Day 12 - Parks and Poland

A delicious breakfast and a puzzling exit from Halbendorf... blazes lead nowhere. Left to our own devices, we're hoping this abandoned railroad is part of the trail:

But it's not. We wander around the woods for an hour or so, occasionally popping out onto a road or farm, before a nice old woodsman on a bicycle sets us straight.

Today is a day of fancy parks. In the mid 19th century, one of the hobbies of the area's nobility was landscaping, and a few took it to extremes. The trail takes us by Friedrich Hermann Rötschke's Kromlauer Park (the German wikipedia entry is much better than the English one, naturally), home to gigantic rhododendrons and azaleas which are reportedly quite impressive in the spring. Also here are some bizarre basalt sculptures including the famous Rakotz Bridge, which isn't a bridge at all really, just a large decorative arch.

A quaint private small-gauge railroad (unrelated to the abandoned ties we found earlier) links all the major sites of the area, once for transporting wood and coal, and now as a treat for tourists. We keep crossing the tracks but sadly never catch sight of the train. There are some cute pictures out there though.

Our next park is the Berg Park -- not really much of a mountain, but still good scenery. A horse-drawn wagon pulls the sightseers through the sights:

What sights? I'm not really sure. There are some excellent old trees here, towering beeches and gnarly old alders.

We wind down through ruins and tiny stone alleys into the spacious town square of Bad Muskau, On the east side of town is our final park, Muskaur Park, also known as Schloss Park after its centerpiece, the palatial castle (Schloss) of the Pückler family.

This was once the home of the famous park-maker Hermann Ludwig Heinrich Fürst von Pückler-Muskau, and the surrounding park is his greatest creation. The building was seriously damaged by Allied bombing in WWII, and was only recently restored when the park was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

(Pückler-Muskau actually sold this palace at one point to fund another park he was working on in Cottbus, which includes his grassy pyramid tomb. We thought the trail was going to take us through there but sadly it didn't; lots of funny business around Cottbus... )

There are gardens, lots of paths, lovely old trees, and bridges, including a foot bridge over the Neisse River -- because half the park is actually in Poland now, thanks to the Potsdam Conference of 1945. There aren't actually any trail blazes left at this point, so we assume the trail takes a little jaunt to Poland and back, who could resist?

The map says the trail just follows the Neisse south (on the German side), passing a bigger bridge on the way out of town. This used to be a complicated border crossing with major security and a big customs office, but now it's all abandoned. and the traffic flows freely. Signs on the Polish side advertise cheap gas and cigarettes.

After following the bike trail along the river for a few kilometers, we nab the last room at the last hotel on the way out of town, not quite a palace, but good enough for us.