Spree River Archives | FRAME TRAVEL ROAM CAPTURE

It was August 21, 1988, and four people decided to risk their lives crossing the Spree River in an attempt of escaping East Germany in hope for freedom in West Berlin. Three men and a woman risked their lives and watching it today make everything look like a distant event in the past, but that was Berlin at the time.

Escaping East Germany: Swimming Across the Spree into West Berlin in Video

Berlin
3 min read

It was a warm Sunday in August 1988 when a group of tourists visiting Berlin caught something unexpected across the Spree River. People were escaping East Germany; everything can be seen in the video below.

The abandoned boat in the Spree River has a name, even though I couldn’t find one when Fotostrasse visited the place back in July 2016. The boat is called MS Dr. Ingrid Wengler. It was named after the owner’s true love, a surgeon at the Dreifaltigkeits-Hospital in Lippstadt. She died in 1979 and she left a hole that never closed. This is why Franz Günther van de Lücht, the owner of the abandoned boat, says about his loss. But the fact that the boat that carries her name is stuck between the Molecule Man sculpture and Badeschiff leaves another one.

A Visit to an Abandoned Boat in the Spree River

Berlin, Urbex
7 min read

You’ve probably seen an abandoned boat in the Spree river. It lays quiet between the Molecule Man sculpture and Badeschiff, and it has been there since 1996, when German bureaucracy showed Franz Günther Van de Lücht, the boat owner, that his dreams of cruising through the waters wouldn’t become a reality. But there is a lot more to this story than I thought it would be.