Short German trips, Sun, 07 Mar 2021 | written by Simon
Jemma and Simon at a City, Forest, Lake, Ruins/Excavation, Temple, UNESCO site in Europe, Germany

  • Welterbe Bauhaus Denkmal Bundesschule Bernau
  • Walls of Bernau
  • Askanierturm
  • Bridge by the Askanierturm
  • Silkebuche
  • Cold cold March waters
  • Joachimsthal Kaiserbahnhof
  • Ad for the Großziethen Geopark
  • by the Dorfkirche Golzow

This has been a long, long winter.

We were pretty well prepared – living on the outskirts of Berlin with forest and lakes around, and living with wonderful housemates, Ania and Michal, has been definitely a good decision. I mean, we managed to even have a few pretty great 4-people parties over the winter, and that’s way more than most people can say in the pandemic.

But still, the constant lockdown is tough. And it’s been particularly tough the last few weeks, because work has been getting a bit crazy. There was one light in the tunnel: the First Day of Spring, and the Marzanna celebrations we were planning in Zieleniec. The idea was to go there a week before the Day, prepare some wicker to send to people so they can join us in drowning Marzanna, and just have a week of semi-holiday, working from the forest.

Then, the weather happened. It has been pretty OK in the last weeks, but the forecast for next week is just abysmal. Temperature hovering around zero, rain with snow, howling winds… And the water pump in Zieleniec is broken, so we would sit there with no option to go out and without water. We decided to pass.

This whole story is important, because we really, really needed to get out. Thank heavens for The Baron! We decided that next week might be abysmal, but at the weekend is meant to be vaguely OK, so let’s just get away from this daily misery and have some joy in the lead up to the First Day of Spring!

This turned out to be the best decision ever. It’s amazing how quickly the atmosphere of exhaustion and dispair changes into excitement when you start adventuring with the Baron! We had no idea where we’re going. Toni told us a few months ago that there is a nice natural park with lots of lakes a bit to the North, so we figured we’ll find something there. After all, we are limited to nature areas, since everything is still locked down. On Saturday morning, Jemma found a few nice spots we could visit, and by 11 we were on the road.

The moment we sat in the Baron, we felt adventure in the air. This is it! The first stop was a perfect example of how awesome it is to travel that way: we just noticed an interesting sign and decided to make a detour to investigate.

It turned out to be a 1930 Bauhaus style trade school campus, a great modernist piece just out of Bernau. It was closed and complete empty, too – that’s sightseeing in the times of corona. Walking around it was fantastic, because the emptiness really amplified the serene, simple modernist architecture, and the relaxing nature around it.

We decided to use the fact that we’re next to a town, and dropped in for a quick Haloumi Doner lunch. Turns out Bernau also has a nicely preserved city wall and gate.

Our first planned stop in the Schorfheide-Chorin Biosphere, was a cute little tower by Wildau: Askanierturm. As we arrived, it started really pouring, so we spent the first ten minutes hidden in the Baron. Fortunately, it passed quickly. Turns out the tower was a brainchild of a local Romantic poet, and a star in a Rapunzel film. It stands right where a canal joins the lake, so we’ll need to come back here with Ania, Michal and the Great A’Tuin!

A tourist map by the tower mentioned a massive tree in the area, so we decided to investigate. The 300 year old Silkebuche is a massive beech and really something to behold! The sun came out for a moment, so we used the opportunity to do a little salutation. And to enjoy nature as we like best.

On the way back Jemma spotted a herd of deer in a field – totally didn’t notice us from behind the bushes! Back at the lake we stopped for a quick look at a place that seemed like a perfect swimming spot. Not now. It’s too cold. Tested, I thought my legs will fall off.

Further down the road, we found a historic train station: Joachimsthal Kaiserbahnhof. And a mammoth – ad for a nearby amusement park. We took course for Chorin which has a lovely abbey, but stopped in a great looking church we spotted on the way – Dorfkirche Golzow. Really interesting neogothic marriage of stone and brick.

We parked for the night by the Chorin train station. It’s cold, about 4 degrees now, dropping to 1-2 at night. It’s almost like we were back at Terme Erding! Except no saunas are open (anywhere in the world). So not really. But still, good memories. And we have beer and Mozartkugeln. So all is good. Goodnight!

  • Good Morning!
  • Chorin church

First night in the Baron in 2021!!!

Our parking spot turned out to be perfect, and even the howling wind didn’t prevent us from having a good night’s sleep. Nothing beats two duvets. We had a lovely first van breakfast of the year, a wonderful lazy morning, checked out a cute little church with a wooden tower, and slowly packed to go to our next destination, which was the most exciting place in the whole trip.

It was super a great place in its own right, but the excitement was all the greater, because it was an actual visitors attraction that you had to pay to get into! Like we weren’t in the pandemic or something! The Chorin Abbey is a ruin of a 13th Century Cistercian monastery, and because it’s mostly an outdoors space, it is open! Oh, the excitement! We paid 7 Euro to get in, like, real tickets and stuff! I haven’t seen those for half a year! And the place was absolutely wonderful – a very well managed ruin of a monastery which, after the Dissolution of 1542, became basically a barn for some three centuries, before being ‘rediscovered’ by a Romantic draughtsman who managed to convince the king of Prussia to pay for its renovation, on the grounds of renewing old German culture. So basically, nationalism. But hey, they’ve done an amazing job restoring just enough of it to preserve the structure without turning it into a grotesque, and keeping the grounds for lovely walking space. It was definitely a highlight of the trip.

  • Jemmotron at the Geopark in Großziethen
  • Friedensgöttin
  • Temmen-Ringenwalde abandoned factory

From there, we moved into the hearth of the UNESCO biosphere site: a Geopark in Großziethen. It’s basically a lot of open space for walks, with an information centre focused on the Ice Age and postglacial landscape. The mammoth was there, too, and a sabretooth tiger, but the centre itself was closed. We packed our lunch and walked off in search of the protected primordial beech forest. But oddly enough, we walked and walked and couldn’t find it! There were plenty of small patches of beech trees amongst the fields, but no more than pines or birches, and mostly it was just fields. We went to a small viewing platform to have a lunch, and the view was the opposite of a forest: a quarry. I mean, interesting, but not what we expected.

Fortunately, there was another observation point on the way – this time over a lake. A massive flock of birds sat right next to us on a tree when we were there, too.

Our next stop was Friedensgöttin – a wooden sculpture of the goddess of peace, made of an oak tree planted to mark the end of the Franko-Prussian war and struck by lightning in the 90’s. Nothing like a tree planted to commemorate a war you provoked for nationalistic gains, to use to celebrate peace. Nice church in the village, and a great abandoned factory that made us think about getting one in the future.

On the way to our next stop, we drove past St Georg Kloster, a modern Orthodox church that’s still being built. Super interesting, because the structure is there, but it’s all just concrete blocks and you can really see how it’s put together. Next to it stands a ruined mansion that was inexplicably open – so we went in to explore, of course! Amazing how they let such cool buildings fall into such disrepair!

  • St Georg Kloster
  • St Georg Kloster
  • Palace by St Georg Kloster

  • Templin
  • Berlin Gate

Next stop: Berlin Gate in Templin. Except we got pulled by the police, for no reason, apparently. They insisted on doing a drug test on me, because I had ‘red eyes and flickering pupils’ – which is complete BS. What I had, was a Polish license plate, I think that’s the only reason. But aaaanyway, they let us go and Templin turned out to be a lovely medieval town with a great deal of city walls and houses preserved. Super cute. Also, ice cream in winter are great.

It was getting late and we took course for home, but we had one more stop on the way. Jemma found it as just ‘Former Entrance to Carinhall.’ What a surprise to find that the map marker is only the gate, located some kilometre away from a massive hunting house built by no other than Hermann Göring. Or rather, the remains of the hunting house. Or rather, the forest that grows on the remains which, if you didn’t know they were there, you would never notice, as it’s basically a couple bricks barely sticking out of the ground, dug up only recently by treasure hunters. And an information plate. Basically, the Nazis blew up the whole place before the Red Army could get to it, and the Soviets razed whatever was left and planted a forest on it. I wonder how many stolen artworks went up in smoke in that place. It’s salted ground, and only some treasure hunters explored it since the war. We found a couple holes in the ground where you could clearly squeeze into the old cellars, but we didn’t go in. The place has an evil feel about it, only magnified by the fact that it’s placed in a gorgeous location, in between two lakes, with amazing views. We pissed and spat on it, and went on.

That’s it! The first overnight trip of the year! Need to install this webasto, so we can have more winter trips next time. But for now, the season is open!