Experience nature

Brandenburg relaxes. Recuperation in the countryside. For anyone who is looking for peace and relaxation and who fancies nature, the unspoilt Brandenburg countryside with its 15 extensive conservation areas, its lakes, forests, soft hills and its pasture landscapes offers everything that mind and soul need for recovery. About a third of the state consists of extensive conservation areas, where you can find new composure, far from the noise of everyday life.

The extensive conservation areas, which are attractive for tourists, are located in traditional areas that encourage relaxation such as the Märkische Schweiz (Mark Brandenburg Switzerland) or the Nationalpark Unteres Odertal in Uckermark (Lower Oder Valley National Park). For instance, with the Spreewald biosphere nature reserve, Brandenburg has a biosphere nature reserve unparalleled in Central Europe, which is protected by UNESCO and which is characterised by numerous narrow watercourses and marshy grounds. Visitors glide in a canoe or in a rowing boat between water lilies through the canals with their many wooden bridges and enjoy the peacefulness while having the chance to watch rare or even endangered species of animals: cranes, for instance, sea eagles and otters.

But the extensive conservation areas also house regions that are often adventurous and so far unknown: huge former and partly  wild military training areas, of which large areas have stayed unused - as for instance in the Schlaube valley or the Nuthe-Nieplitz nature parks – and former regions along the border between the once divided parts of Germany like the Prignitz (Biosphere Reserve River Landscape Elbe). The meadows of the Oder valley along the German-Polish border in the Lower Oder Valley National Park and landscapes arising from former mining activities in the Naturparks Niederlausitzer Heidelandschaft (Lower Lusatia Heathland Nature Parks) and the ridge of land of Lower Lusatia are also part of these. In the ridge of land, a “new land of lakes“ has developed from a bizarre “lunar landscape“ with more than 20 former coal mines that have been flooded.