Spreepark

I don't remember when I first heard about the Spreepark, the abandoned DDR amusement park in Treptower Park, but I have wanted to see it since that day. It was on my summer to-do list last year, but we never got around to sneaking inside, so I replaced it with something else.

A few days ago I heard that it was finally going to be sold and this past weekend would be the last time to join the tour to see the park. It was 20€ per person, which is very high, but we signed up. Now that I live in Potsdam it took almost 90 minutes to get to the park, door to door, so it also required an early wake up on a Sunday. This thing had to be good to justify the effort it took to get there.

But it wasn't good. It wasn't in such a very very bad way. The tour was at 11:00, but we had to arrive at 10:40 to hand over our 20€. At 11:00 the gates opened and we were shuffled inside, where we looked at the decorated dinosaurs for a bit before the guide started talking and finally said we needed to go line up to sign a registration and pick up a shiny orange vest. I think that took another 20 minutes, at which point we finally started walking into the park proper.

A few of us stopped to take photos of the ferris wheel, but the tour group was waiting to begin, so we dutifully joined. It then the guide started to speak for ten or so minutes, using pictures from a binder to supplement his speech. Pictures from a binder. I guess he thought we were there to learn the history of the park from a book instead of actually seeing it.

When he was finally finished, we then walked a short bit ahead, to the first ride - possibly a log ride, but I can't be certain since he was speaking German (where was our promised English tour guide?) and we stood away from the crowd. When they finally started to move on, I took a few photos and then we were called again to join the group. There were about 50 people on the tour, so they were all blocking my ability to actually see the ride and photograph it while he was speaking. How dare I spend five minutes taking photos.

The tour continued and we lagged behind, and then finally someone said the English tour was ahead and I noticed that the group had just split into two. Was the guy late, is that why our tour started half an hour late, in the middle of the park? And what's back there, where the German tour is? I guess we'll never know.

Of course, we'll also never know anything about the park because our English tour guide wasn't quite fluent and was barely a tour guide. I don't like being mean, but had I given a tour in German, it would have been only slighly worse. I heard someone talking to her friend later and she described it perfectly "I was watching your face as he started talking, and it just fell, like What is happening?"

The one good thing was that this guide let us wander a bit, so we were able to get away from the group. Still, when we saw the exit, we made a dash for it and handed in the orange vest. I then bought a severely disappointing Krakauer sausage. How hard is it to cook a sausage over a fire pit? Apparently impossible for those feeding the Spreepark.

The wheel was turning in the wind and could be heard creaking around the park.

Totally safe to walk here.

Since the wheel turns, and it's easy to get inside this, I wonder how many drunks ride the wheel each night?

And the worst thing? The absolute worst? The park gates were open and it appears that no one else had to pay to get in! Only those of us who were foolish enough to think the really bad tour was the only way to see the park had to pay 20€ for the privilege. Had we just walked by, we could have seen the whole thing for free - or even paid 3€ for a train ride. That would have been a good day. Our day was a bit of a waste.

another visit to the Baltic

My boy and I took a short vacation to the coast again this weekend. Rügen is a beautiful island we really enjoy visiting because it's so beautiful and quiet and a very nice escape from the city.

 This was our view during dinner.

 I had delicious schnitzel, jäger-style.

My boy had chicken and pasta.

We walked out to the pier after dinner and discovered you can see the water through the floor. I'm glad it was a calm day.

We could see our hotel from the pier, but it's not actually possible to get to the water from the hotel.

I got a new camera and tested out the zoom. Not bad considering I didn't have my tripod to try a longer exposure.

We went back to Jasmund National Park and it was cold and foggy that morning. It had been crazy hot in Berlin all week so we packed for hot summer weather and were not prepared for the cold and fog.

 View of the Königsstuhl from the Victoria Sicht.

 View of the Victoria Sicht from the Victoria Sicht.

We decided to walk the 2+km back to the car park instead of taking the bus. We did this last year as well and forgot how long it was. 2km isn't really that long but all of my photo stops really added to the travel time. It was interesting to see things that had changed, such as logs in the water that I remembered photographing.

Next we went to Prora and I walked in the water. I wasn't prepared with my bathing suit, nor did we have any towels, so I held up my skirt and waded as far as I could. It was lovely and crisp and I wish I could have actually gone swimming. It's probably best that I didn't though as I got a crazy sunburn on my back and arms from this walk on the beach. Damned dress!

The one problem was the occasional patches of seaweed. I don't like swimming in rocky beaches and I don't like being touched by seaweed in the water. This beach is sandy but seeweedy. The next beach we went to, where I really felt my skin burning, was all seeweed so we didn't go in the water at all. The third beach was all rocks so we ended up coming back here for an hour or so to sit in the shade and enjoy the evening beach before a quick walk in the water.

The next day we walked to the end of this pier. We didn't do it last time and I regretted that, so even though we were tired, we made the 2km walk. Near the beginning of the walk I took this photo and two hours later we were on the next boat! That was something totally unplanned, but another thing we can cross off our Rügen to-do list.

The lighthouse didn't seem to be getting closer at all and there was no shade the entire walk, which was okay on the way there, but the return trip really exhausted us, as is usually the case.

On the other side of the lighthouse the water kept splashing up - so much that the metal barrier had fallen off the pier!

On the boat. We sat on the starboard side, which meant that all the photos we took on the way to the chalk cliffs were though the heads of everyone else on the boat, but on the return trip we had an unobstructed view.

The lighthouse is visible at the far left of the picture. The pier starts at the white building on the right.

The Victoria Sicht on the left and Königsstuhl on the right. Last year we climbed down the beach.  There was no way I was going to do that again! 

 The viewing platform on the top of Victoria Sicht.

a rainbow

Drops had a sale in the month  of May and I just couldn't resist buying a box full of Alpaca.  I bought it online and while I was trying to decide which colours to buy, I just kept adding them to my cart until I pretty much decided to buy all of them. Well, except for the brown shades because I'm not a fan of brown. 

I first thought of making a blanket with successive gradients of colour, but decided it would be too messy.  I then thought about making a spiral gradient blanket, but couldn't figure out a way to do it without cutting the ends and joining them every row - which is a waste of good alpaca in my view!  So I settled on huge blocks of colour.

55 stiches in each colour, 28 cm tall before changing colours.  I hope it will be as gorgeous at the end as it is in my  head.  It's already so soft and wonderful that alpaca is my new favourite yarn.