"Time goes wonderfully slowly in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern" (the name of the state in which we are based). That's been the opening sentence in several books and descriptions of the area; almost as though they're copying from each other, or as if there really is nothing else to say about the place. Bismark reportedly said that when the end of the world comes, he wants to be in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern — because it's always 50 years behind everywhere else. The local newspaper does nothing to contradict this impression. The lead story on the first page shows an old lady in her front room fingering a large plant: "it's never had so many flowers before".

The network of rivers and lakes here covers an area roughly the size of North Wales, or of the whole of Norfolk and most of Suffolk combined - and all of it fantastically beautiful. You can read a little about it here or look at it on Google Images. It’s not really a tourist area: nearly everyone is German, and mostly north German at that. One evening I was chatting with some visitors. "Of course", they said, "this is a good place to come because it's so much cheaper than on the coast. Everything is so expensive there". If ever somewhere was undervalued it's this place.

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