trzebiechów holds another surprise, as we find out after following this local van for a little while...


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:eek::eek: What a place !!




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Taking the bed upstairs?


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Oh....and the breakfast? :bow:

Wanna check out the bill for this little caper?

Search booking.com for "Pod Koziorożcami "
https://bit.ly/2Lr7J8y
 

glitch

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Ruegen Island...the East

Map https://bit.ly/3fVhZ6S

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A historic blue-blood country estate, now converted to up-market holiday flats




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The old seaside health resort of Binz



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...while the countryside offers some excellent gravel roads!


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The old Ruegen-Bridge offers another engineering marvel....an electrified rail and road flip-bridge in constant daily use.


While "up" to allow boats and ferries into the shallows....



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...it's bloody neat how all the bits fit when the bridge gets lowered.
That overhead centenary linkup is trick.


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glitch

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Rivers, Wars and Borders...Oder-Neisse

Most likely THE most crucial border for Germany over the last few centuries, the Oder and Neisse rivers have always constituted a somewhat natural border line as they run nearly straight south-to-north into the Baltic Sea. The Neisse river is a long but small river without trade or shipping originating in the Czech Republic and flows into Germany at the 3-country-corner at Zittau.
A few hundred kilometers to the north it flows into the Oder river, which leaves Poland and tacks north at Kosarzyn and flows north into the Szczecin Lagoon / Stettiner Haff before entering the Baltic Sea.


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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oder–Neisse_line


We followed the Oder/Odra river for its last 90km in Poland and tried to find the confluence of the Neisse.
Then follow the Oder-border north towards Stralsund for a little, for a quick peek at Eisenhuettenstadt (of Tom Hanks Travel fame)
....and Germany's second Frankfurt


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Map https://bit.ly/2ygWbSc



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Barely an hour later, the little ferry across the Oder at Brody/ Poland



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Part of the Polish road-system...no charge, smiles only



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The old pre-war bridge at Krosno Odrzańskie (fmr. German Crossen/ Oder) a neat little rivertown mostly living of the river-tourism nowadays.



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glitch

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Staff member
A quick Gmap shows it best...


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....the near-deserted lakeside resort Nad Borkiem at the bottom edge of the map


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the small village of Kosarzyn and the river-meadows and flood-dam of the Oder river as well as the Neisse river confluence, with the German-Polish border following the center of each river.

Following the footpath along the Polish Neisse bank out to the spit...



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After all the stories, the press articles, the historic references in books and school texts, the place somewhat feels like a major let-down.

This is IT?

The Communists, the Nazis, the Bolsheviks, industry, money and political power, the military, the war, decades of blood and misery, war and oppression...and that's it?

Sitting at the spit watching the water join and flow north, the disappointment and hollowness slowly vanish.

In the end all the idiocy DID stop and things came to an end!

It's peaceful now, the rivers keep washing the wounds.


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It's a quiet stroll back to base....


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Back on the road the next morning there's an endless string of tiny towns and villages along the German banks of the Oder, many sprouting small docks, a rack of dinghys, some overgrown soccergrounds or a waterfront "Pub and Dancehall" straight out of the mid-18hundreds.


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Let's treadle a bit harder then for tonight's bed...see ya in 30k's.


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