This abandoned resort in Germany never opened

20,000 GUEST RESORT EMPTY FOR 75 YEARS

David Ellis


ITS taken 75 years but work's underway on getting guests into the world's biggest and most bizarre resort whose extraordinarily 100 six-storey blocks to house a mind-blowing 20,000 holidaymakers stretch 4km along a beach on the Baltic Sea, and have lain largely deserted since being built three-quarters of a century ago.

And it was built not by some massive multi-national resort or hotel company – but by Adolf Hitler.

Begun in 1936, the sprawling resort along a magnificent white-sand beach on the island of Rügen, was the first of five that Hitler fashioned along the lines of Britain's Butlins Holiday Camps to offer affordable holidaying for German workers.

Called Seebad (Seaside) Prora and completed in 1939, it never officially opened to guests as Hitler invaded Poland and WWII began just weeks before the first holidaymakers were to check-in. And weirdly it's been basically empty since, apart from several rooms converted into holiday flats some years ago, a 400-bed youth hostel the local council opened in several blocks in 2011, a little warts-and-all museum of the Nazi era, and a small off-beat art gallery that's been dubbed "Beatnik Berlin" – that ironically is the exact free-expression type thing that Hitler's Nazis so vehemently hated.

Hitler's concept for Prora was three-fold: he would use thousands of the worryingly huge mass of unemployed in 1936 to build it, it would provide cheap and affordable holidaying for Germany's working classes – and although promoted as a 'Seaside Resort for the Common Man,' daytime activities would be largely orchestrated with Nazi-approved exercise programs, 'educational' courses that pushed the Nazi cause, and night-time 'entertainment' that would be pure Nazi propaganda.

The enormity of the resort, dubbed by locals The Colossus, numbs the mind. All 100 of the six-storey blocks, which are in turn grouped into eight larger major wings, are inter-connected by corridors up to 1.6km long, requiring an hour to walk from the first block to the last. Prora was to offer over 10,000 rooms, all exactly alike and measuring 5m by 2.5m with central heating, two single beds, a wardrobe and a hand sink, and all facing the sea just 150m away – with vast communal shower and toilet facilities and the inter-connecting corridors on the inland side of all 100 blocks.

There were also cinemas, swimming pools, a school for children of resort staff, a hospital, a ballroom for each of the eight wings, vast dining rooms that could each seat a thousand at a sitting, a post office, and a huge jetty for another of Hitler's ideas – a 2-ship cruise fleet that sailed the Mediterranean under his Strength Through Joy propaganda organisation from 1937 to supposedly reward German workers, but in truth to brainwash them.

One project never completed at Seebad Prora, however, was a massive meeting hall that would seat all 20,000 happy campers at one time for more Nazi propaganda lectures and programs.

After the war, the island of Rügen became a part of the 'Russian sector' and Prora taken over by the Russian Army which occupied, and largely stripped it, over ten years to 1955.

Now two wings have been sold by the government and are being converted by separate developers – not like Hitler's concept for workers, but as the best of luxury hotel rooms and private apartments.

And in one of the finest locations on the Baltic. For here the sea is virtually tideless and most times resembles more a calm lake than the open ocean, the region enjoys temperatures warmer than the North Sea for summer holidaying, and Seebad Prora stretches along one of Rügen's finest beaches.

And while all its guest rooms face the ocean, huge stands of vegetation have grown up over the past 75 years blocking such views, but both developers have permission to thin these to once again give spectacular outlooks from their new luxury digs

When the first blocks went to auction they sold for E2.8m (approx. AU$4m and three times the reserve,) with the buyer currently converting them to a 400 room luxury hotel and several hundred luxury apartments that will all open in 2015. The second developer bought a smaller number of blocks and is converting these to sixty luxury apartments, also to open next year.

Prices will range from AU$200,000 to a near AU$1m each.


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PHOTO CAPTIONS:



[] FROM the air just-three of Prora's eight wings give some idea of the enormity of the resort. (Rügen Tourism)


[] ANOTHER view of just-part of the one-hundred blocks stretching over 4km. (Yahoo)


[] GOING forever, inter-connecting corridors could be over 1.6km in length. (WikiMedia)


[] DAYTIME activities under Hitler's plan would have included Nazi-approved exercise classes like these. (German National Archives)

[] PRORA has been totally trashed over its three-quarters of a century laying idle. (WikiMedia)


[] ALL that remains of one of the many dining rooms for up to 1000 at a sitting. (CivFanatics)

Struth! Holy Gotham City Batman

 

IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says an old mate who has been a near life-long devotee of Batman and Robin comics and movies, has not been the same since doing a tour earlier this year of the Warner Bros Studios in Burbank, California.

 

Because he'd always thought that those who played The Caped Crusader and his juvenile side-kick in the first Batman movies in the 1960s really did scale the outsides of tall buildings for the sake of Saturday afternoon movie-going kids like himself.

 

Thus he was horrified to see on his movie-lot tour how it was really done – and that was by having the crime-fighting duo supposedly "scaling tall buildings"… by merely having them crawling along a wall-like structure laid flat and safely on the studio floor.

 

Furthermore a picture of the supposed skyscrapers of Gotham City around them was actually projected horizontally on a screen behind them, and while Batman's cape looked like it was hanging street-wards from his shoulders as he appeared to be climbing vertically, it was simply pulled horizontally from off-screen.

 

Finally to complete the trick, the movie camera was mounted at 90-degrees to the norm.

 

(The Warner Bros Studios tour also showcases original Batman and Robin costumes, props, artworks and the famous Bat-Cave.)

 

THEY SAID IT: The only reason they say "women and children first" is to test the strength of the lifeboats. (Jean Kerr)

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PHOTO CAPTION:

[] TRICKS of Hollywood… Batman and Robin fake scaling a tall building (and note Batman's cape.) (ComicsAlliance)

Canada's Klondike characters shoot to fame

THE UPS AND DOWNS OF ARIZONA CHARLIE

David Ellis

BACK in the days of Canada's Klondike gold rush, few could match the flamboyance of Arizona Charlie Meadows who, when audiences seemed bored in his Grand Opera House in Dawson City, would put on impromptu performances with a 6-gun – shooting cigarettes out of his wife's lips or glass balls from between her thumb and forefinger a stage-width's away.

It was a great way of bringing instant life back to the audience, until one night he shot off one of his wife's fingertips, at which time she declared enough was enough.

The Grand Opera was but one of Arizona Charlie's business ventures that ranged from spectacularly rewarding to disastrous – and quite often the latter, as his background had been trick-riding, bull-roping and sharp-shooting in Wild West shows alongside the likes of Buffalo Bill, Calamity Jane and Annie Oakley, not commerce.

In the early 1890s he also brought a Wild West troupe to Australia to perform with a circus here; the circus went broke, but Charlie honoured his troupe's commitments.

Standing over 2m tall, Arizona Charlie Meadows was your minds-eye Wild West showman, having chest-length hair that flowed from under a broad-brimmed hat, a voluminous moustache, and forever sporting a trademark red bandana and fringed buckskin jacket.

When gold was discovered in the Klondike in the 1890s, Charlie headed off with his wife Mae and a dozen mates on a trek from San Francisco to Skagway… taking with them 200 burros (small donkeys) loaded-up with food and building supplies for a planned get-rich-quick scheme on the new goldfields.

It proved one of his Great Disasters: along the way a glacier 'calved' and swept away most of his burros and their loads, at another point humans and animals alike almost froze to death after being trapped in snow, and finally his remaining California warm-weather burros simply died of the cold; Arizona Charlie, his wife and backers gave up on reaching Skagway, and eventually stumbled into what was to become Dawson City in December 1897.

There, he quickly invested in a number of gold claims that had been staked-out by others who didn't have the money for equipment to develop them; it gave him quick reward, and getting back his investment – and more – he decided the town needed a newspaper.

So he launched the Klondike News that he filled with paid advertisements… and 'feel good' stories that many folks with shadier backgrounds paid to have appear in print as a reflection of their newly-acquired 'civic status.' It earned Arizona Charlie US$50,000 (over US$1m in today's terms,) and he never even gave thought to a second edition.

Charlie put much of the money into building his Grand Opera House that was a combination of palatial European theatre and flashy American music hall. But because of its design, patrons had to access performances by first running the gauntlet of his saloon in the foyer, and which a local journal criticised as "patronised by boisterous men spitting, smoking, swearing, drinking and gambling… a not at-all comfortable environment for civilised theatre-going ladies to have to pass through."

And when unable to find appropriate concert-style seats for his Opera House, Charlie Meadows provided his audience with 500 high-backed kitchen chairs; uncomfortable as they were, his First Night audience in July 1899 paid up US$12,000 (in today's terms around US$286,000.)

Realising he needed more than opera, Arizona Charlie put on concerts and theatrical shows as well, and appeared on stage nightly as a combo MC and Wild West showman, introducing such bizarre alternatives as dancing bears, performing dogs, acrobats, knife-throwers, tumblers, magicians and doing some trick-shooting himself.

But when the local gold boom crashed and the population fell from 16,000 in 1898 to just hundreds in 1901, Arizona Charlie sold his Opera House for a mere one-third its original cost.

It then faced a mixed future under names including The Savoy, The Auditorium, Nugget Dance Hall and today the Palace Grand Theatre. It is now owned by Parks Canada – after having been knocked-down in dilapidated condition some years ago and rebuilt with renovated original materials – and offers a variety of shows, performances and historic theatre tours (see www.dawsoncity.ca)


FOOTNOTE: Arizona Charlie Meadows died back in his namesake home-State in1932 while operating on his own varicose veins with a pocket knife.

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PHOTO CAPTIONS:

[] CANADA'S Dawson City, stepping off point to the 1890s Yukon gold rush; although called a City, it is today a town of little over 1000 residents. (YukonInfo)

[] BUILT on a mudflat, Dawson City in the gold rush could be a hell-hole. (WikiPedia)

[] ARIZONA Charlie Meadows, flamboyant Wild West showman who had his share of business ups and downs. (Yukon News)

[] THE Palace Grand Theatre today after being demolished and rebuilt to original plans using renovated original materials. (YukonInfo)

[] CAMP of gold rush hopefuls waiting to move out by ferry closer to the gold fields. (WikiMedia.)

[] LONG walk to the top: hopeful miners form an unbroken line over the snow-covered mountains from Dawson City to the gold fields. (Canadian National Archives)

A new life for SS United States

SLOW RESCUE FOR AN ATLANTIC GREYHOUND

David Ellis

A LONG-RUNNING maritime saga in the USA is expected to come to an end in just weeks – possibly even in only days – but in so doing, delivering to the victor no jewelled prize, instead simply the rusting hulk of a once-proud ocean liner that's not seen a guest aboard in a near half-century.

And which at the most-conservative of estimates, will then cost them upwards of US$300,000,000 to put to any feasible commercial use.

That corroding, largely-stripped, and now bedraggled-looking ghost of a ship is the SS United States, a 1950's ocean-going greyhound that set trans-Atlantic speed records that have not been beaten to this day, and which has lain forlornly empty alongside a pier in Philadelphia for 18 years.

Fighting for its future are the SS United States Conservancy that owns the 302m liner (990ft,) but which is fast running out of money to keep her tied-up in Philadelphia let alone restore her, and two other groups who each claim to be on the cusp of getting their hands on millions to snatch her up if the Conservancy goes under – The SS United States Redevelopment Project, and business advisory company The Binnacle Group.

The SS United States was the revolutionary brainchild in the late 1940s of American naval architect William Francis Gibbs who, to reduce weight and so gain the most speed from her massive 240,000 shaft-HP engines, used lightweight aluminium wherever possible to replace conventional heavy steel.

And for safety against fire, no timber to the point that even furnishings were made from aluminium, glass and fire-resistant fibre-glass, and with fabrics from carpets to tablecloths equally fire-resistant. (The only major timber items aboard were, in fact, the several Steinway grand pianos… and a half-tonne butcher's chopping block in the galley.)

And so impressed was the Pentagon (for this was the time of the Cold War) with the promised speed of the new ship – and how quickly she could be converted from 1,900-passenger luxury liner to troopship that could carry 15,000 personnel 16,000kms without refuelling – that it put up two-thirds of the whopping US$78m construction cost.

Then on her maiden voyage in July 1952, the United States with 1,600 guests and 900 crew aboard did the seemingly impossible: she sped across the Atlantic from New York to Southampton in 3 days, 10 hours and 40 minutes, at an average 32 knots (59kph.) In doing so she slashed 10 hours off the best time ever by rival liner Queen Mary, and established that still-standing trans-Atlantic record.

Over the next seventeen years the United States made more than 400 return-Crossings from New York to Southampton or Europe, and scores of holiday-cruise voyages as well, listing amongst her repeat guests American Presidents and European heads of State, England's Duke and Duchess of Windsor, giants of industry and commerce, and countless film stars from both sides of the Atlantic.

Guests, who after dining on the finest First Class cuisine in her silver-service dining rooms, would dance bejewelled and in tuxedos and ball gowns in the vast ballroom to the music of maestros like Duke Ellington...

But the advent of jet aircraft that could cross the Atlantic in hours rather than days spelled her doom, and rapidly losing money she was ingloriously pulled from service in 1969. The SS United States Conservancy bought her in 2011 from Norwegian Cruise Line for US$3m in the hope of converting her for use as a floating hotel, convention centre, museum and shopping complex in New York City – much like the successful Queen Mary in Long Beach, California.

But all it's managed has been to pay $60,000 a month in mooring, insurance and government fees in Philadelphia…

The Conservancy says it now has to decide within weeks whether to fight on, or to sell the hulk (that's been stripped of furnishings, lighting, precious metals and even some walls and asbestos insulation) – with the other two contenders, who envisage converting her for similar future use as the Conservancy's, watching ready-to-pounce from the sidelines.

One of them, like the Conservancy, has New York in mind as United States' new home, but the other is looking at moving her downstream to nearby Chester on the Delaware River in Pennsylvania to boost tourism and generate 2000 new jobs there

Watch this space….


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PHOTO CAPTIONS:


[] MARITIME greyhound: the SS United States set a speed record across the Atlantic in 1952 that stands to this day. (Norwegian Cruise Line)

[] TODAY, United States is a forlorn sight laid-up pier-side in Philadelphia. (Philadelphia Tourism)

[] THIS was considered the epitome of cruise ship dining ambience in the 1950s. (Norwegian Cruise Line)

[] THE one-time First Class Dining Hall is a sadder sight today. (Chandra Lampreicht)

[] ORIGINAL photo of a United States cabin in the 1950s. (Philadelphia Tourism)

[] REGULAR guests in her hey-day, England's Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
(Norwegian Cruise Line)

[] MONACO'S Prince Rainier and his American actress wife, Grace Kelly were other regular royals aboard United States. (Norwegian Cruise Line)

Struth! It's a dog's life

 IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says pets are increasingly being treated to pampering in top-flight hotels that can range from caviar for dinner, to physiotherapy, massages, facials, mud baths and nutrition consultations.

One European hotel already has part of its 5-star restaurant set aside for guests to dine there with their pets, while another offers a 'play meadow' with an expert dog trainer, canine physiotherapy options, massages, lymphatic drainage, laser treatment, and nutrition and detox programs.

In a recent survey of over 8000 guests world-wide, Small Luxury Hotels of the World (SLHW) was surprised to find some guests in China wanted their dogs to be offered Iberian pata negra ham or caviar for dinner, while in the USA a guest requested daily blueberry facials for their pooch, and another asked if their cat could be taken to the local zoo by a staff member – for a bird-watching session.

And in the UK one guest suggested pets be given personal butlers, while in Australia a couple here came up with what we think is the most-bizarre of requests: when they had to spend time away from the hotel, they wanted an SLHW staff member "to spend the day with our Burmese cat telling her how beautiful she is."

THEY SAID IT: America is the only country in the world where a significant proportion of the population believes that professional wrestling is for real, but that the moon landing was faked. (David Letterman)


PHOTO CAPTION:

[] PAMPERED pooches lap it up at this 5-star hotel. (BSNews)

 

Struth! Thanks a million - Bundanoon bands together

IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says that although it's got a population of a little over 3000, the NSW Southern Highlands village of Bundanoon holds an annual event that's the envy of many another when it comes to local charity, volunteer and community-group fund-raising.

Because it's annual Bundanoon is Brigadoon in the past 33 years has raised a mind-boggling $1m-plus for such groups.

The biggest Highland Gathering in Australia, Brigadoon attracts on average 12,000 visitors – four times Bundanoon's population – for everything Scottish from massed pipe marching bands to caber tossing, "knights in armour" engaging in mock fighting, Scottish Country and Highland dancing, strongmen lifting competitions, water-filled balloon hurling and fresh-egg tossing and catching, and events for wee lads and lasses.

Plus arts and crafts stalls, a Scottish ancestry help centre… and yet others offering more-ish Scots mutton pies, drop scones, fresh-baked Highland shortbreads, Abernethy biscuits, gingerbreads, butterscotches, and blood pudding and haggis.

Proceeds from the day go back to those charity, volunteer and community groups who help put it all together and run it, including the local Rural Fire Brigade, SES, schools, sporting groups, Scouts and Guides, and the massed bands that come from other parts of NSW.

In the past 33 years this has amounted to an enviable $1,073,401; Bundanoon is Brigadoon will next be held on April 11 2015.

THEY SAID IT: HOME cooking. Where many a man thinks his wife is. (Jimmy Durante)

Struth! Cowboy's tall tales

IN his continuing search for the more weird, wacky and wondrous in the world of travel, David Ellis says that in October 1940 the world mourned the loss of silent movie star Tom Mix who died in bizarre circumstances in a car crash in Arizona.

At one stage earning up to US$17,500 a week (about $240,000 today,) Mix made 291 full-length movies, with his Press Agent promoting him as a genuine cowboy, and a Wild West hero who'd fought in the Spanish-American War, the Boxer Rebellion and the Boer War, and had been a Sheriff, a U.S. Marshal and a Texas Ranger…

Cowboy Tom Mix and his Cord

While he'd once been a ranch cowboy that was about it: in truth Tom Mix was an Army deserter who simply walked off-camp one day and never returned, and was a drum major in a Cavalry Band in Oklahoma before heading to Hollywood to try his luck there in 1909. When sound movies arrived, he had difficulty making the transition and appeared in only nine before exiting stage left.

Visitors to Florence in Arizona today can see a 60cm high iron statue of a riderless horse next to a dry creek bed in which Mix crashed his V8 Cord Phaeton sports car on October 12 1940 – after he'd swung off the road at speed to avoid a wash-away, and an aluminium suitcase on the backseat had speared forward breaking his neck and crushing his skull.

That "Suitcase of Death" is on display at the Tom Mix Museum in Dewey, Oklahoma.

THEY SAID IT: I'm not a paranoid, deranged millionaire. God dammit, I'm a billionaire.

(Howard Hughes)

Attenborough's hero stuffed hoax animals

CHARLES Waterton, eccentric yet far-seeing conservationist.

ANOTHER creation satirically titled 'John Bull and the National Debt.'

HEAD of the crocodile Charles Waterton captured by 'grabbing its front legs

   and riding it into submission.'

WATERTON'S mansion on an island in an 11ha lake is now a luxury hotel.

ECCENTRIC CROC-WRESTLING NATURALIST

David Ellis

SHOW us a television viewer who reckons they're not intrigued by the exploits of English naturalist Sir David Attenborough, and we'll show you someone who, shall we say, tells fibs.

Attenborough turned bird and animal life in the wild into compulsory viewing, with programs that were at the one time riveting, educational, droll and witty.

So it is hardly surprising that he lists among his heroes an Englishman who explored the jungles of South America in the early- to mid-1800s, yet who looked at wildlife with the jaundiced, satirical eye of a modern-day newspaper cartoonist.

That man was Charles Waterton – or Squire Waterton as he was known to neighbours around his family home, Walton Hall near Wakefield in Yorkshire. "He was a very important and extraordinary figure," Attenborough once recalled. "And even if quite eccentric, was at the same time a far-seeing conservationist.

"He was also double-jointed, so if you went to visit him you might well have been welcomed by him standing on one leg while using the foot of his other to scratch the back of his head."

Stories about Waterton's eccentricity abound… right back to his schooldays at a Jesuit establishment called Stonyhurst College in the Ribble Valley of Lancashire, where he was given the task of resident rat-catcher and fox-hunter due to his deadly accuracy with a cross-bow.

In fact he culled so many foxes, that most of his fellow pupils enjoyed free fur hats to keep their heads warm during the Ribble Valley's cold, wet winter months.

And showing his love of adventure, on a school trip to the Vatican, Waterton climbed a tall tower near St Peters and left his cap there to prove he had achieved the feat. According to folklore, when the Pope expressed his displeasure, Waterton scaled the dizzyingly high tower once more to retrieve it.

WATERTON'S most famous odd-ball creation:
the backside of a monkey fashioned to resemble the face
of Britain's dreary Secretary to the Treasury.

And as an adult, if dinner parties at Walton Hall began to dull, he would slip under the table, start barking like a dog and bite guests' ankles.

In 1804, at the age of 22, Charles Waterton travelled to British Guiana (now Guyana) to take charge of his uncle's estates near Georgetown, a task that fired up his interest in wildlife. For years he explored the rainforests, collecting birds and small animals and shipping them home to the world's first wildlife sanctuary that he'd established at Walton Hall.

He also taught himself a unique style of taxidermy, shaping the skins of specimens around an empty shell rather than stuffing them. They included a large-ish crocodile he'd captured in Guyana by grabbing its front legs and riding it into exhausted submission.

He also created bizarre 'hoax' animals that he fashioned using pieces from different beasts. These included a piece he satirically titled 'John Bull and the National Debt.' It was formed from a porcupine in a tortoise shell being attacked by six devil-like creatures – while his most-famous piece, 'Nondescript' was made from the backside of a monkey fashioned to resemble the face of Britain's dreary Secretary to the Treasury, Stephen Lushington who constantly slapped exorbitant import duties on Waterton's specimens.

Waterton's brother Edward migrated to Australia and bought land near Port Macquarie in NSW but never actually lived there, and after also spending a couple of years in New Zealand returned to Sydney and finally sailed back to England – taking with him as presents for his brother's wildlife sanctuary two live emus, a kangaroo and a squirrel.

Edward Waterton died during the voyage, and Charles was so distraught he gave the Australian animals away, saying "Without my brother, those animals would have increased my sorrow."

Charles Waterton was still climbing and pruning tall trees on his estate at 80 years of age, and after such an active life died in a simple accident in 1865 just short of his 83rd birthday: he tripped over a tree root and suffered internal injuries.

Many of his odd-ball creatures can be seen in a museum opened in Wakefield last year, including the crocodile he had ridden in Guyana and the famous 'Nondescript.' Others are at his old school Stonyhurst.

His manor house that's on an island within a picturesque 11ha lake is now a luxury hotel, and guests can walk the splendid grounds of Squire Waterton's once-wildlife sanctuary. Details www.watertonparkhotel.co.uk

(All images courtesy of Wakefield Museum & Library)