Tuesday 25 August 2015

Malchow


Exploring the area with a forest walk, a visit to a Bear park, lunch in Malchow, seeing the DDR museum. 

I walked through the forest beside the lake. There was a huge campsite there, with many permanent tents and women were being good haus fraus and sweeping in front of the tents. There had been a heavy rainstorm during the night. I inspected and was impressed by the cycle path around the lake. Ingrid was keen to visit a local bear park. We walked on paths through the forest and the bears who had been rescued from captivity mooched around in the forest. I don't like seeing animals in captivity so this did not really appeal to me. We then tried to find a place for lunch, village after village was too small to support a cafe. The lakeside cafe staff said they could not serve 7 people unless we had pre-booked, that felt very E German. We ended up in Malchow eating a local delicacy, smoked fish with potato salad and chips. The smoked fish was fresh and tasty, red snapper, halibut, also fresh herrings called Bismarck herring. We sat at a bench and it felt very Hanseatic, I was reminded of eating fish in Holland. We checked out the DDR museum which was a vast unselected collection of items from the DDR era. They were grouped into five themes, radios, TV, clothes, dolls and toys. Sadly they lacked an explanatory narrative so one did not know whether items where there to illustrate poor DDR design or just from that era. It was a pity because the collection could have been interesting with some selection and explanation. We wandered back through the town, and Jorg and I sat on the bridge of land connecting the island to the mainland. It was windy but we enjoyed the bright clear light We drnk a local a beer flavoured with rhubarb, rather sweet for my taste. The owner dropped in to the house whilst we we're there, she is a teacher in her early 60's and had moved from East Berlin to West Berlin in 1986, to join her husband, she left her mother behind in this house. She was fortunate that The Wall came down 4 yrs later; she could not have predicted that. She must have an interesting story having grown up in the east and moved. She had a warm intelligent face and said that her pupils were not interested in the past, fortunately her children have asked her to write it down. The area has improved hugely over the last 25 yrs, many houses have been renovated and repainted, but it is a tourist area. Over supper we have talked about the DRR here because of the palpable recent history.

No comments:

Post a Comment