Germany's Fairytale River Delta | I Paddled Through the Spreewald

Hey guys, it's me again, Hannah Hummel from DW Travel. As you can see, today I'm traveling through one of Germany's most beautiful regions, Spreewald. It's only 80 kilometers away from Berlin. It's a nature-lover's paradise with countless small waterways that can be explored by canoe, bicycle or barge. Climate change is already causing problems here, but fortunately this kind of travel is environmentally friendly. The Spreewald is also home to the Sorbs, an ethnic minority with their own language, culture, tradition and costumes. I'm going to show you a truly gorgeous landscape that combines nature and culture in the most beautiful way. Are you ready? Then let's go! You can easily reach the Spreewald by train. It only takes an hour to travel from Berlin to the heart of the Spreewald, Lübbenau. I start my trip at the harbour. This is where tours with typical Spreewald boats begin. I'll take a ride in one of them later in my trip. But first I want to paddle through Spreewald because those are the kind of videos that I always see from friends. It looks like so much fun and then I can enjoy the peace and quiet by myself. You can rent paddle boats in almost every town. A one-seat kayak costs 24 euros a day and a two-seater 32 euros. I'm given some information about the area. Martin Richter shows me a nice route that ends in Lede, which is said to be one of the most beautiful villages in the Spreewald. And then we're off. But we're not looking for an overpass yet, because so far every paddler has been here before. Okay, good to know. Let's see how this goes. At first it's not so easy. Okay, that was a close one. But I soon find my rhythm. So peaceful here, right? I think this is going to be nice. The Spreewald is Europe's largest lagoon landscape with 350 canals and waterways. The water comes from the river Spree and Wald means forest, hence the name Spreewald. Large parts of the area are a UNESCO-designated biosphere reserve. There are 500 kilometres worth of canals and waterways here, but I don't think I'll manage all of them today. According to experts, the Spreewald was formed during the last ice age, when the glaciers melted. But there's also an old local legend that explains this natural wonder. Once upon a time, the fields here were being ploughed by oxen when they were disturbed by the devil. So they scattered and ran all over the place, ploughing all of the canals into the region here. It's a bit more poetic than melting glaciers, right? It slowly gets busier and I'm approaching my destination, the village of Lede. Right, now I just have to make it to shore without getting wet. Not as easy as it looks. OK. Made it. Here in Lede, there's an open-air museum where you can learn a lot about the Sorbs, a Slavic ethnic minority who have lived in the Spreewald for centuries. Hi. Nice to meet you. I'm Hanna. Wow, OK, I'm going to assume that was Sorbian? Yeah, that was lower Sorbian and I'm very thankful that you're here and I'm giving you bread and some salt. Oh, thank you. Do I just... Yes. Do I just dip it? Yes. Is this traditional then? Yes, that's traditional. It's good. Yeah, that's really good. I've never had bread with salt before. Saskia Bugaj leads me through the museum village. Here you can explore Sorbian houses from earlier centuries. So, welcome to 1840. Wow, it's really like stepping into a totally different world. Yes, it is, it is. This is the only room in the whole house and it's a room for living, sleeping, eating, everything happened here. And you see the bed, it's quite large, but you have to imagine upstairs there is a sleeping space for the grandparents, the parents, the children, and downstairs in the children box the smaller children and if they had other children that didn't fit in the bed, they will sleep above in the attic. And how many people would live in every room? Up to 15 people. Wow. So, I mean, there's one question that's coming to mind though, because if there were so many children around all the time, but also so many people living here, how were those babies made? Don't worry, we have many silent and quiet places around the house and everywhere in the Spreewald, so people had enough time and enough privacy to make this much babies. On our way through the museum village, Saskia tells me some more stories from earlier times. She also draws my attention to the carved house gables. This is the Snake King, a legendary figure of the Spreewald. We have a fairytale for children, we tell them if you got the crown of the Snake King, then you will have a lot of money and jewels and luck every day. And so the children try to catch the snakes maybe and look after them if they can get the crown. Well, I have to say, this is also a very beautiful dress that you have on. Thank you. Very nice. But would you wear this every day? No, this is for special occasions, like when I'm invited to a wedding, then I will wear this as a dress. And this is also very colorful and very expensive because the embroidery is handmade. So this is for special events and my everyday dress will be a lot less colorful and less expensive. Saskia is proud to be Sorbian. She inherited the language and traditions from her parents and grandparents and now passes them on to her children. So how do the Sorbian people keep their culture alive nowadays? We try to celebrate our traditional occasions and I think a key piece is to contain and to live the language in daycare and in schools. Children will also speak Sorbian and will learn it. And yeah, we try a lot, but it's very hard because only a few people, I think up to 60,000 only are Sorbian or see themselves as Sorbian. Now another challenge awaits me. Step one complete. This is really old school. In the museum village Lede, you can also try to do some things yourself, like washing clothes by hand, just like in the old days. What do you think? Am I doing this right? Although there's still quite a few stains on there. My tour through the Spreewald continues by bike. You can rent bikes everywhere for about 10 euros a day. The Spreewald is famous not only for its beautiful landscape, but also for the delicious Spreewald pickles that can be found everywhere. In every shape and flavor. Okay. Look, they even have a pickle radler, so beer and lemonade, with a cute little picture of a pickle on it. And pickle schnapps. Can you imagine? Cheers. First time trying the Spreewald pickle? Very good. And off we go. The cycle paths are perfect, and one of the routes also has a funny name. Even the cycle path is named after the pickles. Gurkenradweg. I cycle into the town of Burg, where I have an appointment at the Biosphere Reserve. Paul Jarek and his colleagues help protect the rivers, moors and forests. The Spreewald is actually a fertile region, but climate change is also making itself felt here. The last summers were far too dry. You probably didn't notice it that much as a normal tourist, because you could still drive canoe and car in the Spreewald. Otherwise, it was also the case that in the Spreewald this summer, river waters were dry. An example of this is the Gänsefließ in the Unterspreewald, which supplies a huge Ehrenwald, an Ehrenauwald complex, with water. That has completely dried up. We were able to see how the beavers, for example, built into the water from below. But we were also able to see how the shells were dry and how the fish tried to escape through the fish nets, which are found in most reservoirs, to water-like areas. Can you just watch how the Spreewald is getting drier? Or are there maybe also projects here to save the Spreewald? We are lucky in the Spreewald that in the last century, people have created dams along the Spree to keep the water in the area and thus operate agriculture. So the Spree, when it enters the Spreewald, is cascaded up to the end, which makes it possible to keep the water in the landscape for a long time. And is tourism also a problem here? In recent years, there has been the development of a master plan called Cano-tourism, which has specifically aimed at checking and overtaking this water tourism. A large signposting concept was created, so that the people who come to visit us now, also on the basis of the maps they have, know which rivers they are driving along. Important, protected natural objects, organisms, biotopes and species, but also the recreational value of the landscape that has made it accessible to people. Here in Burg, there is also a large harbour, which is a good starting point for a Spreewald tour. And now, since I've seen so many people do it, I'm going to do the typical tourist thing and take a trip in the classic Spreewald barge. On weekdays it's not so busy, but on the weekend you should definitely book your barge tour in advance. Tino, my ferryman, knows the business from the ground up. I've always been on the ferry when I was a child. I got my driver's license almost ten years ago. And I've been here full-time for almost nine years. But actually your whole life? Yes, you could say that. My grandmother used to live in Burg, so did my father. And that's why I've always been on the river. A true local boy, Tino Meyer also knows about the figures in Spreewald legends. For example, the Lutzkis. Well, I've been wanting to visit Spreewald for so long and it definitely didn't disappoint. The landscape here is really like something out of a fairy tale. Which makes it all the more difficult to see how badly this region has been affected by climate change. So hopefully it will still survive in the future and you'll get the chance to visit it too. See you next time. Bye for now.