cottbus + brandenburg II

well, we enjoyed the opportunity to discover cottbus with our friends from lübbenau (spreewald). of course it is nice to have local guides and thus we have not only seen the nice city center, but also learned a lot about history and present age + current developments in the whole area. and yes, we also celebrated the birthday of my wife in a beach club on a roof top of one of the former socialist style

enjoy few pictures from cottbus at the river spree, it is the second largest city in the state of brandenburg in eastern germany.

a very strange an untypical building, if you asked me

 old electric power plant (elektrizitaetswerk / elektrizitätswerk)

 at the main square in city center

more pictures here.

the diary of our whole holiday journey is here.
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spreewald + brandenburg I

this hot summer was our our holiday completely different than usually. we just sat in our car and drove north :-). our first stop was the east german water and forest nature area of spreewald (=river spree's forest) in the brandenburg district in eastern germany. 

river spree and its islands, forests, inhabitants, tourists, ...

for the first two nights we have made a reservation in kreblitz (luckau, lübbenau) in an old blacksmith's manufacture where we have felt like in a museum. all following nights we have to decide and look for a roof above our heads spontaneously. even if it was not always easy in the main tourist season, we've got very different accommodations from wooden cottage without water, toilet and electric power up to a castle resort at a lake ...

the car statistics show us a short overview about our wonderful 2 weeks :-)

our stops through germany, poland, lithuania, poland, germany were:

• spreewald ~ pictures in this blog post below
• city of cottbus
• ucermark lake district
• polish baltic sea coast
• german teutonic knights castle marienburg (malbork, in today's poland)
• castle karnity + masurian lake district (PL, mazury, masuren)
• vilnius (lithuania)
• water castle trakai (lithuania)
• lodz and central poland
• lusatia = lausitz = luzice (eastern germany)
• north bavarian lakes (rothsee)

 lübbenau, the main gate to spreewald was quite full of tourists, all other areas were almost empty

our blacksmith's inn in kreblitz / luckau

 city of luckau

lausitz lake district. this lake near luckau covers a former mining area (even if lausitz is known as a brown coal area, here was probably a metal mine if i remember the information boards correctly. probably copper or iron ore, who knows?)

the best of all wives :-)

good-bye, dear spreewald ...

more holiday pictures are here

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