Advent at Straupitz Spreewald station

The former Straupitz station building is now home to a café that is very popular with connoisseurs, the “Mohnamour”. As you can see from the name, there are sinfully delicious poppy seed cake variations, among other things. The café, which is modeled on a living room, is located in the formerly rather inhospitable part of the building, the packing and storage shed. The actual station is run by the Spreewaldbahnfreunde association. Both Marina Staritz from the café and Philipp Seemann from the association teamed up to organize a Christmas market.

Older visitors can still remember the former Spreewaldbahn, which last took passengers to neighboring villages and towns such as Lübben and Cottbus for Christmas in 1969. Although it had long been known that the railroad would cease operations, the people of the Spreewald didn’t really want to believe it, because the railroad, their “Guste”, had been part of the Spreewald for almost seven decades. And yet it happened: on January 2, 1970, at midnight, one week after Christmas, locomotive 99 5703 drove onto the Straupitz siding and breathed its last steam forever. Railroad enthusiasts have been able to view the restored locomotive in the Lübbenau Spreewald Museum since 2012.

The two actors wanted to commemorate the railroad with a small Christmas market. Paths and exhibits were illuminated with kerosene lanterns from disused wagon technology. A model railroad layout showed the younger visitors in particular how the Spreewaldbahn once used to whizz along the tracks with old passenger carriages. The Straupitz children Jaron and Lukas Meinhardt were delighted when the model train passed them at nose height, as they just about reached the plate. Two-year-old Carlo Hausner was slowly becoming too heavy for his Berlin grandmother Viola Demmler to hold: Again and again he enjoyed the jerking model train.

The ringing of bells approached in the twilight: horse lover Kerstin Görtzig had put a bell collar on “Lambo” and “Lotti” and came to visit the Christmas market with them. “Lambo”, now 18 years old and actually a fiery Andalusian, and “Lotti”, were patiently stroked by the children time and again.

In the two-hourly presentations by Philipp Seemann, visitors, including many railroad enthusiasts, learned a lot about the history of the railroad and the work of the association – some donations were then made for the maintenance of the old railroad technology and the museum in the model of a freight wagon.

More information about the Spreewaldbahn:

Order at https://www.spreewald-foto.de/Meine-Spreewaldbuecher/

Peter Becker, 30.11.25