Berlin is a rich city at a natural
level: there are lakes and parks, a rarity for a great metropolis. In
all this green, however, the mountains are surely missing.
Although the Brandenburg landscape is
very pleasant, especially if you happen to make a car trip without
hurry, there have been various attempts to diversify the flatness:
Teufelsberg is an artificial hill built with the rubble of WWII, as are the Volkspark Friedrichshain and Volkspark Prenzlauer
Berg.
Yet in Berlin you climb anywhere: in
the trees, the bunkers in the industrial areas, even on FlakturmHumboldthain. But a mountain, where you can walk for hours to get out
of breath at the top and enjoy a breathtaking view, is missing.
But for residents is not a serious
problem: in two a half hours from Berlin by car there is a natural
paradise that is called "Saxon Switzerland" (Sächsische
Schweiz), where there are over a thousand scenic peaks reaching
different altitudes.
The mountainous area, near the Elbe -
the river that passes from Hamburg, Dresden and Torgau, where the
Americans met for the first time the Red Army during WWII - is the
goal of a strong German tourism and also a a discrete foreign
tourism.
The best way to visit the area is to
take a tent, set up a base camp at the foot of the mountain and then
find more and different paths to reach the heights. For the lazy
there is also a hotel on top.
Here they went artists belonging to the
current of Romanticism, they left inspired by the wild beauty of this
region. Among them the painter Ludwig Richter and the composer Carl
Maria von Weber.
The most characteristic peak is the
Bastei, with its Basteibrücke, built more than 200 years in wood and
then replaced by a stone in 1851, along with a ruined castle and the
town of Rathen and not far from here is the Königstein fortress, one
of the largest hilltop fortresses in Europe.
All images are under CC Creative Commons (Attribution, Noncommercial, No Derivative Works), please refer to " darioj laganà | www.norte.it "
