Schwedt

Schwedt/Oder sits on the Oder river in the Uckermark district, right on the Polish border about 100 km northeast of Berlin. Huguenot settlers who arrived after 1685 brought tobacco cultivation to the surrounding Uckermark, and for roughly 150 years Schwedt was a centre of tobacco trade and cigar production. The town's character changed dramatically after 1959, when a treaty with the Soviet Union routed the Druzhba ("Friendship") crude-oil pipeline here; the PCK refinery began operating in 1964 and grew into the GDR's largest, handling most of its Soviet oil imports. Workers poured in from across East Germany, and the town's population roughly quintupled between 1960 and 1989, from a small agrarian town to over 50,000 people, largely housed in new GDR-era developments. The refinery still operates today and remains central to the town's identity and economy.

Schwedt is reachable by regional train and by road from Berlin, about 100 km to the southwest.

The town centre, much of it rebuilt in GDR-era planned housing, is walkable.

Schwedt's tobacco-trading past and its GDR-era petrochemical-town development are its most distinctive local history; the Tobacco and Local History Museum (Tabakmuseum) documents the town's earlier tobacco industry.

Visiting the Tabakmuseum and walking the Oder riverside are the main organised activities. The surrounding Unteres Odertal (Lower Oder Valley) National Park offers wetland birdwatching.

• Berlin — Germany's capital city, reachable by regional train
• Nearby towns in Brandenburg — explore the surrounding region