On our way to Leipzig we had seen the sign pointing to Colditz. As soon as I saw that sign I knew what my mission was going to be today. I wanted to go there.
To give some background, when I was quite young the only books I was permitted to read were true stories, and for me the best way to inject some excitement and drama into that genre was to read war stories. So I went through quite a phase of reading books like ‘Carve her name with pride’, ‘The wooden horse’, ‘The Berlin bunker’, ‘Reach for the sky’, the list could go on forever. But more importantly right now was that I had read several times ‘The Colditz story’. So just to repeat, I wanted to go there. Justine was more interested in exploring Leipzig and the shopping district, so I left her to that and headed off, the 48kms to Colditz.
As far as I can tell this place doesn’t feature in any guidebooks, and this is reflected in the directional signs and the number of people that are there when you arrive. But arriving there is quite a mission in itself. Driving through tiny little German villages, that have that undisturbed old world charm. The kind of villages where you get stared at by the old folk sitting by the side of the road, because they know that you don’t belong. Little villages consisting of very narrow, small houses constructed out of either stone or plaster, with steep pitched roofs. As you drive through the open country side with vast expanses of wheat and corn, speckled with little areas of woodland, interrupted by these villages, you progressively become lulled into this sense of another time, another place, another world. I found this all quite fitting considering the destination that I had in mind. The only thing that I had to bring me back to the present was the regular bleating of GPS Jenny, but thank God for her, because without her I would never have found the place.
From 20 kms out I was keeping an eye out for what I imagined the castle to be like. From my young days of reading this story, I had in my mind an image of something big, large, imposing, on the top of a hill, overlooking the countryside and constructed out of dark menacing stone. After all it is a castle. At 5 kms out, I couldn’t see her and I was wondering if in fact this Colditz place was the same one of the story fame. At 3 kms I saw her, or at least I thought I did, but she was different to what I had imagined. Located in the middle of the landscape of rolling hills, she was on the side of one of the hills elevated from the houses of the town, but not by much, and big … she certainly wasn’t. Once I had entered Colditz town, I then had to find the castle. I could see it, but I couldn’t find my way to it. Perhaps that was part of the strategy in the WWII POW days, to confuse the escapees. After circling around through the progressively narrowing lanes, I finally got there.
Colditz isn’t large, but as an inmate I can imagine how imposing it would be, especially when you consider that the inmate had no idea how long they would be confined here. You walk up through the entrance, through the outer courtyard, through the inner gates, into the inner courtyard and then into the museum area. There are no tourists here to speak of, only half a dozen while I was there, and all obviously destination tourists. If you weren’t looking for this place, you would never find your way here. To me that was very cool. It was also very cool to remember the stories that I had read all those years ago and to place them in the context of what I was seeing.
There is only a small portion of the castle that you can visit, but enough to give you a sense of what it must have been like. There are items in the museum dating from that time, including items that have only recently discovered. There was a display of a radio receiver room that had been set up in the ceiling, but this was only discovered five years ago, completely untouched. Incredible. There were quite a few portraits displayed executed by one of the resident inmate artists, portraits that included one of a certain Captain Charles Upham, of NZ fame.
There were many accounts of all manner of escape attempts, successful and otherwise, but the one that I was reminded of that appealed the most was the Frenchman who was obviously a fan of the KISS principle. While in the exercise yard he got one of his mates to springboard him using his cupped hands right over the top of the fence. He ran zigzagging down to the treeline in a hail of bullets. He made his way to the village where he stole a bike, and then he rode to Switzerland (and that was without the aid of GPS). I suspect that the fact that he had been an Olympic gymnast helped him with the initial jump. Don’t you love stories like that.
While I was going through my travels down memory lane, Justine was in Leipzig getting followed by strange old men. Men who would enter into pleasant conversation and then proceed to hang around, unable to be shaken off. We haven’t even reached Hamelin (of pied piper fame) yet. But the biggest surprise for her was seeing several NZ Maritime flags in a shop window display. They were doing a promotional on a NZ nautical clothing line. A little unexpected on this side of the world. Leipzig is a beautiful city and very significant city on the world stage of 1989 as we were about to find out, but that is yet to come.
We drove from here to Berlin. Before we got there we made a list of the things that we wanted to see, and even as we were on our way to the hotel we were seeing all these amazing places that we have only heard about and seen pictures of. The Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstaggebaude, the Tiergarten, the TV Tower, … There was a continuous stuttering of “Oh look”, “Wow!”, … coming from the passenger seat. This certainly is an exceptional city.
What is also astounding is the price that this hotel charges for internet use, eight euros an hour for WiFi. Excuse me?! We decided to go down the road a little bit and get it for 60 cents an hour with dinner and beer to match. From our 16th floor window we get an excellent view of what was once East Berlin. How things have changed.
To give some background, when I was quite young the only books I was permitted to read were true stories, and for me the best way to inject some excitement and drama into that genre was to read war stories. So I went through quite a phase of reading books like ‘Carve her name with pride’, ‘The wooden horse’, ‘The Berlin bunker’, ‘Reach for the sky’, the list could go on forever. But more importantly right now was that I had read several times ‘The Colditz story’. So just to repeat, I wanted to go there. Justine was more interested in exploring Leipzig and the shopping district, so I left her to that and headed off, the 48kms to Colditz.
As far as I can tell this place doesn’t feature in any guidebooks, and this is reflected in the directional signs and the number of people that are there when you arrive. But arriving there is quite a mission in itself. Driving through tiny little German villages, that have that undisturbed old world charm. The kind of villages where you get stared at by the old folk sitting by the side of the road, because they know that you don’t belong. Little villages consisting of very narrow, small houses constructed out of either stone or plaster, with steep pitched roofs. As you drive through the open country side with vast expanses of wheat and corn, speckled with little areas of woodland, interrupted by these villages, you progressively become lulled into this sense of another time, another place, another world. I found this all quite fitting considering the destination that I had in mind. The only thing that I had to bring me back to the present was the regular bleating of GPS Jenny, but thank God for her, because without her I would never have found the place.
From 20 kms out I was keeping an eye out for what I imagined the castle to be like. From my young days of reading this story, I had in my mind an image of something big, large, imposing, on the top of a hill, overlooking the countryside and constructed out of dark menacing stone. After all it is a castle. At 5 kms out, I couldn’t see her and I was wondering if in fact this Colditz place was the same one of the story fame. At 3 kms I saw her, or at least I thought I did, but she was different to what I had imagined. Located in the middle of the landscape of rolling hills, she was on the side of one of the hills elevated from the houses of the town, but not by much, and big … she certainly wasn’t. Once I had entered Colditz town, I then had to find the castle. I could see it, but I couldn’t find my way to it. Perhaps that was part of the strategy in the WWII POW days, to confuse the escapees. After circling around through the progressively narrowing lanes, I finally got there.
Colditz isn’t large, but as an inmate I can imagine how imposing it would be, especially when you consider that the inmate had no idea how long they would be confined here. You walk up through the entrance, through the outer courtyard, through the inner gates, into the inner courtyard and then into the museum area. There are no tourists here to speak of, only half a dozen while I was there, and all obviously destination tourists. If you weren’t looking for this place, you would never find your way here. To me that was very cool. It was also very cool to remember the stories that I had read all those years ago and to place them in the context of what I was seeing.
There is only a small portion of the castle that you can visit, but enough to give you a sense of what it must have been like. There are items in the museum dating from that time, including items that have only recently discovered. There was a display of a radio receiver room that had been set up in the ceiling, but this was only discovered five years ago, completely untouched. Incredible. There were quite a few portraits displayed executed by one of the resident inmate artists, portraits that included one of a certain Captain Charles Upham, of NZ fame.
There were many accounts of all manner of escape attempts, successful and otherwise, but the one that I was reminded of that appealed the most was the Frenchman who was obviously a fan of the KISS principle. While in the exercise yard he got one of his mates to springboard him using his cupped hands right over the top of the fence. He ran zigzagging down to the treeline in a hail of bullets. He made his way to the village where he stole a bike, and then he rode to Switzerland (and that was without the aid of GPS). I suspect that the fact that he had been an Olympic gymnast helped him with the initial jump. Don’t you love stories like that.
While I was going through my travels down memory lane, Justine was in Leipzig getting followed by strange old men. Men who would enter into pleasant conversation and then proceed to hang around, unable to be shaken off. We haven’t even reached Hamelin (of pied piper fame) yet. But the biggest surprise for her was seeing several NZ Maritime flags in a shop window display. They were doing a promotional on a NZ nautical clothing line. A little unexpected on this side of the world. Leipzig is a beautiful city and very significant city on the world stage of 1989 as we were about to find out, but that is yet to come.
We drove from here to Berlin. Before we got there we made a list of the things that we wanted to see, and even as we were on our way to the hotel we were seeing all these amazing places that we have only heard about and seen pictures of. The Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstaggebaude, the Tiergarten, the TV Tower, … There was a continuous stuttering of “Oh look”, “Wow!”, … coming from the passenger seat. This certainly is an exceptional city.
What is also astounding is the price that this hotel charges for internet use, eight euros an hour for WiFi. Excuse me?! We decided to go down the road a little bit and get it for 60 cents an hour with dinner and beer to match. From our 16th floor window we get an excellent view of what was once East Berlin. How things have changed.
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