William Thirteen finds royal history and great paddling in the pleasant Brandenburg village of Gosen…
In 1752 Prussian ruler Frederick the Great took time out between war with Austria and witty banter with his friend Voltaire to found the small village of Gosen. Gosen and neighboring village Neu Zittau were intended to be home to the workers of the new weaving and spinning mills being established in the area as part of Frederick’s efforts to develop the local Brandenburg economy.
In the intervening two and a half centuries much has changed in Gosen. Much that is, except its size. Visiting Gosen last week I stepped off the bus and found myself in a still tiny town square framed by a church, a firehouse and an ice cream shop.
What attracted me to the village was the same quality that caught the attention of the emperor—its proximity to water.
Gosen lies at the edge of one of Berlin’s many lakes (the city has over fifty depending on how you count) and while Frederick found the water access ideal for transport of goods to and from the village, today its location between the lake and a nature preserve makes it a popular destination for day trippers from the city seeking to wile away an afternoon on the water.
A short walk from the bus stop brought my traveling companions and me to Gosen’s main boat rental place, a collection of ramshackle sheds and a camper set up at the water’s edge. Both kayaks and canoes were available and while the wooden kayaks were both less expensive and better styled, gauzy childhood memories of summer camp led me to choose a canoe—or a ‘Canadier’ as they’re called in Gosen.
We collected our paddles and a few short minutes later my friends and I were out on the water endangering each other with our ill executed strokes and rusty steering skills. Thankfully Berlin is flat and the local waters reassuringly calm, so our initial lack of control proved more amusing than alarming. Before long we were awkwardly navigating down long green aquatic avenues beneath the leafy canopy of the nature preserve. The stillness of the forest calmed our urbane chatter and we drifted along almost…