st. marien. the town of plau am see is about 20 kilometers west of malchow and was our next day's destination. it's situated at the plauer see - the third largest lake in mecklenburg-pomerania! the name plau derives from the word plawe - which means rafting in polabian ( a western slavic language spoken once in the northeast of germany around the elbe river between the 7th and early 19th century ). rafting is defininitely a thing that you do in the mecklenburg lakelands and when plau am see was first mentioned in 1235, it was a village of fishermen & raftsmen, thus absolutely ringing true to its name. it's a rather interesting thing knowing that the northeast of germany has slavic roots, something i feel some sort of kinship over. all the north eastern states of germany, including lower saxony, schleswig-holstein, brandenburg, saxony, saxony-anhalt & thuringia had ties to the western slavs, this ethnic group most certainly informed their histories during the dark...
travels. photography. memory diary.