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.