‘Day Trips & Weekends Away’ Archives
Walking the 66-Lake-Trail
Paul Scraton discovers pine forests, sand dunes and run-down industrial estates on Brandenburg's 66-Lake-Trail... The 66 lake trail. Photo by Paul Scraton For the last four kilometres through the forest north of the spa town Bad Saarow, we do not meet a soul. Signposts and waymarkers amongst the trees suggest that this must be a popular hiking and Nordic walking spot in the warmer months; but with the forest floor blanketed in snow, the only other sign of human life beyond the crunch [...]
Beelitz Heilstätten: The Phantom Sanatorium
Catherine Lupton explores Beelitz's abandoned Sanatorium and the history left behind... Image by Catherine Lupton The vast abandoned sanatorium / hospital complex Beelitz Heilstätten, southwest of Berlin, is surely one of the city’s most flagrantly open secrets. Easily reached by train from Wannsee, Beelitz is a mythical destination for aficionados of urban exploration (urbex): the clandestine visiting, photographing and filming of abandoned buildings, as well as being an oddly [...]
How To Travel Slowly in Munich
Jenny Seifert gives some tips on how to travel slowly in the Bavarian capital... Munich is one of those European cities that get trampled by tourists. According to the Deutscher Tourismusverband, in 2011 it was second only to Berlin in terms of overnight visitors, with Bavaria – the state of which it is capital – topping the list for German Länder. It’s easy to understand why people flock to Munich. The city is a veritable museum of iconic landmarks and German stereotypes (think [...]
Haus am Waldsee
Lily Philipose jumps on her bike and discovers some Modernist treats at the Haus am Waldsee... The Haus am Waldsee is the kind of museum you may have missed if your art and culture forays tend to gravitate toward the state museums on the Museumsinsel or around Potsdamer Platz. A small, private museum and sculpture garden at the edge of the Grunewald in Berlin-Zehlendorf, the Haus am Waldsee is an important part of Berlin history. It was one of the first museums in West Berlin to open [...]
Restoring Halbe’s Kaiserbahnhof
Andre Gifkins cycles to Berlin's southern fringes to explore a soon-to-be-restored royal train station... I'm a big fan of the fact Berlin has so many old buildings that have been left to rack and ruin. They look cool and suggest a history far, far beyond my personal experience. Most decay slowly, before escalating land prices eventually entice developers into buying the property the building is on. The structure itself, perhaps an old wood mill or a water processing facility, is then [...]
Bike Ride to the tip of the Spreewald
Paul Sullivan explores Berlin's industrial edgelands en route to the forests and lakes of the Spreewald...
A Weekend In Rügen
Natalie Holmes enjoys a leisurely weekend at Germany's Baltic coast... Goehren Arriving on Germany’s biggest island, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d fallen down a rabbit hole and landed in toytown. Impossibly clean and tidy villages host tiny houses. Litter, so prevalent in Berlin, is conspicuous in its near-total absence; the landscape is a compelling array of primary colours: intense greens, ever-deepening blues, soaring yellows. Having decided to stop travelling by air [...]
