Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Hiking in "Saxon Switzerland," a region of Saxony, Germany, near the Czech border known for its ...
[+] limestone mountains. Christopher Elliott The Biostadt Schmilka, a sustainable resort on the bank of the Elbe river near the Czech border, looks like every other German village. There's a Gasthaus and homes with immaculate gardens and fruit trees, and the river with colorful kayaks floating downstream.
But Schmilka was never like the other German villages. As far back as the late 19th century, artists and affluent visitors came there to enjoy hiking among the sandstone monoliths that looked almost alpine and earned this place the nickname Sächsische Schweiz , or Saxon Switzerland. In the 1930s, they invented free climbing here, and during the Cold War, it was a border outpost closed to the rest of the world.
That's when Sven-Erik Hitzer found it, as a young man growing up in what was then East Berlin. "This was our Alaska, our wilderness," says Hitzer, who created the Biostadt Schmilka after much of it was abandoned in the early 2000s. He reconstructed a mill, added a bakery and a brewery, and renovated the empty homes.
And then he discovered sustainability — the idea that a resort could conserve its natural resources, recycle, use renewable energy and serve organic food. Hitzer went all in, opening Germany's first certified "bio" resort. It's just one of the ways a unique German idea of sustainability has taken hold i.