MESMERISING MOSAICS TOWERING MEMORIALS
ENDLESS OSTALGIE
May 08 ⇾ May 16
October 02 ⇾ October 10
In addition to our regular group departures to East Germany, we also offer tour services for private travel parties and lone wolves alike. As a traveller-oriented boutique operator, tailored trips and bespoke adventures are our bread and butter. Get in touch for more info on our Bespoke East Germany Tours!
DAY 1 TO DAY 2 – East Berlin
Wilkommen in Berlin! Breakfast-time meet-and-greet with your guide at our hotel of choice in East Berlin, the capital of the bygone German Democratic Republic.
We’ll spend the next two days exploring the lesser known sights of East Berlin, a diversely multilayered and endlessly fascinating urban concoction of GDR-made architectural wonders, modernist mosaics, socialist-realist monuments, and magnificent Soviet war memorials.
Being this a Soviet Tours journey, we will keep safe distance from overrated (and overcrowded) touristy spots – such as Checkpoint Charlie and East Side Gallery – and include, instead, a de rigueur visit to the Soviet-German Museum Karlshorst.
Overnights in East Berlin.
DAY 3 – POTSDAM
Early morning visit to the extensive ensemble of USSR-era heirlooms dotting Wünsdorf-Waldstadt, a former Soviet military city home to one of the last Lenin statues still left standing in Germany.
We’ll then drive south onto the small town of Baruth to marvel at the local Soviet War Memorial and then continue west to check out the remnants of Altes Lager, one of the largest Soviet airports in East Germany.
After lunch we’ll make a quick stop at a Soviet military graveyard near Beelitz and then devote the last hours of the day to the elegant city of Potsdam, the discreet capital of the German state of Brandenburg and the very place where Stalin, Truman and Churchill met to shape the future of post-war Europe in the summer of 1945.
Overnight in Potsdam.
DAY 4 – HALLE NEUSTADT
In the morning we will tour Brandenburg an der Havel, a picturesque East German city with plenty of Soviet and GDR relics on display.
We’ll then enter Sachsen-Anhalt, one of the least known German states, which also goes by the curious epithet Land of the Early Birds.
First we’ll stop in Magdeburg, the state capital, and then move further south to the steampunk satellite city of Halle Neustadt, a broken communist dream of raw concrete and monumental public art.
Overnight in Halle.
DAY 5 – LEIPZIG
We’ll leave Halle after breakfast and – after a quick socialist-era public art photo stop in Merseburg – head for Leipzig, a major industrial and cultural centre of the former GDR and one of the most significant places in the whole history of Germany.
We’ll spend the rest of the day touring the many wonders of Leipzig’s socialist-era material legacy and then head south towards the tranquil city of Zeitz, in the triangle of the federal states Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia and Saxony.
Overnight in Zeitz.
DAY 6 – KARL MARX STADT
In the morning hours we’ll enter the charming state of Thuringia, also known as Green Heart of Germany, and pay a visit to the austerely beautiful city of Gera with its fair share of Soviet and East German architectural and monumental marvels.
Around lunchtime we’ll then find ourselves in Karl-Marx-Stadt, a nostalgic socialist-modernist town with a truly impressive assortment of GDR-era public artworks, including a world-famous gargantuan bust of none other than Karl Marx himself.
If time allows, we’ll also visit the nearby Kosmonautenzentrum Sigmund Jähn, dedicated to the first German citizen to travel into outer space.
Overnight in Karl-Marx-Stadt.
DAY 7 – LUSATIA
After breakfast we’ll head for the former mining town of Freiberg and then further east towards Dresden, where we’ll visit the spectacular Kulturpalast, an architectonic doppelgänger of the now demolished Palast der Republik in Berlin.
In the afternoon we’ll leave Dresden and enter the historical region Lusatia, homeland of the Sorbs, a predominantly Catholic Slavic minority speaking a peculiar language closely related to Polish.
Highlights of our Lusatian detour will include the traditional Sorbian villages of Chrósćicy and Pančicy-Kukow, a few rarely seen GDR-era masterpieces of monumental art and a traditional Sorbian dinner in the quaint historical centre of Bautzen (or Budyšin in Sorbian).
Overnight in Bautzen.
Bespoke Experiences • Traditional Sorbian dinner in Bautzen and in-depth GDR cultural immersion with the locals in Eisenhüttenstadt.
DAY 8 – EISENHÜTTENSTADT
Morning drive through the socialist-heritage-rich cities of Hoyerswerda and Cottbus and lunch in the border town of Gubin, home to a very peculiar monument dedicated to Wilhelm Pieck, the first president of the German Democratic Republic.
We’ll then make a short hop across the frontier and enjoy a melancholic drive through the Lubusz Voivodeship before eventually reaching Eisenhüttenstadt, formerly known as Stalinstadt, an archetypical socialist idyll full of astounding architectural gems and monumental beauties.
Overnight in Eisenhüttenstadt
DAY 9 - BACK TO BERLIN
We’ll start the day with a visit to Frankfurt Oder and its unique Karl Marx Memorial and then roll through a romantic landscape of fens, reedbeds and grass-covered natural banks flanking the flood plain of the Oder, a highly symbolic river drawing the current border between Poland and Germany.
After lunch we’ll make a final stop at the humbling war memorial commemorating the Battle of the Seelow Heights, one of the last assaults on large entrenched defensive positions of the Second World War and the theatre of some of the most bitter fightings between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army.
In the late afternoon hours we’ll eventually return to Berlin for a last pint of refreshing German lager and final auf Wiedersehen to those not travelling north on our highly recommended the Baltic Sea Extension (see below).
End of the tour.
BALTIC SEA EXTENSION | 3 DAYS - 2 NIGHTS | 995 €
After a restoring night at our hotel of choice in Berlin, we’ll embark on a three-day odyssey along the shorelines of the Ostsee, as the Germans call the Baltic Sea, from a lost Soviet graveyard near the eastern fishing port of Ueckermünde to an Estonian-made Lenin still standing in the outskirts of Schwerin in the Mecklenburg Lake Plateau. Main attractions along our gallivanting around the Baltic lowlands will include the white cliffs of Rügen, the no-frills port city of Rostock, the graceful Stralsund War Memorial, the halcyon sceneries of the Bay of Greifswald, and the secluded hamlet of Peenemünde, the site where the world's first functional large-scale liquid-propellant rocket, the V-2, was developed Get in touch for more info on our Baltic Sea Extension!
3295 €
INCLUSIONS
Double/twin hotel accommodation (breakfast included), private transport in Germany (car/minivan), all entrance fees, English-speaking guiding service, 24/7 on-site and remote assistance.
EXCLUSIONS
Single supplement, international flights, main meals (lunches and dinners), extra drinks, visa fees (if required), tips, travel insurance.
© Gianluca Pardelli | www.gianlucapardelli.comUns trennt von gestern kein Abgrund,
sondern die veränderte Lage.