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july '17: baltic sea adventures VI - kiel canal & hütten hills.


twigs & sailing boat.

on one evening after we had stayed on langholz beach again we decided to have a little walk around the village. we found a wonderful section of a steep coast, an age-old dolmen & some rabbits! i'm super into those little walks, especially when you don't know anything about the place & stumble upon such little treats.

the steep coast between langholz & waabs.

walking along a high coast never gets old to me.


a tiny rain front was brewing that evening and hid the sun behind blue-ish grey clouds. the light was amazing.

met some bunnies along the way.

relaxing between crops.

the sun fought her way back through the clouds again and left us with a soft pink evening glow.

the dolmen of langholz. it's a megalithic structure of the funnelbeaker culture. it's dated to 3500 - 2800 b.c. this place was so very quiet and secluded.

a beautiful country home in langholz. i love these old mansions so much. wish i could live in one of these.

our landlords invited us the other day to come to one of their concerts which they held in the hütten hills, a small area of upland not far away from eckernförde. we decided to spend the morning taking a stroll along the shores of the kiel canal and then make our way to the hütten hills later on for the concert. the kiel canal is about 100 km long and starts in brunsbüttel by the north sea and ends in kiel-holtenau. it was finished in 1895 and these days it's the most busy artificial waterway world-wide. it also traverses the nature park of the hütten hills, so it wasn't really a big detour. it was very interesting to watch some of those huge ass ships making their way through the canal. especially as it isn't very broad in width ( even though it has been widened over the century ).

started our little tour at the old schoolmaster house in sehestedt ( built in 1820 with a very untypical neo-classical portal ). it houses the village's museum as well.


church st. peter & paul. it was probably build around 1200, so it is a verrrry old church. love the wooden bell tower.

by the canal.

sehestedt is divided by the canal and to reach the other side of the village ( and vice versa ) you have to cross it via a ferry.

found some lovely sunshine yellow flowers. these are birdsfoot trefoils.

there was a short rain shower rushing over us as we walked on. this was our first encounter with one of the huge ships on the canal.

say hello to the nautilus. this wasn't even the biggest ship.

as the sun re-emerged this colossus was approaching us.

hi hooge! it's a gibraltarian freighter.


it shipped chinese cargo.

in contrast you could also witness small sailing boats. this one had something very viking about it. especially with the fish fins at the side.

another random blossom on the roadside. 

the walk along the canal wasn't really that scenic ( as it's simply just walking straight ahead and everything is edged with a little bit of woods on each side ), so we decided to move on and check out a lake nearby called wittensee.

one of the tributary waters of the lake.

lake wittensee. we stayed for a short time to watch some kayaking kids and to enjoy the scenery, but other than that there was not much to do around here. sometimes just sitting around and staring at a body of water is all you need to do. i generally like lakes, rivers & the sea, so these are happy places for me.

one of my favourite things is clouds being mirrored in the water. so dramatic & effective.


it was about time to head to the aschberg, the third highest hill inside the hütten hills nature park. it's about 98 meters above sea level, which is tiny, but huge in a land that's basically without any hills or mountains ( there are some more hills between kiel & lübeck that reach 170 metres, but that's about it -  upper north germany is flat as a fluke ). there's a lodge up on the aschberg which offers hotel rooms, glamping, space for any kinds of festivities, a restaurant and a very fine lookout. we had some very good coffee & cake inside the restaurant and also climbed up the lookout ( where it was very windy ) to get a general view of our surroundings. the trombone choir our landlords were playing in arrived later & played quite a few songs from up above that lookout as well. since it was very gusty there they only played like 3 songs but those three songs were quite nice to hear. it had something very majestic to it.

the globetrotter lodge from the back.

it was built from 2009 to 2014 by prof. moths architekten.

right next to the lodge this guy was demanding some very serious attention: otto von bismarck. he was a very famous politican & the first chancellor of germany. you can find quite a few dedicated memorials throughout our country. they called him iron chancellor because he led the country in a very powerful & take-no-bullshit kind of way. he's still admired ( and also hated ) today, a guy with many facettes & fascinating personality traits. 

the sunlight on the aschberg was horrible, i didn't really get good pictures of the sculpture ( or the lodge in general ), so you have to deal with this picture of the iron chancellor from behind with his most beloved german spiked helmet.

globetrotter lodge front with the little lookout next to it. the lookout was most fascinating to me, and was definitely not made for people with fear of heights because in addition to being high, you could also look down as the floor up there was transparent. suffice to say i loved it. i am absolutely not afraid of heights, as you probably already noticed.

and up we went. the view up there, despite only being some 100 metres above sea level, was absolutely unbeatable. it felt like the very familiar hill scenery of my home area of the thuringian basin. and from up above the landscapes of schwansen also didn't look so flat anymore! down there you can see the glamping site of the lodge.

soft arboreous hills everywhere.

in the back you can see a tiny spot of smoke. there must've been a fire that day, but we never found out about it.

the lodge again, this time with cars & the trombone choir on the far left.


and another picture of the trombone players as they were playing their songs up on the platform. i truly love the architecture of this tower!

Comments

Kyle Studstill said…
Super interesting tower with the band up there! 🔮🙏

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