fisherman on loppin lake.
our first full day in loppin was filled to the brim with activities. right after we had breakfast we headed down to the lake and grabbed one of the accommodation's provided rowboats for a paddling adventure! i have never paddled before so it was definitely a new experience for me. after having some problems with the right coordination technique i finally got the hang of it eventually and managed to haul me and my parents all over the lake ( with breaks inbetween and occasional allocations to my father ). i loved that experience a lot! the sun shining down on us and creating glitter all over the water surface, the splash of the water underneath the paddles, cranes flying above us - they are basically like a heraldic animal for the region, roosting two times a year in the region in spring and autumn - and the stops at the shores ( where we found a huge fairy ring of parasol mushrooms or checked out the landing place of the local youth camp ), all of this contributed to an unforgettable memory. paddling will definitely be on my to-do-list again when i return back to the lakes - it's such a special way to get to know the region - especially when you encounter wildlife or can reach insular parts of the lake shores.
the paddling adventure begins.
some stowaway grass-green caterpillars accompanied us on our tour over the lake. this fairly big baby will eventually turn into a birch sawfly, not into a butterfly!
the shores of lake loppin were lined with reed, every once in a while the growth was breached with access possibilites.
too small to paddle through, but eventually we found a bigger access point to reach the northern shores.
sunlight illuminating the reed.
we made a little break at this shore point, checking out the grassland in the back! we found a huge parasol fairy ring, the mushrooms where as big as plates.
the view back towards the direction of loppin.
back on the lake.
little landing stages reached into the water, some were equipped in a way so that you could technically hang out there a little longer - this one had a bench and a table.
some forgotten agricultural equipment.
twinkle, twinkle, little star, not in the sky, but in the water 🌟
the loppin lake is well known to hold riches of carps, but also other fish like pikes & tenches. we encountered a fisherman later on who told us that he visits this lake every year around this time and appreciated the quietness and tranquility of the place.
cranes flying above our heads! from august to october the cranes are stopping in these latitudes to gather energy for their long bird migration into the south. the mecklenburg lakelands are very popular with the birds and provide a true spectactle when they fly over your head with loud trumpeting cries and in a v-line.
next stop was the landing stage of the youth camp, where the kids can also go swimming in the summer. since no one was there when we visited, we felt free to enter the area without fearing that we might get expelled 😂
i would probably have been a happy kid if i had had the chance to be part of this camp in my youth. looks like a place you would want to have as a special place in your memories.
dad exploring the camp grounds.
i found a ruddy darter on the grounds as well!
for the rest of our lake journey i put my camera down and just focussed on rowing the boat back home! it was so nice to concentrate on just the activity alone for once and to take in everything with my eyes and brain only! always taking photos can sometimes take you away from being present in the moment, because you are basically thinking about whether something is worth it to take a photo of, or about the technicalities of a good shot, and it kinda creates a barrier between you and the real world. though for me taking photos helps a lot to deepen the memories i have made, sometimes it's just nice to just exist without ( my self-generated ) pressure to document everything in my life. well, and rowing a boat and taking pictures at the same time is somehow... not conducive 😂
after taking a short break at home ( lunch and lunch nap 😅 ) we decided to visit the damerower werder and the wisent enclosure that is situated on this peninsula between jabelscher see and kölpinsee. the damerower werder peninsula is a protected landscape and wildlife sanctuary of 300 hectares where wisents & deer live all year round and cranes can flock in a little bay of the kölpinsee, the schwenzin. wisents are european bisons and not very common in the wild anymore, but the reservation is integral in preserving some of the last still existing populations with a breeding program.
there are little areas inside the reservation called show enclosures where you can actually encounter the wisents and the deer, especially during the feeding times. mostly you will meet mothers with their calves and young bulls, the older bulls are often loners and protect the groups from the periphery. when we entered the wisent reservation the feeding time just had ended, so we were lucky to meet one of the mother/calf groups. did you know that wisents have a matriarchy? i always love learning about matriarchal social structures in animal kingdom, i feel like we can learn so much through that for our own species as well!
slowly the group left the area to return back into the more primary parts of the reservation again...
...and we continued to explore the peninsula. this is the 'schwenzin', the bay i mentioned before, where birdlife is the most prevalent attraction. we didn't see any cranes ( they only gather in the early morning or in the evening here ), but i spotted some swans!
swans can be so beautiful, but they are also assholes sometimes. just recently i've been witness to a swan fight, which was quite a sight to behold! they bite each other's wings and basically try to drown the enemy, quite a dramatic ( and maybe traumatic ) happening!
can i admit a weird thing i like about water birds? when they dabble for food headfirst! they are such good living buoys 😂
a little tiny iceberg 😅
there were some cute wooden and carved benches all over the reservation, sculptural in their execution! loved this bench with a hunter and his dog looking out to the schwenzin bay! also loved that my dad sat down to pose right next to this couple 😂
there are also red deer living on the peninsula, the stag 'heinrich' is the star of the population! we were really lucky to meet him and one of his betrothed females scouring through the high grass.
those antlers surely were formidable!
discovering some more carved statues! i absolutely adored them! unfortunately i wasn't able to find out the artist. he/she/they really should take proprietary rights for these sculptures, because they were amazing! i am always in awe when people are able to carve something nice and beautiful out of wood.
these sculptures were also telling little stories, like i imagine that this due is a wisent hunter, or was he a wisent turned into a man?
lovely leaf shadows on tree bark.
this wild boar bench was not quite ready yet!
newborn young boars ( virtually - they were freshly born out of the wood ).
right next to the boars - a wolf! also quite new, as the year specification on the base tells us.
i remember this dude being one of the founders of the wisent reservation, but i forgot to note down his name. the reservation was initiated in 1957 and has had lots of breeding successes over the course of time. about 300 calves were born on the peninsula and helped increasing the european population of these massive animals! when they started in 1957 only about 300 specimen were still living worldwide, but now the population increased to 3400 animals again. of course it would be a lot nicer if there were more, but their habitat needs to be very specific, they love huge mixed forest areas with a big compound of dead trees, which are increasingly hard to find in europe, since human settlements and unilateral forest management is limiting their roaming space immensely, and diseases also keep decimating some populations. the most natural and primordial area with perfect living conditions for the european bison can be found in poland, in the białowieża forest.
interesting outgrowth of a dead tree stump.
since the reservation closed at 6 pm we left the place around that time, but did not want to return home to loppin yet. instead we drove to the biggest city in the lake müritz region, waren (müritz), which is about 20 minutes away from the damerower werder peninsula. we wanted to grab a bite at one of the many restaurants this tourist city has to offer, but also my parents wanted to visit the place in which they married 40 years ago and see if the city had changed in any way. this fact made the visit in the early evening hours so much more special to me, i LOVE visiting places of importance in my family history. it's so interesting to me to learn where things began and to connect to the past, also in terms of my own existence in the world and how the places connect to me. we would also later revisit the hotel/bungalow my parents stayed in during their wedding holiday ( it was situated in a different town called klink )!
near the promenade by lake müritz these houses were closely built next to each other, forming some sort of a city wall. they stand on a high terrace that overlooks the lake quite nicely. behind those houses the old city core of waren with the old market and georgenkirche can be explored ( the existence of waren as a town dates back to 1273, though it must've been a village for a few more centuries before that ).
the city harbour of waren with the appartment complex 'hafenresidenz' in the back ( built 2015 - 2016, thomas jäntsch ).
inside this building my parents were married 40 years ago - the city hall of waren on the new market square. built from 1791 to 1797 it was inspired by the english tudor style. the city's historical museum is also located inside.
my parents married here without any family present ( though they all knew that they would hitch during their wedding holiday ) and the witnesses were a couple they got to know back in the hotel in klink. it was a pretty low-key and effortless ceremony, without throwing an over the top party, or any exuberant romantic gestures ( though my mom wore a very pretty white dress and a lace veil and my dad was appropriately dressed with a chic suit - their wedding picture is probably one of my absolute favourite images in our family album 😭❤ ). i always loved the fact that my parents married in such a small circle, and it's been one of my visions since i've been very small up to my earlier teenage years that i wanted to have a very private wedding, too ( until i decided i never want to get married in later years 😂 ). i am still of the opinion that, should i ever find someone i really want to say 'yes' to ( a lot of things just have to click and fit together just right before i ever do that, though 😂 ), i will definitely only have a small wedding, with only the most important friends ( like two of them ) and the closest family ( my parents and my brother maybe ) around. i find the thought so soothing to keep it simple and small, and somehow much more romantic than a big princess marriage. somehow... in my mind i always imagined that a quiet and small intimate ceremony would lead to a long-lasting and trusting marriage filled to the brim with quiet and unspectacular, but immensely warm moments of love. the big and kitschy drama marriage was synonymous with quick and ugly endings, loud and shrill and braggy, and i hated that vision full force. in a world, where everyone wants to have a fairytale wedding, go big or go home, spend thousands of quids and style every little minute detail into perfection, i just always wanted to go the other direction. keep it simple, keep it practical - the magic lies in the small gestures, the seemingly mundane. i also never saw myself looking like a traditional 'bride', wearing a glorious wedding gown, no, i was sure i'd wear a really cool pantsuit with a single carnation stuck in my shirt pocket, wearing some dandy black & white loafers. and the wedding bands would just be really simple, minimal silver rings, so utterly unimposing that you would probably just look at it like it was an accessoire.
it's funny, ( only vaguely ) imagining my own wedding feels so unreal and like a crazy utopia, it doesn't feel like an actual possibility for me at this point in my life. it's not something i absolutely need to experience as well, the whole event just doesn't feel important to me. like i said, maybe i might think different if THE ONE steps into my life, but i still don't see myself wanting to have such an excessive experience. i think that just living together, without being married, can offer the same kind of emotional comfort and it probably reduces the financial loss should you ever part again. in a different part of my practical brain, i also look at marriage as some kind of detention practice, which is maybe a little crazy, yeah, but also... i know that i personally don't like to be locked-up and have my autonomy clipped. maybe it's a deeper sitting fear of dependency issues 😅
anyway, that was my little stance on marriage ^^;
the beautiful city hall up front. seeing it with my own two eyes was like a 8 mm movie started and i could see my parents leaving the registry office, smiling and giddy and kind of wallowing in the knowledge that they just went through a special moment, a moment that would eventually lead to starting a family in which my brother and i would be born into.
another pretty building on the neuer markt square is the 'haus des gastes' ( visitor's house- basically a tourist info and event venue ). a pharmacy is also situated inside the building, historically the first pharmacy of the city. the building was erected around 1800.
neuer markt - new market. it is the second oldest point of the city ( the oldest one can be found on the old market a few streets further ), and its first mention dates back to 1325 - when the older part got merged together with a new city district.
the kugelbrunnen ( bowl fountain ) - such a quirky addition to the historical surroundings. it was created in 2003 by fritz poppe.
when streetart meets surrealism.
this cobblestone street lead to the 'oll kerk', st. george's church. this church was first mentioned in 1237, though it is said that it was still a wooden church then. in the 14th century they finally built the church in brickstone gothical manner until the church was almost destroyed in 1699 after a big fire ( only the massive west tower survived in its entirety ) . its current neo-gothic appearance dates to the 19th century, during that time the church was completely overhauled and rebuilt - receiving a new choir and new arches.
i found this street called schulstraße ( school street ) completely charming, especially in the dark. so atmospheric! the house on the right was formerly a school building.
i couldn't decide which photo i liked better, so i am including this slightly different one as well. and yes, the two people visible here are both my parents roaming around and waiting for me to finish photographing 😅.
the bell tower on the west side of the church.
we left the inner city and made our way back to the harbour ( where we had parked nearby ). from there you could see the church tower again, illuminated in cozy warm light.
last image of the day ( we were quite ready to return home, understandably, after all the rowing and watching wisents and deer and sightseeing in waren ). in the back you can see the kietzspeicher, one of the best preserved granaries in the city ( built in 1835 ). you can find restaurants and cafes inside it and it's also as a holiday appartment complex. the weiße flotte müritz - a shipping company that takes you on boat trips over lake müritz - is also situated here.
this would be our only exploring encounter with the city on this holiday, though we would later return to waren on a rainy and grey day, but only to check out the müritzeum - a museum about the region's nature and history. the museum was quite interesting, though i did not document it properly to eventually include it in one of these posts 😅 guess i will have to return one day and shoot some nice pictures of the amazing architecture and reacquaint myself with the museum!
but until that happens, i guess we have to stay curious.
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