Spreewald Visit

Bicycles on the Regional Express to Luebbenau

Last weekend, Renate and I spent a few days in the Spreewald, a region of swamps, twisting small streams, and beautiful old towns an hour and a half by train to the southeast of Berlin. The Spree, as you probably will remember, is the major river flowing through Berlin. It rises in the hills outside of Cottbus, then flows into the Spreewald where it breaks into lots of small, twisted streams surrounding islands. The Spreewald geography is a consequence of a collection of Ice Age moraines that formed in a particular way, the islands being the moraines and the streams being the drainage channels of melt water from the ice sheets. On the other side of the Spreewald, near Maerkische Buchholtz, the twisted small streams join together as the river begins its journey to its end in the Havel on the west side of Berlin. A large part of the Spreewald has been designated a UNSECO Biosphere Reserve, in recognition of the unique flora and fauna contained within.

Since like most of the area around Berlin the Spreewald is relatively flat, we decided to take our bikes along to do some bicycling. We left from the Berlin Bahnhof Zoo. Above, you can see the collection of bikes on the train to Luebbenau. Actually the train ended in Cottbus but we departed in Luebbenau where we were staying. As we departed from the train, I noticed this Slavic-looking name on the train station:

I commented about it to Renate, saying that I wondered whether there was a Polish minority population, but she said that actually the situation was more interesting. There was a Slavic minority population but they weren't Polish. Later, I looked up the history on line. It turns out that the area was originally settled by two Slavic tribes, the Sorben and Wenden in around the 600s.  The Sorben were in the Unterspreewald and the Wenden in our area, the Oberspreewald. Around 1200, the area was integrated into the Holy Roman Empire, and German settlers began moving in. Mostly, the German settlers clustered in the towns and the Slavic indigenous inhabitants occupied farms. Today, there are still around 60,000 people who speak these languages, and after WWII teaching of Sorbisch and Wendisch was once again introduced into elementary schools for those students who were from this linguistic minority.

After we checked into our small hotel, we did a 40 km bike trip to Burg, one of the major cities in the Obersprewald. Burg was celebrating its 700th anniversary as an incorporated city:

 And it was celebrating in style. A huge folk festival was in swing, with lines of cars backed up on the highway to Berlin, thousands of people walking around town, and, as you can see above, a folk dancing group in traditional costume, on the grounds of the festival.

The traditional costume for women in the Spreewald is a kind of headdress where the sides stick out like wings. You can see it better below:

The headdress requires between 70-100 needles to keep in place, and a piece of cardboard or paper to spread it out. Every town or small area in the Spreewald has a different style of traditional dress, the style you see above is found only in Burg.

They also had an exhibition of traditional crafts. Below, you can see a blacksmith working on a horseshoe:

Being a biosphere reserve, you would expect to see wildlife. While we didn't see any mammals, we did see a lot of birds, including this stork in a perannual nest on top of a power pole:

The indigenous Sorben and Wenden people have lots of myths about animals. One of them involves a Snake King, which you can see a statue of here on the Dammstrasse in Luebenau:

This reminded me of the Hindu/Buddhist myths about the Naga Raja, the Snake King.

The second day we did a tour of Luebenau and Ledhe, a small village that's part of Luebenau, by flat bottom boat. Below you can see an example at the harbor in Luebenau (and yes that's rain you see prickling the surface of the water, it rained heavily while we were there):

Many houses in Ledhe can only be reached by boat. Our guide on the boat (who was a woman) lived in Ledhe and told us that the mailman, police, fire, ambulance, and even trash pickup were all done by boat, like in Venice. Below you can see some of the watery "streets" in Ledhe:

People in the Spreewald use boats to get around, and in the biosphere reserve (where Ledhe is located) motorized boats are not permitted, except for public services, so our guide and the other tourist guides used a pole to drive the boat, with a hook on the bottom for grabbing onto branches.

Besides tourism, a major industry of the Spreewald is agriculture, mostly crops like hops, horseradish and specifically, pickles. They make and export tons of them. Below, you can see a pickle platter that I ordered for lunch one day. It came with three varieties of pickles and some pickle bread:

The Spreewald produces many different varieties of pickles, and the ones I tried were really good, a spicy kind, a sweet kind, and a mustard pickle.

Since there isn't much stone in the area, traditionally most houses are made of wood. They use fast growing poplar, put it into water for 10 years to let it harden, then build with it. Roofs are traditionally made of woven reeds, as you can see from this picture taken in the Open Air Museum in Ledhe:

Like most places in Germany, there's a castle in Luebbenau. Renate and I had a great dinner in the restaurant. Below you can see the entrance:

Today the castle is a four star hotel, but it was originally the residence of the family of the Count to Lynar, which originally came from Tuscany. During WWII, the count Wilhelm Graf zu Lynar was the personal adjunct to General Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben (maybe a member of the same Witzleben family that donated Lietzensee to Charlottenburg?). Von Witzleben was executed in 1944 for organizing an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate  Hitler, and Wilhelm zu Lynar, being on his personal staff, was too.

On the last day, before leaving back to Berlin, we visited the Spreewald Museum in Luebbenau. It had many interesting exhibits about the history of the area, including ones from the time when the area was part of the DDR, East Germany. At that time, there was a huge brown coal power plant and mine that was, essentially destroying the ecology of the Spreewald. The power plant was spewing out coal smoke and the mine was draning down the water table. Both the mine and power plant were closed down after the reunification of Germany in 1990. We also saw an exhibit about the Spreewald Railroad. Below, you can see a top view of a steam locomotive:

The railroad was built in the early 1900s as narrow gauge track from Luebben to Cottbus, and was taken over by the East German Reichsbahn after the WWII. Steam locomotives were used until 1970. The railroad was shut down in 1983.

After our three day trip, we left the Spreewald to return to Berlin in pouring rain. Below you can see the beautiful public art display at the entrance to Luebbenau:

It represents a dragonfly, and though we didn't see any, dragonflies are normally common in the Spreewald. Signs are posted at various places saying "Dragonflies are sensitive". People in the Spreewald want to protect drafonflies because they eat mosquitos, of which there are normally a lot in the Spreewald, though again we saw only a few.

The Spreewald is definitely worth a visit, lots of interesting culture, nature, history, and great food to top it off.