Hi Again From Germany:
Well, it is Sunday evening and we’re ready to start our journey back to Provence tomorrow. We have truly enjoyed our visit to the old East Germany, and not just because the food is so good.
Yesterday, we grabbed the kids and drove into Poland. It was always a “maybe” in our plans, but we’re very happy we made the trip. I would say the word shocking would be a good word to describe what we saw.
Just because part of my family is from a part of Germany that is now in Poland, it was sort of a symbolic gesture to set foot into Poland. And, the two places we visited in Poland were former German cities (Rzepin and Slubice).
Let’s lead in gently to what we saw when we crossed the border. I had expected here in the old East Germany to be able to see weak economic conditions and the remains of the communist/Soviet control from 1946 to 1989. As stated earlier, you really see very little that would indicate what the conditions were like here such a short time ago. We are continually told how happy folks are to have a united Germany. We’ve been told that in 1990 there were no freeways (auto routes) in what was East Germany. Now, there are great auto routes. After our trip into Poland we learned that the Polish cities near the border are not very nice and nobody here in Germany wants to be in Poland. I’m not really sure if what we saw is common throughout Poland. In this area of Germany, within 45 minutes of Berlin and only about 30 minutes from the border with Poland, all of the standard things you hear about Germans could not be truer. These folks could not be more orderly and cleaner. Everything looks like it was recently painted, and while you see very few people, it is not uncommon to see someone raking and sweeping in front of their homes, which are surrounded by trimmed green grass and gardens. There are mainly brick homes and brick barns in the small farming communities. The old East Germany looks very prosperous.
We crossed into Poland on a typical European auto route. A few miles in we saw a rest area with a gas station, convenience store and restaurant. We stopped just to see what we would see. It was ultra modern, nicer than most you see in France, and very much the equal of the nicest in the U.S. We saw the few American products you see everywhere, from Coca-Cola to Lays potato chips and M & Ms. Then, not too far over the border we got off the auto route and went into Rzepin, a town of about 5,000. It had the typical buildings of a German town that we’ve been seeing on this trip, however, they were dirty and dilapidated. Everything looked very tired and poor. It was what you would expect in Mexico, and closer to home, it was worse than the poorest small town in Southern Illinois. The people simply looked like everything was a struggle for them. Ick! We took the two-lane highway back towards the border and the border city of Slubice, with a population of 18,000. It was more of the same. It was the picture I have in my mind of the Soviet Union and the countries that were behind the Iron Curtain. It is a slow road for Poland. I read their per capita income is 65% of that of other European Union countries. I’d like to get into the interior of Poland, and especially go to Warsaw, and get a better idea. However, this lifetime appears that it will not allow such a trip.
We didn’t take any photos in Poland (believe me I won’t forget what it was like) and moved back across the border to Frankfurt an der Oder, which was a city of 86,000, but since the 1980s has seen it’s population drop to 60,000, due to difficult economic conditions. Before 1946, Slubice and Frankfurt an der Oder were one city. Frankfurt an der Oder was slick and very American like. We went to the center of town and had lunch. There’s a photo of an interesting church on the central plaza where we ate and another photo of the center of town. It looked like a great part of the city had been built since World War II.
Back to our village of Reichenwalde, we took a photo from near the parking lot of our apartment, looking across the street with a couple of directional signs in the foreground. And, behind our apartment are some abandoned farm buildings (see photo), which we are told were part of the communist farming system.
Today, Marlene and I drove to the town of Beeskow, only because we kept seeing directional signs to it. Along the way we saw some sensational German farm villages. Again, the Germans have their farm homes and barns centered in their village and there are no homes nor barns out in the fields. We took some photos in one of the villages, getting a look at an old barn, a typical street and a house with a barn. And, we found Beeskow very interesting and bigger seeming that its 10,000 population. There’s very little written about Beeskow, but it dates back to the Middle Ages. In fact, there’s very little material on-line about many of these villages and cities. We took a picture of a typical German home that we saw in Beeskow.
And, we took Segway PTs today. More on that coming up.
The Wilsons
