On a particularly misty weekend in Autumn we decided to pick a random destination within 2-3 hours of Berlin and go exploring. We picked Waren (Müritz) because, being honest, it was the first interesting looking town we spotted that was directly reachable on the RE5 train from Berlin, and it was surrounded by a bunch of lakes.
With this vast amount of research done, we set off. I’ve been recently bitten by the film-bug, but I decided to take my trusty Fuji XT-4 along for the ride anyway, in the hopes that at the very least I’d capture some small-town-moody-Autumn vibes.
Exploring the old town of Waren (Müritz)
The first stop was Waren’s old town, which was predictably small but surprisingly full of interesting (to me, anyway) old buildings. Unfortunately the lighting was super flat, but it’s Germany in October – what are you gonna do.
The flat light combined with the super interesting old buildings had me channeling my inner Toshio Shibata and playing ‘the sky is lava’. I’m still quite happy with some of these building shots, even if some of them are super abstract.
Even without the best weather, it was super interesting to wander around the old town looking at the historic buildings, cozy cafes, and little antique shops.
Hiking in Waren (Müritz)
After a few hours of exploring the town and drinking enough caffeine to kill a small animal we decided to burn off some energy by hiking south, down between the two lakes (Binnenmüritz and Feisnecksee) and into the forest just outside of Waren.
In doing so, we stumbled upon a super cool Watertower-turned-hotel, where we got chatting with one of the groundskeepers outside, who were super nice! If we come back, we’d definitely stay here for a night just for the novelty.
The entire area was packed full of crazy old manors and villa’s, which I of course tried to get a few interesting shots of, as well as the moody lakes. The Autumn vibes were in full swing.
And that’s pretty much it! You can definitely cover Waren within a day, but I’m sure a weekend in summer would be worth it as well. If you have more time, you can even go and visit actual real life bears in the forest (on the list for next time as it was not easily reachable via public transport and we didn’t fancy cycling in the cold).
