Every year at Ascension Day, the deal is the same: eight people, four boats, some body of water to make miserable. Paddle until your hands blister. Do it all on public transit plus one car, show up Wednesday, go home Sunday. It's a logistical nightmare, and yes, it requires actual planning.
The start and the finish both need to be reachable by train, and they need to be connected. Boats, people, bags, food — everything has to end up in the same place on Wednesday. The car needs to get to the endpoint, and the driver needs to get back to the start without losing half the day. And on Sunday, everyone needs to get home to Berlin somehow.
Also: eight hungry people eat and drink a lot. A grocery run halfway through or a stop at a restaurant isn't optional.
The Ascension Day Tour 2025
This year: From Gorgast, just short of Küstrin, down to Niederfinow. About 73 kilometers on the Alte Oder, with a brief hop onto the Finow Canal. We ended up skipping the last stretch because of weather.
You're technically supposed to buy a vignette – five euros per boat, available at tourist information offices and canoe rental places in the Oderbruch. But when we ask at the rental shop, we get a weirdly aggressive answer: "What for? Nobody checks." The money never actually goes toward the rest stops like it's supposed to. "Where did you even hear you need one?" The whole system has apparently fallen apart. He won't sell us the vignettes.
And sure enough: on the entire route, not a single sign, not a single check. Just a mild sense of guilt.
Wednesday – Getting to Gorgast
You could, in theory, take the RB26 from Berlin-Lichtenberg all the way to Gorgast. About an hour on the train, then two kilometers on foot to the Heidehof, where we're spending the first night. Except this year there's replacement bus service, so the route goes through Frankfurt (Oder) and a connecting bus instead.
The car shuttle works, though. One transfer — RB60 to RB26 — and our driver is back at the start.
We set up four tents and two folding boats while thunderstorms drift by uncomfortably close, make dinner, and sleep through until morning.
Thursday – Gorgast to Quappendorf
Alarm at eight. Eight people break down camp and make a real breakfast. It's eleven by the time we're actually on the water, same as every day. You could trim that down by bringing less stuff and being less precious about the morning routine, but where's the fun in that?
The leg is about 22 kilometers. Just before Zechin we turn left into the Schleusengraben, and that's where the first surprise hits. My Jübermann map – admittedly a few years out of date – shows a weir. What we actually find are bottom sills.
We spend a while figuring out the situation. The rigid boats get towed through the churning water. The banks are overgrown with thorny black locusts, which is about as pleasant as it sounds. Eventually it turns out to be faster to just haul the loaded folding boats up the slope and carry them with four people. This is the big upside of traveling as a group: raw manpower solves a lot of problems.
After that, no more portaging. The weed barrier we'd been warned about is open. The landscape switches between bits of forest and bare dikes. The Schleusengraben goes dead straight for kilometers, but there's a decent current pushing you along.
We pull in at the Quappendorf canoe station: A nice little meadow with a bivouac spot right on the water.
The local youth, unfortunately, is celebrating Ascension Day here with great enthusiasm and even greater quantities of beer. They look mildly intimidating in a way that's very on-brand for the region. The portable speaker – about the size of a crate of beer – is pumping out something between Ballermann hits and Rammstein. The site owner takes pity on us and puts us behind his holiday cabins.
To their credit, the kids keep the peace and are already quieting down by ten. The owner had apparently threatened to kick them out. We end the evening around a campfire with the cabin renters, who turn out to be folding-boat paddlers themselves.
Friday – Quappendorf to Neugaul
Friday. The less sporty among us are already feeling their arms. But it's only 20 kilometers, and while the heat is brutal, it's manageable on the water.
In Wriezen, there's a willow lying straight across the river. Fun! We let a somewhat inebriated group of canoeists bash a path through it and then slide over the branches without too much drama. From the bridge above, a woman shouts down to us standing ankle-deep in mud: "My husband says you can't even stand there."
Past the tree, we pull over and restock on food in the quiet little town. We're running short on time now. We push on for the bivouac at Neugaul, where we meet the canoe group again, struggling badly to get their boats out of the water. The "campsite" is a mowed patch of grass, already half-full of camper vans and busier than expected.
There are no toilets. People just go on the grass. If the vignette money actually went where it was supposed to, you'd at least get a porta-potty.
Saturday – Neugaul to Oderberg
Twenty mostly uneventful kilometers. The river is wide and lazy now. Lots of weeds, thick belts of reeds along the banks. Every so often, a dead chicken floats by. We never figure out why. The sun is relentless, but at least we have the water pretty much to ourselves.
We stay the night at the water-trail rest stop in Oderberg, on the Stille Oder — one of the better spots on the route. After gently displacing some anglers from the dock, we camp next to a proper little building with a seating area, running water, and electric light.
Sunday – Oderberg to Niederfinow
Just eleven kilometers to go, and a storm is heading our way. Do we really want to get drenched at the very end? We decide: no. Part of the group takes the bus to Niederfinow to grab the car or catch a train home. The RB60 goes hourly to Eberswalde, and from there the RE3 runs back to Berlin.
The plan had been to cross Oderberg Lake, pass the famous Niederfinow boat lift, and take on the only lock on the route along the Finow Canal. There's a decent spot to take out the boats near the old bascule bridge, not far from the station.
In the end the storm missed us, but you can't know that in advance. No point being annoyed about it.
Wrapping Up
The Oderbruch is underrated for paddling. It's quiet, green, and has more variety than you'd expect — even if it doesn't hold a candle to our Spreewald tours along the Spree and Dahme.
Still, it was a great trip. Nobody got hurt, nothing got lost. A few mosquito bites, some sore muscles, and a whole lot of good memories out on the water.
Translated and edited with some kind of AI, of course.
