The town of Neuruppin (NW of Berlin)

Does anyone know a town called Neuruppin...somewhere near Berlin?

My husband was driving from Hamburg to Berlin last night and stopped there for dinner. He was in a restaurant and very nearly beaten up by skinheads who wanted his table. He said the owners were too scared to do anything.

I think it shook him a little, we are fairly sheltered here in Bavaria!

This topic is probably of little interest to anyone else, maybe I should have "vented" instead. Merge with the skinheads in Berlin thread I just found?

Shoot! He's not a small scrawny type guy either. How horrible. I guess I'm glad I ended up here and not in Berlin after all...

I used to drive through Neuruppin quite regularly in the 90s..was a pretty run down and unpleasant place...sounds like it hasn't changed for the better over the last decade..

He said its a definite for being on a world list of "Places Not to Go".

We seem to have a knack for this, we pulled in for petrol in NZ about 3 years ago (near Hamilton, anyone, anyone?) to a town where all the shops had bars on the windows, shutters, everything was locked down, menacing people lurking around. When I told my cousins later where we had stopped, we were told that was the "worst town in NZ" and we should never have stopped there.

I think the first time I ever stopped there was in 1992...so you could understand that the place was completely run down and that most of the social life was concentrated round the tankstelle...

It was just a generally grey and hopeless place...

There was a disastrous fire in Neuruppin in 1787 which destroyed two-thirds of its buildings. On the orders of King Friedrich Wilhelm II it was rebuilt in the neo-classical style. The great Berlin architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel was born there (his father was killed in the blaze) and one wonders if Schinkel got some of his inspiration from the new buildings he saw around him. Neuruppin was also the birthplace of the writer Theodor Fontane.

Many of Neuruppin's buildings have been restored over recent years. I was there in May this year for a look around and it seemed quite a pleasant place.

another pic...

However, not everything has been restored by any means - there are still some vintage DDR grey and crumbling facades to be seen...

...and there's an awful DDR-era bus-shelter which lowers the tone...

Conclusion - a nice place with a seedy side to it.

The first photo in particular looks very pleasant.