Two sides of the Inn-Line
Good day everyone! Not so long ago we rested in Kaliningrad and Svetlogorsk. Used the services of several travel agencies, took excursions. In Svetlogorsk, two excursions were taken from the travel agency Baltic Tour, now Inn-Line. The bus is in good condition, excellent driver Oleg and just a great guide Lilya, perhaps the best of the four we have seen during the rest. Oleg and Lily! Thank you very much for your professionalism and just wonderful personal qualities. It was very nice!
The excursion to the Curonian Spit was impeccable - a competent distribution of time on the tour, an excellent travel excursion from Lily, an excellent ornithologist Doctor of Biological Sciences Leonid Sokolov (ask for him to conduct the excursion, you will be delighted - deep knowledge of the subject, excellent presentation of the material, and how magnificent and you can find out the original presentation of the material only after hearing the tour - the whole group had smiles behind their ears), and at the end of the tour our driver entered the image of a hospitable host and regaled us with tincture, and tea, and snacks, and sweets. Sincere thanks! All the sadder against this impeccable background was the excursion "Castles of Prussia" the very next day.
Maybe the manager hoped that we knew the program, because they stood in the queue for registration and heard everything, maybe for another reason, but they didn’t tell us in detail about the program during registration, we read the printout with the program: Neuhuizen castle, church, mini organ concert, Waldau castle, Nesselbeck castle with dinner and jousting. In fact, it turned out the absence of Neuhausen, the church and the organ concert. Instead, they were given an amber museum, which we initially consciously decided not to visit at all during the trip. it's two hours of driving and standing. Then our Lily begins to prepare us morally, saying that we visit ruined castles and it's good that we arrive there in the dark. Waldau, where we got through traffic jams, met us with pitch darkness, the only light was from the headlights of the bus. Therefore, it was not possible to assess that the castle was quite well preserved compared to others.
In the two, in the light of the headlights, heaps of construction debris, the tattered remains of the former hostel are visible in the windows. The owner, of course, is an enthusiast of his business, he is just on fire with the restoration of the castle, this bribed the whole group. The presentation of the material in the museum is absolutely unprofessional (I apologize to the guide for being harsh, this is my personal opinion, nothing more), the expositions are more like a "porridge", where all peoples and eras are gathered together. In Waldau, the Petrovsky Hall is really interesting and designed in the spirit of the era. This museum would truly be characterized as a museum of amateur enthusiasts, in this respect it would justify its name. Neuhausen, as we later talked with the guides, is nothing interesting, but the ride is long. And at the end there was Nesselbeck - this is not a Prussian castle, but a remodeled castle hotel, it seems, built in 2009. The interiors are magnificent, lunch is normal, many people liked the jousting tournament.
That is, Nesselbeck would be a sort of modern reconstruction of the castles of Prussia and the knightly era, if before that we really got a tour, at least mentally plunging into the old days. Even Lilya, who on the way spoke simply superbly about the knightly order of Prussia, could not pull out the ecuscus on herself. And you know, the worst thing is not even that the money was given away (and by the way, this is the most expensive excursion of all 1950 rubles), and not even that the precious short time on vacation was wasted. The most disgusting thing was the nasty feeling of substitution of concepts, some kind of misleading (using the typical ideas from the word Castles, the manager easily arouses the desire of tourists to go on this most expensive excursion "Castles of Prussia" with such a rich program). The most disgusting thing is the consciousness of the professional uncleanliness of the tourist industry and specifically the company Baltic Tour, and now Inn-Line.
In general, we arrived with a headache from traffic jams, disappointment in the excursion itself. First I had to go to a cafe to drink coffee with dessert as compensation for the time spent. Just a few words will set the right accents in the description of the excursion from the t / f Baltic Tour - Inn-Line "Castles of Prussia": WE LOOK ONLY RUIN PRUSIAN CASTLES, NEUHAUSEN AND THE CHIRCH ARE NOT HISTORICALLY VALUABLE, OTHER SIMILAR OBJECTS CAN BE VISITED CLOSER AND FOR FREE, WALDAU - MUSEUM OF NON-PROFESSIONAL ENTHUSIASTS-LOVERS, NESSELBECK - CASTLE HOTEL NOVODEL. And managers who show miracles of cunning should be psychologists and understand that not everyone should be offered such an excursion. They just take advantage of the fact that people come to rest for a short time and will not download rights.
But all the same, the impressions from the rest were wonderful - Oleg, Lilya, Svetlogorsk itself - they were magnificent, it outweighed. Thank you and good luck!
If possible, we will definitely return to Rauschen!