Postcard from... Travemünde

Walking onto the ferry in the rain, I was joined by lady pushing her bicycle, baskets filled with shopping, puddles gathering in the creases of the plastic bags. As we found a sheltered spot beneath the bridge, she looked me up and down.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

I told her I was walking to the border. To look at the point on the beach where the country was once divided. She looked out across the river, into the driving rain, and shook her head.

“There’s nothing there,” she said, pityingly.

I shrugged. She didn’t seem to know how to take this, and the rest of the short voyage passed in silence. Only as we reached the opposite bank and she wheeled her bicycle up the ramp did she turn and speak to me again.

“On the road, there’s a sign. Not much, but there you go. On the beach though… Pffft. Nothing.”

She waited a second, to see if I would follow the insinuation. There’s nothing to see. Turn around and go back. But I just smiled and followed her off the ferry. Now it was her turn to shrug. So be it, her body communicated, as she climbed onto her bicycle and rode gracefully away, weaving between the standing water on the road.

Postcard from... Dublin

Dublin 15 is full of rats. There is one crossing the four lanes of Snugborough Road, oblivious to the cars whooshing past and my shadow on the sidewalk. It just scampers along on whatever business large rats have in broad daylight, stopping at the curb for a moment, before scurrying into the shrubbery next to the sidewalk. I walk further down the road past the National Aquatic Centre, with the ringing of the last ice cream van of the dead summer disappearing in the estates on my right. The shrubbery is rustling constantly; with every step I seem to startle another greyish-brown critter with a wormtail, scampering away from empty packs of crisps deeper into the undergrowth. The midges dance on the Tolka river in the last rays of sunshine the day has to offer. In the shadows of the outer walls of the estates there’s the smell of rotten leaves, of trampled-flat ice cream-wrappers, and long-dead things.

By Marcel Krueger

Postcard from... Rannoch Moor

Rannoch Moor. For years I have been wanting to take the Caledonian Sleeper, to climb aboard the train at Euston station, to fall asleep somewhere between Stafford and Crewe, and to wake with the glens, the lochs and the mountains of Scotland outside the carriage window… and at the centre of that dream has always been the moment that I would lay eyes on Rannoch Moor. I am not sure why this high, open, expanse of boggy moorland, across which the railway tracks make their lonely progress, so captured my imagination… but it did. And now, as the landscape opens out and the snow – up to now visible only on the higher tops – seems to be coming down to meet us, I am finally there.

I don’t know how long it takes us to cross the moor, as we stand at one end of the carriage and move back and forth, the views out of either side of the train such that the only vocabulary that lands on the notebook in my hand is patently not up to the task of doing justice to the scene. Bleak. Beautiful. Breathtaking. Put down the pen and just look. The sky is blue, the light is soft, and the moor is lightly covered with snow. I can feel the images becoming imprinted on my memory. This is what I have been waiting for, and yet I could not have imagined it would be like this... Rannoch Moor.

Postcard from… Świnoujście

On the beach the few walkers out on the sands leaned forward into the wind that whipped in from the east, as if delivered straight from Kaliningrad or beyond. A young couple had come out from behind the dunes with their pushchair but had immediately seen sense, and were struggling back up the slope as the wheels dug ever deeper into the sand. We pulled our hats down over our ears, our jackets up to our chins. The next town was six kilometres away. An unspoken moment and we all knew we were not going to make it, that we would take the train instead.

None of this, not the cold nor the the wind, seemed to bother the fisherman in the shallows. He continued to work, the icy waters up to his knees. Patiently dredging his net before leaning forward to inspect his catch. Sweep, bend, check. Sweep, bend, check. We could not work out what he was looking for, and it would have been wrong to shout across the small, Baltic waves, to ask. So we pressed on as he continued to work, not even pausing to glance up as the container ship passed by the lighthouse and the sea wall, aiming for safe harbour. Sweep, bend, check. Sweep, bend, check. Soon he was out of sight, as we found sanctuary behind the dunes.

Photo: Katrin Schönig

This postcard is from a moment on one of two walks Elsewhere editor in chief Paul Scraton made for his essay in the digital-only zero edition of the journal, that was released earlier this week as part of our crowdfunding campaign.

Postcard from... Güstebieser Loose

To get a glimpse of the past, we stand atop the dyke. To our left, the Oder river. To our right, the fields of the Oderbruch. This was once a marshy land where the river split and wandered, flooding every year. In the 18th century Frederick the Great ordered the drainage of the Oderbruch to create new agricultural land, and dykes such as this one were built to hold the water back. New villages sprung up and the colonists erected statues and named their inns for the King that had pulled this new land from the swamp: Alte Fritz.

Güstebieser Loose stands at the eastern edge of the Oderbruch. In the summer a ferry links the village with Poland on the opposite shore, but out of season we have the place to ourselves. The road breaches the dyke on its way to the banks of the river, passing through a hundred metres or so of marshland before it ends at the water’s edge, and it is this sliver of land that allows us to imagine the landscape as it was before the Oderbruch was tamed by Fritz’s plan.

Photo: Katrin Schönig

Postcard from... Darwin

Only a handful of people live in the old mining town of Darwin, just beyond Death Valley. At first glance it appears that this is a true ghost town, where mobile phones have no reception and the nearest open supermarket is over a hundred kilometres away. But then we met Jay. Jay came to Darwin a few years ago… or was it that he moved into his current trailer then as his house had burned down… it was hard to follow the story, and Jay liked to talk a lot.

He showed us around his rock garden, an open air exhibition made up of stones collected from around about as well as the abandoned mines. Sometimes Jay spent days underground before resurfacing to make his rock carvings, as well as sculptures out of scrap metal and glass. After we had admired his work for a while we moved on, eventually meeting a friend and neighbour of Jay’s who also calls this ghost town home. She was on her way to bring gas to someone whose car had run dry in the desert. She told us that she organised the annual dance in the dancehall. Even in Darwin, there is still some life to be lived.

Postcard from... Tokyo

We are in Roppongi, my new friend telling me stories of black marketeers turned into real estate moguls who made their first money from US soldiers stationed at a nearby barracks and have now built skyscrapers and shopping malls.

“Are you hungry?” he asks, and I nod. It feels like we have been walking these streets for hours.

He takes me to Shibuya, where he used to live before he started his family and moved further out, closer to the hills and mountains he loves so much. We walk through residential streets where all is quiet on this January evening. He points out some places he knows, bars and restaurants where he is no longer as regular as he would like to be, now that that he has moved. We duck through a curtained door and into the restaurant. Inside there are five women, sitting at the counter, and a family at the single table. We sit down at the last two seats.

I have no influence on what follows. Between my friend and the cook they work out what we are going to eat. We drink beer and eat with our hands. It takes us two hours to finish our meal, and at quiet moments our neighbours ask questions about me. The questions are polite, the answers - once translated - received with reassuring smiles. In any case, I don’t mind. I feel safe here.

Postcard from... Maleme (The Dead Beach)

On the Dead Beach, it feels like there’s nothing. One middle-aged man sunbathing nude, and one other old man shuffles past, with wrinkled, deep-fried brown skin and a long scroungy grey beard and long grey hair, clad only in black speedos and sandals. He looks like the last remnant of Crete’s hippie past.

To either side the pebbly beach stretches for kilometres on end, disappearing in the distance in a haze of sunlight and spray from the surf. Behind the beach is an empty sea promenade, where confused tourist couples can be seen walking under the blind and shattered streetlights from time to time, trying to find a rainbow-coloured cocktail bar. The empty shells of the ghost estates stare back at them.

By Marcel Krueger