Berlin City Escape: My tip for a perfect weekend getaway on the countryside

Disclaimer: I was not paid for this post, but a few other bloggers and myself got two nights in the sustainably built house Ferientroja via Airbnb (no affiliate) for free. I was asked to share my honest experiences and honest feedback here on the blog. We paid for travel and meals ourselves. There was no other compensation as I said.

In the last few weeks I have had enough of Berlin. I’m actually a city person, but since we have no balcony, no terrace and no garden and the weather was just such beautiful summer weather over the last few weeks, I just wanted to “get out”. But lately, l have been working a lot on weekends too, so my boyfriend and I haven’t been able to spend two days on the countryside. Luckily I was recently able to combine work and pleasure a little bit:

Two weeks ago, together with my blogger agency Homenest and a few blogger colleagues (to be exact with Charlotte, Talisa, Anna and Amelie) I spent two nights in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The weekend was all about content creation, but also about enjoying nature, doing yoga and just spending time with nice colleagues.

Sustainable and idyllic accommodation recommendation:

For such a short break from the big city I can highly recommend Ferientroja. Here you will find three freestanding cottages that are built with sustainable materials (more about this at the bottom) and which you can rent individually or all three together through Airbnb. As I said, the platform provided us with two nights, and it’s exactly places like this that are the reason why I love Airbnb – you can accommodations that are off the beaten track, in the countryside, away from the big city! Below you will find many photos that will hopefully give you a better idea about the accommodation. Here are some facts:

• Location: In Troja, near Lärz
• Costs: about 80-165 Euro per night per house (depending on season and house, each house has room for 5-6 adults)
• Equipment / environment: large kitchen with large dining table, fireplace, terrace with table, huge garden and adjacent forest area, a beautiful lake that is a 20 min walk away – in the middle of nature and yet the Internet was really good, so perfect for two days of pure relaxation or just a workcation like we had!
• Booking: Via Airbnb (on the left you will find the three houses as advertisements, no affiliate link), let the host give you the exact address for your GPS! Also ask the host about the exact footpath to the lake!

Since many of you guys might not really imagine what a “content-focused” workout looks like, I also wanted to give you some insights. To give you an idea of what our weekend looked like, including a dramatic rescue pickup in the middle of the rain, saving a bat mom and her twin babies, beautiful, sustainable accommodation and lots of tasty vegan food:We

Friday, arrival:

I arrived at around four o’clock in the afternoon, together with Nicole, Talisa and my boyfriend, who joined the weekend as the photographer, in a small, packed car. And it was PACKED, as we didn’t only have our really light luggage for two nights, but also all our cameras, light boxes, ring lights, cables, accessories and of course food! Fortunately, the journey was only two hours long: P

After we arrived in Troja near Lärz, we first picked the rooms, unpacked the food and shot the first photos. Since we did not know how the weather would be the rest of the weekend (we arrived to bright sunshine but the weather forecast said it would rain the whole weekend), immediately after arrival we began diligently taking pictures. Then we explored the surroundings a bit and went to the lake in the late afternoon. This is only a 20 minute walk from the house and takes you through a beautiful forest path! But make sure to take mosquito spray if you are planning to do the walk! Surprisingly, they were quite harmless (no really big bites, only very small ones), but they were really everywhere!

In the evening we cooked a delicious vegan spaghetti Bolognese using lentils instead of meat and waited for Amelie, who was riding by bike from Berlin to Troja. She almost made it, but for several reasons she was dealyed and Nicole picked her up in the pouring rain and at night in the dark somewhere in Brandenburg. That was exciting, but thanks to GPS and smart phones everything went smoothly!

The exciting evening was not over, at least for Nicole and Amelie: In their house (we booked two houses), the two then found a small bat, which lay almost motionless on the ground and a few inches next to it was a baby bat!!! The real exciting part of the story happened on the next day, because it was aleady very, very late…

Saturday:

I was actually awake pretty early and Jesse, Nicole (the two were still awake before me!) and I decided to do yoga in the beautiful garden of the houses following a YouTube video by yoga with Adriene. What a perfect start to the day! Finally I was not in my dark living room in a back house in Berlin on the yoga mat, but in the middle of the meadow surrounded by woods, flowers and the sounds of nature! After a hearty breakfast, which Talisa and, understandably a sleepy, also Amelie joined, we started filming some new videos. Amelie does not speak very much German and is just learning the language and that’s why we gave her a few difficult German words that she had to pronounce in the video. I think “Tschechisches Streichholzschächtelchen” is all I have to say, hahahaha.

Shortly thereafter, Anna and Charlotte arrived and then the production day started officially. Photos were taken, videos shot, interviews conducted, statistics and strategies discussed, so Work Work Work Work!

In between, of course, we also took care of the bat family: Apparently the mother had sought shelter in the house, but was quite exhausted. We thought she probably did not have enough water in the house. We put some drops of water near her, but we already knew that she probably would not take anything from us. Then carefully relocated her, together with her baby (without touching her of course, we were very careful since we did not want to be bitten), to a basket and put it on the windowsill, to keep them safe from cats and give them the opportunity to leave at night. After a while we found out: she was not only exhausted, no, she gave birth to a second baby!!! This is very rare among bats and so she was probably very weak. However, after the birth she became more active and we were confident that she would then soon be able to fly away with both! By the way, we were in contact with the bat emergency hotline the whole time, who gave us all the tips. If you are unsure about injured or weak wildlife, you can almost always reach professionals and ask for help!

But back to our workation, haha, in the afternoon we had delicious summer rolls, hand-rolled by Anna and Talisa, with blue-colored rice noodles! Of course, we had to take group photo too! In the evening we all sat together and enjoyed a delicious dinner with pasta (again, haha) and vegetables, in between we had a dance livestream and posted many Instagram stories. After a long day’s work, we all went to bed early!

Sunday

Our breakfast with all the blogger girls was really beautiful! We then did a few videos and photos, a little yoga and stretching in between and then we had to clean up and pack already! We didn’t want to get back to Berlin too late because we all had to be up early on Monday.

The weekend was really worth it! Such a combination of vacation and work is not always really relaxing, but we still spent a lot of time together and I’m really lucky that I had, not only colleagues, but also friends to spend the weekend with! This makes the work feels less like work and more like free time 🙂 I hope you found the results exciting so far (some photos are already online on Instagram, as well as some videos on my channel and on Charlotte’s).

Let me know if you have any questions about the accommodation! I can highly recommend it to you, exactly the escape that I needed as a big city kid! In the house you will also find everything you need. THe only difficult part may be finding the houses because they are a bit hidden, but that’s exactly what you want when you are trying to escape the big city. Be sure to give the exact, correct, address for your drive into your GPS. I would also recommend to ask for the exact way to the swimming area because we had to ask us some people on the spot. And as I said: mosquito spray 🙂

And just a bit more information about the sustainable construction of the houses, as the owners came over an extra hour to tell us more about ecological house building:

A total of 850 hectares belong to the low-energy houses that were, incidentally, handcrafted from wood that is cut during new moon. This was taken on New Moon in January, as it contains less water at the time. The wood was cut down from the forest in front of the house, and the doors and windows were even handmade. Since the owners have their own sawmill, there was hardly any wood wasted. Trays were made from the leftover wood and the leftover sawdust goes to the local farms. Another special feature: the houses were built so that they should last for hundreds of years. In addition, the Krümmel forestry farm is also making the effort to plant new trees: within the last 11 years, 400,000 trees have been planted, which probably will not be usable until the next generation.

Maybe an important point for vegans, which I wanted to mention: hunting is also allowed in the area, read here for more information. If you do not want to support it, the area may not suit you, but everyone has to decide for themselves.

So even though I was invited and in return I “had” to write this blog post (there was no contract, but a request), I can highly recommend this accommodation. I think the pictures speak for themselves. If you have further questions, please let me know! Here is a picture of Elise and her brother Moritz, who built the three houses, a really nice team:

Here is a little photo diary of our weekend: