Frederick the Great stands on a pedestal in Letschin, and the people of the Oderbruch have good reason to remember him. In the mid-eighteenth century, the Prussian king ordered the draining of this vast marshy floodplain of the Oder, a huge engineering project that created new farmland and villages for thousands of settlers. He is said to have declared that he had conquered a province in peace. The landscape today is a flat, fertile plain of fields, ditches and dykes, stretching to the Polish border.
The Oderbruch has a dramatic modern history too. In April 1945, the Soviet army launched its final offensive on Berlin from the bridgeheads across the Oder, and the battle of the Seelow Heights, on the ridge at the western edge of the plain, was one of the bloodiest of the war. A memorial and museum at Seelow tell the story, and the landscape still bears traces of the fighting.
The riding here is flat and open, with long straight roads across the fields and big skies overhead. The views are wide, and the light is beautiful in the evening. The roads can be windy, and agricultural traffic is common, especially at harvest time. Some roads are lined with trees, and the villages may have cobbled streets. The Oder dyke offers a fine ride along the river, with views into Poland.
The nearest dependable fuel and food are in Seelow or the larger villages along the main roads; Letschin is a place to look, not to shop. A local inn may offer hearty Brandenburg dishes, such as potatoes with quark and linseed oil. The Lusatian lakes lie far to the south, a long ride along the eastern edge of the country.