Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Sie Koenigstein, eastern Germany on Czech Rep. Border
The Koenigstein in former GDR (East Germany) right after the Berlin Wall fell and you could travel freely in what had been behind the Iron Curtain. It's a fortress from the early Saxon Kings built to keep the Slavic armies across the Elbe away. It's a sandstone butte that now has an elevator running up the core of it to the castle on top (also many storerooms and fighting redoubts carved out of the sides). There is a water well dug through it too so during seiges the Saxons could hang for months against the hordes attacking.
When we were going up on the elevator the old operator told us to do something in German and when we ignored him and told him in English that we didn't speak German he almost started crying he was so happy. He stopped halfway up and ran into a closet and came out with a dusty old tourist manual from pre-Soviet invasion in English and said we were the first American or British tourists since before WWII! It was beautiful view at the top of the winding Elbe and the great forests and other rock spires of the "Saxon Switzerland". It's a very unkown area to most tours but very well known to rock climbers. It's sort of like Bryce and Zion National Parks in Utah but much more beautifully wooded.
I once worked on a ship when the Polar Ice Cap had broken up off Pt Barrow Alaska in the US Arctic Ocean. There was one sunny clear day with virtually no wind. The Beaufort Sea formed a perfect mirrorlike surface the reflected the symmetric double of the icebergs floating in the water. The blue sky was reflected in between and everything just bizarrely buzzed out into this fantasy world of what looked like giant ice-cubes floating through the air. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, before or since.
The Koenigstein in former GDR (East Germany) right after the Berlin Wall fell and you could travel freely in what had been behind the Iron Curtain. It's a fortress from the early Saxon Kings built to keep the Slavic armies across the Elbe away. It's a sandstone butte that now has an elevator running up the core of it to the castle on top (also many storerooms and fighting redoubts carved out of the sides). There is a water well dug through it too so during seiges the Saxons could hang for months against the hordes attacking.
When we were going up on the elevator the old operator told us to do something in German and when we ignored him and told him in English that we didn't speak German he almost started crying he was so happy. He stopped halfway up and ran into a closet and came out with a dusty old tourist manual from pre-Soviet invasion in English and said we were the first American or British tourists since before WWII! It was beautiful view at the top of the winding Elbe and the great forests and other rock spires of the "Saxon Switzerland". It's a very unkown area to most tours but very well known to rock climbers. It's sort of like Bryce and Zion National Parks in Utah but much more beautifully wooded.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bamba_boy
I once worked on a ship when the Polar Ice Cap had broken up off Pt Barrow Alaska in the US Arctic Ocean. There was one sunny clear day with virtually no wind. The Beaufort Sea formed a perfect mirrorlike surface the reflected the symmetric double of the icebergs floating in the water. The blue sky was reflected in between and everything just bizarrely buzzed out into this fantasy world of what looked like giant ice-cubes floating through the air. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, before or since.
- Two years in northern Yemen (late 80s)
- Trekking through Borneo (2004)
- Bobo Dioulasso, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) in 1982-83
- Two months of living in a 6-person camp in the middle-of-nowhere Alaska ~ nearest "neighbor" was a 2-person weather station an hour helicopter flight away (1981)
- A week spent in a rural village in Cambodia building houses (2007)
- Lake Awasa, Ethiopia (1979-80)
The list could go on for a while ... but I think these are probably the most remote or off-the-beaten path places I've been. My username probably should have been "Wanderlust".
Cox's Bazaar and the Sundarbans in Bangladesh, respectively the world's longest stretch of unbroken sand beach and largest tidal mangrove forest
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.