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*** BALTIC STATES 2011 - WEEKS 1~2 *** | ||
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What better place to begin our trip to the Baltic than at Lübeck, once the flag-ship port-city of the Hanseatic League whose trading empire ruled a pan-North European sphere of control across the Baltic from the 12~17th centuries. Lübeck's mercantile independence from the Church made it the wealthiest and most powerful of the 200 member cities of the Hanseatic League trading cartel through its monopolistic control of Baltic salt export. This mercantile wealth found expression in magnificent civic and ecclesiastical architecture still to be seen today despite damage from WW2 bombing raids. Our base for the visit to Lübeck was the welcoming Campingplatz Schönböcken in the city suburbs from where we caught the bus into the Altstadt (old town).
The sturdy towers of the Holstentor city
gateway constructed in 1470 today form an iconic symbol of Lübeck's medieval
power, wealth and political confidence (Photo 1 - Lübeck's Holstentor
medieval city gate). We spent a happy day admiring the restored medieval
buildings such as the ornate 13th
Lübeck's medieval merchants built magnificent Gothic churches as an expression of their power and wealth and the panorama from the Petrikirche spire over the roof tops of the old town typifies this, the view dominated by the nearby Marienkirche and Rathaus. The monumental scale of the city's Gothic churches and medieval architecture still exude the political confidence that the Hanseatic League's trading power brought to the port-cities of the Baltic regions which we should visit over the next week.
Leaving
Wismar, we camped further along the misty grey Baltic coast, tucked safely
behind the protective dyke as rainstorms persisted. Beyond the communist era
apartment blocks of Rostock, another Hanseatic port but not a pretty sight, we
crossed the elegant new suspension bridge to Rügen, Germany's largest island off
its Baltic coast, to camp at Altfähr just across the sound. From here a ferry
takes you back across to the small Hanseatic port of Stralsund. The distant
silhouette of its Gothic churches gives a hint of the port's former
Summer
weather was proving elusively spasmodic as we explored more of Rügen's Baltic
coastline. The island has been a traditional German holiday venue since 19th
century Romantics eulogised its natural beauty. Bismarck and the Kaisers relaxed
here, and Hitler chose Prora on the north coast to build a monumental concrete
Continuing
eastwards, we crossed the straits which separate the island of Usedom from the
German mainland. The narrow, 50 km long island had been an aristocratic
playground in the 19th century, and the GDR communist authorities had
confiscated resort properties turning Usedom into a mass workers' holiday
resort. Since re-unification, entrepreneurialism has reasserted
itself and Usedom's miles of fine white sand beaches are again a magnet for mass
tourism. But what happened here in the late 1930s and in WW2 gave us an entirely
Against this historical background, we set off
from the campsite along the narrow lane through the forests to the site of the
rocket test site of Peenemünde. The former power station which generated
electricity for the complex now houses the Peenemünde Historical and Technical
Museum. Standing in front of the building were reproductions of the V1 flying
bomb and the terrifying V2 rocket (Photo 14 - V1 flying bomb and V2
rocket at Peenemünde). The museum's exhibits are spread
over 3 floors of the former power station. One floor is relates the story of
early rocket development in the 1930s and the WW2 period of successful launch,
mass production of the rockets and devastating impact of the vengeance attacks
on civilian population. Another floor continues the more fascinating post-war
and Cold War period of the A4/V2 rocket's story, when the US and USSR hijacked
stocks of
The Usedom road continues along the island's
narrow spine to the tiny segment of Polish territory at the far eastern tip, but
here there is only a pedestrian/cycle border-crossing; we had to loop south the
long way round to where a bridge spans the narrow strip of the River Odra
estuary separating Usedom island from
Szczecin is an unashamedly industrial city spread
along the banks of the Odra with the cranes of its docklands showing its
maritime and ship-building heritage. German colonists came to dominate the
original Slavic settlement once the port-city joined the Hanseatic League in
the 13th century, and it remained under
The
following morning we crossed back to what felt like the Polish 'mainland' but
was in fact the neighbouring island of Wolin to visit the sedate little sea-side
resort of Międzyzdroje (OK - try Mee-en-jee-zdroyeh) and treated
ourselves to a flądra flat-fish and chips lunch at one of the stalls along the
front (Photo 19 - Flądra and chips lunch on Polish Baltic coast),
and to enjoy a part-day's walking along the sand-cliffs of the local National
Park. Continuing our eastward Baltic journey, we crossed Wolin
We camped that night at the excellent Leśny Camping at Łeba, a small Baltic fishing port and resort we visited last year. From the campsite we walked into the town to keep an our long-promised appointment to buy more smoked fish from the dockside stalls for another tasty Baltic supper, and at 9-00 that evening, the stirringly patriotic Polish Hejnał bugle call was relayed over the town from the church tower.
For our final night in Poland, we camped at the delightfully straightforward U Haliny Camping set on a peninsula of Lake Wigry in the Wigry National Park. Tomorrow we should cross into Lithuania to say Laba diena as we begin our trip proper to the Baltic States after our relaxing and nostalgic journey through Poland. But that's a story for our next edition in 2 weeks time; join us then. Next edition to be published in 2 weeks
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THE BALTIC
REPUBLICS 2011 -
Journey out through Northern Germany and Poland:
century Rathaus (town hall) with its lofty
gabled façades of dark glossy brickwork (Photo 2 - Lübeck's Rathaus (town hall) and market place.
We shopped for supper in the nearby market place against the backdrop of the Marienkirche's Gothic spires and flying
buttresses and wandered the back lanes of the Altstadt peering into the tiny
courtyards and mews of flower-lined cottages and alms houses hidden away in
alleys behind the street fronts (Photo 3 - Cottages and alms houses of Lübeck's courtyards). The mid-20th century
West German Chancellor, Willy Brandt was born in Lübeck, and the exhibition in
the city's
Willy Brandt Haus celebrates the statesman's life and achievements.
Politically active from a young age in the Social Democratic movement, he was
forced to flee Germany wit
h the mid-1930s Nazi seizure of power, and sought
political asylum in Scandinavia earning a living as a journalist. Returning to
war-shattered Germany in 1946, he reported on the Nuremberg war crimes trials,
and again took up politics in post-war democratic West Germany. From 1957~66,
Brandt was mayor of West Berlin, responding to the building of the 1961 Berlin
Wall with his 'Small Steps' cautious policy in an attempt to make life in the
divided city tolerable. This experience served to develop his 'Ostpolitik'
policy as West German Chancellor (1969~74) in thawing relations with the GDR and
Eastern Bloc which won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971. The exhibition
is a worthy tribute to one of the great statesmen of the Cold War period.
Moving
east along the Baltic coast of Germany, passing a sign marking the former
West German/GDR border, we reached another of the former Hanseatic ports,
Wismar which during the 13~15th centuries developed as a wealthy trading city.
But the 30 Years War in 1648 brought
conquest and 150 years of
occupation by the Swedish Empire, a legacy of which is still to be seen today in
the colourful moustachioed 'Swedish Heads' scattered through the old town, most
likely figure heads of Swedish ships in origin. In one of the last RAF bombing
raids of WW2 in April 1945, 2 of Wismar's huge brick Gothic churches were
destroyed, leaving only the tower of the former St Mary's Church still standing.
Since German re-unification in 1990, Wismar has been much restored and is now a
popular tourist centre. The old cobbled Hansestadt market place still has
its medieval water tower standing amid the stalls and is lined with elaborately
gabled brick façades of burghers' houses (Photo 4 - Wismar's market with
medieval burghers' houses). The massive 14th century
gothic bulk of St Nikolai's Kirche survived wartime bombing intact and its
sturdy brick columns stand as testament to Wismar's wealth and power from
its Hanseatic heyday (Photo 5 - Gothic church of St Nikolai, Wismar).
Boats selling smoked fish line the moorings of the Alter Hafen with its Baumhaus
former toll house which once controlled access to the harbour (Photo 6 - Wismar's
old harbour).
wealth,
second only to Lübeck as a member of the Hanseatic trading cartel. Dockside
stalls sell delicious, not to be missed Baltic smoked fish and the cobbled Alter
Markt is backed by the ensemble of Gothic Nikolai Kirche and the show-case
Rathaus, its ornately pinnacled brick gable bristling with turrets and rosette
perforations to let Baltic winds blow through (Photo 7 - Stralsund market-place
and medieval Rathaus).
resort accommodating 20,000, as part of the Nazi Kraft durch Freude (Strength
through Joy) movement in preparation for military expansion eastwards.
Under the GDR, Eric Honecker and millions of East German workers took holidays on Rügen,
and their caravanning successors still flock to the coastal resorts. We headed
NW to sample the island's natural beauty in the Jasmund National Park, the
woodland-covered peninsula which ends at the startlingly white chalk cliffs of
the Stubenkammer. A 3 km footpath leads through delightful beechwoods to the
highest point of the cliffs, the Königstuhl (King's Stool), a 350 feet high
chalk buttress projecting from the line of cliffs (Photo 8 - Rügen's chalk cliff at Königstuhl).
Not prepared to pay rip-off admission charges, we followed the cliff-top path to
other high-point look-outs along the cliffs, with their sheer drop down to the
grey waters of the Baltic. Wooden steps lead down the 300 feet to the shingle
beach below the chalky cliffs. The NW corner of Rügen projects into the Baltic
from inland lagoons, ending at the lighthouses of Kap Arkona and the isolated
fishing village of Vitt with its thatched cottages clustering around a tiny
harbour (Photo 9 - Fishing village of Vitt). We camped that night at
the delightfully straightforward Camping Oase in Polchow village, with supper of
local smoked fish and nothing but the sound of birdsong for company - sheer
heaven.
Continuing
eastwards, we paused at yet another of the former Hanseatic port-cities,
Greifswald. The town did not have the wealth and grand edifices of the
trading cartel's bigger members, but it did develop as an academic centre with
one of North Germany's oldest universities founded in the 14th century. Its
charming ambience was recorded by local artist Casper David Friedrich in the
early 19th century, and the historic buildings and grid pattern of streets of
its Altstadt survived WW2 relatively unscathed thanks to the local military
commander surrendering the town to the Red Army in 1945. The town's market place
filled with vegetable, flower and fish stalls is backed by the blood-red Rathaus
and lined with brick gabled houses (Photo 10 - Gothic town houses in Greifswald market place). The university church of St
Nikolai is now one of Greifwald's most ornate churches (Photo 11 - University
church of St Nikolai at Greifswald).
The nearby stubby-towered Marienkirche built in 1250 to celebrate Greifwald's
Hanseatic membership was stripped over the centuries of its furnishings and now
glories in elegant simplicity, the lightly painted vaulting decorated with
subtly coloured motifs and lit by unadorned stained glass windows (see right).
For us, Greifwald's Marienkirche was the most attractive Gothic church we had
visited. At the town's fishing port of Wieck, 4 kms down at the outflow of the
Ryek River, the dockside was lined with fish smokeries where we could buy more
suppers of Baltic smoked fish. The port's working boats were moored along the
river (Photo 12 - Riverside fishing harbour at
Wieck) which was crossed by a wooden lifting bridge
creating a beautiful setting (Photo 13 - Wooden lifting bridge
at Wieck).
different reason for visiting a place whose holiday-making preoccupation would
normally have repelled. The isolated western tip of Usedom was the location of
Peenemünde, the German secret military rocket research station, set up in 1936
under Wernher von Braun to develop the liquid fuel A4 rocket. The Nazi's
aggressive re-armament programme guaranteed limitless funding for rocket
research to provide more powerful military ordnance. Von Braun's design team had
to develop a large liquid fuel engine for the rocket's thrust, and
supersonic aerodynamics and gyroscopic guidance systems to control stability in
flight. After endless failures, the first successful launch of the A4 rocket
took place at Peenemünde in October1942, the first ever breaching of
the space
barrier. Initial reports of rocket development at Peenemünde were rejected by
the Allies as disinformation, but aerial reconnaissance photos of the site
showing the presence of tube-like objects were finally interpreted as rockets. A
massive 500 aircraft RAF attack caused devastation at Peenemünde and in 1943
production of the rockets was moved to an underground factory complex, Mittelbrau Dora, in the Hertz Mountains using concentration camp slave labour.
With the 1943 defeats marking WW2's turning point, the continuing intensive RAF/USAAF
bombing of German cities, and the 1944 D-Day landings, Hitler needed a 'wonder
weapon' to restore German morale. In mid-1944, he ordered attacks by
'Vengeance Weapons (Vergeltungswaffen) against the cities of Western
Europe and London. Initially V1 flying bombs launched from fixed 'ski ramps'
along the channel coast attacked London then in September 1944 attacks by V2
rockets began from fixed launch sites then from mobile launch platforms. Some
20,000 V1s and 7,000 V2 rockets were launched. Their inaccuracy made them
ineffective against precise military targets; they were used purely as vengeance
terror weapons against areas of dense civilian population. The slower V1 flying
bombs were vulnerable to counter-attacks, but there was no defence against the
speed and trajectory of the V2 rockets which fell from an altitude of 110 kms at
4 times the speed of sound (3,500 kms/hour). The V2 rockets were powered by a
mixture of liquid oxygen and alcohol with the temperature of the engine's
combustion chamber reaching 2,500°C causing the long plume of exhaust flame.
From launch, the rocket motor burnt for 65 seconds propelling the rocket to the
boundary of space; after the engine's cut-out, the rocket continued in a free
fall ballistic trajectory to reach its target range of 320 kms in 3 minutes. The
1 ton of explosive war head caused a 20m wide, 8 m deep crater. Despite attacks
by V1s and V2s on London, Antwerp, Lille and Paris causing some 3,000 civilian
deaths, their military impact was minimal given their cost and vast consumption
of scarce materials; it was said that the V2 rocket killed more people in its
production (20,000 slave labourers) than in offensive deployment. It was, exactly
as its name implied, a 'Vengeance Weapon'.
rockets
and components together with the German scientists and technicians (including
von Braun himself) to develop their own competitive military rocket programmes
leading to the arms race and space exploration. The 3rd floor celebrates the 50
years of space exploration since Yuri Gagarin's historic first space flight in
1961, rather disingenuously diverting attention from the test site's original
purpose of developing vengeance weapons. Without doubt however the Peenemünde
museum does relate the story of the unequivocal military purpose of German
rocket development in frank and objective terms. The myth of von Braun as the
enthusiastic but gullible scientist is debunked in equally frank terms: he was a
committed Nazi, an opportunist guilty of war crimes, while at the same time
a brilliantly creative design engineer. The exhibition deals equally frankly
with the barbaric German exploitation of slave labour in rocket production
factories. Post-war American
cynical hypocrisy in illegally granting visas to
former Nazi war criminals for use in the US' own rocket development programme,
including von Braun himself is also given exposé. The Peenemünde museum presents
a worthwhile exhibition with as much emphasis on the historical, political and
moral implications of wartime and post-war rocket development as technical
details. And for all the 1000s of holiday-makers invading the beaches of Usedom at
Whit weekend, Peenemünde was almost deserted.
'mainland' Germany, to cross into Poland
near the city of Szczecin (formerly German Stettin before the 1945 shifting of
borders). Our base for the visit to Szczecin (pronounced Shetsin) was to
be Camping Marina, where we were welcomed with wonderfully helpful hospitality.
This is a superb campsite set in lovely parkland and gardens on the shores of
the lake formed by the Odra estuary, with excellent facilities, a small
bar-restaurant and free wi-fi covering the whole site. Like many Polish
campsites, it has a homely campfire circle with plentiful supplies of chopped
wood and encouragement to light an evening fire. 
Prussian/German control until the 1945 redrawing of Poland's borders.
Post-communist market economy resulting in closure of shipyards and associated
industries has brought serious economic plight and unemployment, leaving the
city a bleak future with little opportunity for further restoration of the
severe damage suffered in WW2. The bus and tram ride into the city centre
presented a grim-grey image of Szczecin (Photo 15 - Trams
trundle past Szczecin Cathedral). As we
walked towards the old centre, we revelled in being back in Poland, renewing
acquaintance from last year's visit with familiar words, signs and conventions.
But somehow Szczecin lacked much of the charm of many Polish cities: some of the
medieval show-case buildings had been restored after WW2 damage, but gaps
between had either been left vacant and now used as car parks or filled with
drab communist-era housing blocks. The old town is now predominantly
residential
with the city's commercial hub shifted westwards away from the river to blandly
grey boulevards. We were left with the impression that, having restored some of
the old buildings like the beautiful Gothic brick town hall or grandiose Castle
of the Pomeranian Dukes, in the wake of the culture shock of transformation to
Polish from German rule no one quite knew how to use the newly restored
buildings. The panoramic view from the Castle' bell-tower showed Szczecin's mix
of scattered historic buildings set amid grim-grey Germanic inheritance and its
historic dockyards along the River Odra (Photo 16 - Szczecin rooftops and
dockyards by the River Odra). The Cathedral of St Jakob,
a massive Germanic Gothic brick structure badly damaged in 1945 was even more
severely mauled by tasteless post-war over-restoration. By 3-00pm we were fast
running out of features worth visiting in Szczecin, but tireless travellers as
always, we pursued the least of the city's treasures before retiring for a
much-needed beer by one of the decorously restored burghers' houses by the Stary
Rynek (Photo 17 - Restored
burghers' houses in Szcsecin old town).
Back at Marina Camping that evening as dusk fell we lit another camp fire, and
photographed a magnificent sunset across the still waters of the marina against
the backdrop of dockyard cranes (Photo 18 - Sunset over Szczecin shipyards).
The following day
we headed north to pick up again our journeying along the Baltic coast this time
within Poland, and headed towards Świnoujście, the port-city occupying the tiny
segment of Polish territory at the extreme eastern tip of Usedom and whose
pronunciation left us severely tongue-tied (try Shveeno-oo-eesheh). The
topography of the sandbank islands and estuaries along the Baltic coastline was
equally bemusing. Świnoujście is accessed from the Polish mainland by a
car-ferry across the wide Świna river-estuary and now functions as a ferry port
with connections to Scandinavia; as we joined local traffic for the 5 minute
ferry crossing to the city, signs incongruously pointed to Malmö and Copenhagen.
We stayed the one night, just long enough to practice pronouncing the city's
name and to say we had camped at this curiously sited western-most point of
Poland on the Baltic coast.
island's eastern
channel to the Polish mainland proper or at least more Baltic sandbars, and
camped that night at a delightful little straightforward campsite named
appropriately Dla Cibie ('For You') at the coastal village of Ustronie Morske.
Keeping as close to the coast as we could along poorly surfaced minor roads
around sandbars and coastal lagoons, we continued our Baltic meanderings
eastward to the old port of Ustka. Our quiet lunch down by the harbour was
enlivened by an entertaining episode involving the Polish Naval Reserve's cutter
Czajka (meaning
Lapwing). Whatever the ratings were being instructed to achieve in
manoeuvring their boat in the narrow dock was unclear, but it ended with
the
naval vessel swinging helplessly around and in danger of ramming the dockside
with its prow (the pointed end) then with its stern (the blunt bit at the back).
As the dignity of the Polish Navy was scuttled by this debacle with no one
seemingly taking charge of events, the height of the comedy was yet to come:
suddenly a pirate ship came sailing into port at full speed, swinging around the
ailing naval vessel as if to fire broadside. Was this, we wondered a belated
raid on Polish territory by the Kriegsmarine, or the Soviet navy in disguise
making a sneak attack while NATO's guard was so obviously down? But having
demonstrated to the hapless sailors how to execute a deft turn within the
harbour, the pirates' tourist boat withdrew leaving us in stitches of laughter to finish our lunch.
You simply could not plan such moments of high comedy.
Baltic weather was
proving fickle in the extreme, and in driving rain the following day we fought
our way through impatient traffic, miserably poor visibility and hopelessly
obstructive roadworks to bypass Gdańsk which we had visited last year. Finally
escaping the conurbation to continue across the flatlands of the Wisła river
delta, we headed back out to the Baltic coast for the 20 mile long narrow Wisłana sandspit to camp at the isolated settlement of Piaski. This little
campsite had been closed when we came here last September, but this year we were
welcomed with delightful hospitality by the lady owner, and camped by the edge
of the Wisłany Lagoon marshes where the frogs sang happily and wild roses
scented the air. We settled into this peaceful little bit of heaven on earth,
gazing out across the lagoon to the outline of Frombork cathedral on the misty
horizon with herons swooping low over the water (Photo 20 - Breakfast at Piaski on Wiślana Sandspit).
The Wisłana sandspit in fact stretches for another 20 miles beyond Piaski
enclosing the lagoon, but is divided half way along its total length by the
border with the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. After a day's break at Piaski,
we walked along the 3 kms of track through pine forests to stand at the border
fence separating EU/NATO territory from the Russian lands beyond. Such are the
strained relations with Kaliningrad that the fence-line extends down the
beach into the grey waters of the Baltic. A brisk wind raised white waves which
rolled in oblivious to the wire fence which attempted to bar their course (Photo 21 - Border
fence with Russia enclave of Kaliningrad on Wiślana Sandspit).
On our way out the following morning, we paused
to buy flądra flat-fish fresh from fishermen unloading the morning catch
from boats drawn up on the beach, as their womenfolk gutted the fish for market
(Photo 22 - Wiślana fishing beach at Krynica Morska).
To continue our journey eastwards, we now had to turn inland to bypass Russian
Kaliningrad; the hassle and cost of obtaining visas to pass through was just too
bothersome. Round through Elbląg we camped for a night at Frombork on the
southern side of the Wisłany Lagoon, where the afternoon sun lit
Copernicus' cathedral, and in the evening we cooked our supper of flądra
bought on the beach that morning. We now had a 150 mile drive through the rural
backwaters of NE Poland, through what before 1945 was German East Prussia and
now formed the borderlands with Russian Kaliningrad. After a night's camp at
Gołdap, we continued through the wooded borderlands of former East Prussia on
Midsummer's Eve, 23 June which this year coincided with the Feast of Corpus Christi, a
day of national holiday for Catholic Poland when religious processions are held
in many places. In the village of Dubeninki traffic was halted as local
people processed with hymn singing and banners behind their priest for the
blessing of shrines decked with flowers and birch branches (Photo 23 - Corpus Christi Day
procession at village of Dubeninki). The rolling
countryside was so attractive and all the small villages had families of storks
nesting on the power-poles (Photo 24 - Stork
family nesting at Glówka).
