SpreewaldLast Blog | Index | Next Blog Fifty | Ninety | Spreewald | Twenty-Five 23 April 2022 - Lübbenau I tried to find a race last weekend while we were in Poland, but it being Easter in an incredilbly Catholic country there was none to be had. However, on the way home we decided to take a slight detour to the Spreewald in Brandenburg, south of Berlin. I only signed up for the 5K, because my knee was bothering me the weekend before we left and because it was at 9AM while the other races were later in the day. The hotel we stayed at last night was a little nutty - they even had named placecards on the tables at breakfast - but the city of Lübbenau itself is a surprising gem in the forest. The name of the area, Spreewald, comes from the Spree river which flows through these flatlands and "Wald", which is the German word for forest. The race itself was mainly along the gravel and dirt roads by the canals through the forest. Lübbenau is truly a garden city and this Spring showed in brillant display. It was also my first race together with Paula, who enjoyed the running once we got going but was a little confused at the start. I took first place in my age division (something I haven't done in a few years), and Paula was the first dog across the finish line. ![]() When I signed up for the race, we didn't realize that Iwona's friend Andrea in fact lived in the town so she joined us and kept Iwona company while Paula and I ran. After the race while I showered up and checked us out of the hotel, Andrea convinced Iwona that we should spend the day on the canals and rented us a canoe. It was a very good decision. The city is beautiful from the roads and wooden bridges but, like Venice, to really see it you have to travel on the water. And, while both cities have gondoliers ferrying groups by pushing sticks against the bottom, the Spreewald fortunately has no speedboats. This is something of a surprise, as German culture seems inherently bent toward mechanisation, but the quiet, contemplative love of Nature is also part of the German soul. The canals are connected by an array of locks which are operated manually and allow small craft to navigate between levels. We just had a few hours, and so we only explored Lübbenau and the fields and marshes nearby. There are, however, a number of cities in the Spreewald and we must come back again to see the rest of them! ![]() The Paddlers Three! |
Last altered 24 April 2022 by Bradley James Wogsland.
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