Writing a Novel While Riding a Bike: Cycling East Prussia for Family History and Fiction
Travel and Culture Guest Author Series: Canadian author Gabriele Goldstone finds inspiration in travel
Writing a novel may not be as easy as riding a bicycle, but Canadian author Gabriele Goldstone has used “slow travel” cycling as a unique research method for her novels. I first met Gabe when we worked together on the Prairie Horizons conference committee (way back in 2009) for the Canadian Association of Children’s Authors, Illustrators, and Performers (CANSCAIP). She lives in Manitoba and I live in Saskatchewan, but we’ve kept in touch since then.
At that time, her first novel, The Kulak’s Daughter (2010), was about to be published. She says it began with a life-changing trip to the Ukraine, where she found her family ‘origin story.’ That novel was later re-published as Red Stone (2015). Broken Stone (2015), Tainted Amber (2021), Crow Stone (2022) and Waltraut (2024) followed.
In this post, Gabe shares share a bit about her 2019 cycling trip through the former East Prussia, where she gathered clues to spice up her novel Crow Stone.
Gabriele Goldstone, daughter of post-Second World War European immigrants, writes the books she wishes she could have read growing up in Winnipeg on the Canadian prairies. Always an avid reader as a child, she found a kindred spirit in Nancy Drew. Later, as an adult, Gabriele became a sleuth pursuing the untold stories of her family’s past. Her search began on her first backpacking trip through Europe in the seventies, when she ended up working in Berchtesgaden, Bavaria for almost a year. Back in Canada, she hunted down clues as she pursued an MA is 20th century German Literature. Europe, still divided by the Iron Curtain, left many stories out of her reach.
Travel & Culture: Tell us a bit about East Prussia. Where is it?
GG: East Prussia was once the easternmost province of Germany (divided from the rest of the Germany by the Polish Corridor, after the First World War). Modern day East Prussia is divided amongst Lithuania, Russia, and Poland. The Russian part of the former East Prussia, wedged between Poland and Lithuania, is known as the Kaliningrad Oblast (oblast meaning province). The former capital city of Königsberg became Kaliningrad city in 1946, providing the Soviets a warm-water port on the Baltic.
T&C: Did you decide to visit the Kaliningrad Oblast specifically as research for your book, or did the trip inspire the book?
GG: My trip to Kaliningrad was one of those bucket list trips that I’ve wanted to take since forever. My mom and her sisters would talk with such fondness of their time there. It seemed like this was a paradise from which they’d been forcefully exiled. As a heavily militarized zone, the Kaliningrad Oblast was off limits to westerners until 1991.
I’d written drafts of Crow Stone before the trip and had the plot points firmly in place. I knew the characters. I’d researched the history and also read countless memoirs. What was still missing was the setting. I needed to add visceral depth to make a two-dimensional place come alive. Sensory details were like spices added to food, creating depth and nuance.
Guided Tour by Bicycle
T&C: Why did you decide on a guided bicycle tour?
GG: Why guided? Because I needed all the support I could get! There was the challenge of several languages and the bureaucracy of borders. Our two Lithuanian guides spoke excellent English and were enthusiastic historians. Our twelve-day trip involved about 50 to 60 kilometers of cycling a day. We were all past sixty and they graciously accommodated our lack of speed, various aches along with our voracious appetites.
In each major city we had walking tours with local specialists. From Riga, Latvia, where we began our tour, though Klaipeda in Lithuania, Kaliningrad city in Russia, and Gdansk in Poland … we were inundated with passionate stories of rebuilding an area decimated during the Second World War. I learned to appreciate the impact of that war that lingers to this day.
T&C: Makes sense. How did you find it useful to go by bicycle?
GG: I chose a bicycle tour because I wanted to go slow. The story I was writing involved a long journey, mostly by horse and wagon or on foot, and I was determined to experience the Kaliningrad Oblast (oblast means province) as thoroughly as possible. Always an avid walker, I wanted to walk in my characters’ footsteps. A bike tour seemed like the perfect way to absorb the sensory details I needed to make the story come to life.
Cycling along the Baltic, knowing of the terrible atrocities that had occurred along its beautiful shore line was a poignant experience. I think anyone who’s interested in history is aware of the ghosts that linger in nature. Long after battles end, after humans pass on, it’s the stones, the earth, the trees that have absorbed our stories. I tried to connect with these non-human elements. Hugging trees, clutching stones, feeling the sand between my bare toes …. I know it sounds mamby-pamby to some but for me it was an emotional experience.
The small Lithuanian family-based bicycle tour company (Baltic Bike Tours), treated the six of us, four from Canada, two from Germany, like family. They organized the hotel layovers, the restaurants, the bureaucracy of borders, and the routes. They also accommodated my request for a day off their regular itinerary, so I could check on a family connection in an off-the-beaten-track village. If you’re looking to travel anywhere in the beautiful Baltic region, I highly recommend you check them out.
Memorable experiences
T&C: What experiences were most memorable for you?
GG: Spotting a tiny hedgehog in the wild was quite the thrill. Hedgehogs are exotic creatures for a Canadian prairie girl. I photographed one of these shy, little rodents in the spa town of Zelenogradsk (formerly Cranz). Curiously, Zelenogradsk’s known as the ‘cat capital of Russia.’ Maybe there’s a connection.
On a more somber note … cycling a bit further along the Baltic Coast, we came across a memorial near the amber mines of Yantarny (formerly Palmicken) marking the spot where in January, 1945, about 3000 Jewish captives (women and children) on a death march from the Nazi’s Stutthof concentration camp, were forced into the icy Baltic.
GG: It was inspiring to visit Thomas Mann’s summer retreat in the seaside town of Nida, Lithuania (formerly Nidden) on the Curonian Spit. Having read his short stories and novels in my university days, knowing it was here that he’d received a charred copy of Buddenbrooks, reminded me of the Nazi presence even here in such a beautiful setting.
Personal impressions
GG: On a personal note, I was delighted to visit the town of Slavskoye (formerly Kreuzburg), 20 kilometers south of Kaliningrad city. Its population is around 200 now, but in my mom’s time, it bustled with 12,000 residents. By following the directions of an elderly cousin, I found first the school, then the well, and finally the house that my uncle had built back in the 1930s. My mom and her siblings, who’d escaped communism back in Ukraine in 1932, called this place home until 1945. The current resident, a charming retired man from Kazakhstan, showed much pride of ownership in the well-maintained house and beautiful garden. Except … were those actual bullet marks on the side of the house? Still visible after so many years?! The past lives on in subtle ways.
I thoroughly appreciated the landscapes that we cycled through, whether it was the sandy Curonian Spit, a UNESCO world heritage site, the thick, dark beech woods on the gentle slopes of coastal Poland, or the narrow linden tree-lined roads throughout the Kaliningrad Oblast. It was the rustic, raw, natural settings that awed me. We cycled past ruins of war, left largely untouched for almost eight decades. This truly was a forgotten corner of Europe.
I was impressed by the kindness of the people … whether in the bigger cities like Riga, Klaipeda, Kaliningrad or Gdansk, or in the smaller towns … our little cycling group was welcomed with warmth and not a little bit of curiosity.
T&C: Any memorable meals?
GG: Yes, there was definitely one. I ate Königsberger Klopse (a type of German meatball) in the now Russian city of Kaliningrad. Too bad my mother has passed on because this is something that would have wowed her.
Other than that, we ate a lot of seafood fresh from the nearby Baltic. We drank local beers and ate hearty, dark breads. Wish I could find similar breads in Canada.
All the food tasted delicious. We had big appetites after our hours of cycling and appreciated the healthy offerings of flounder, sprats, smoked eel and pickled herring.
Novel research
T&C: Did you take notes as you traveled? How did your writing improve because of your trip?
GG: I tried to sum up the day’s experiences in a journal every evening. But honestly, it was photos with my cell phone camera that became my main source of notetaking. I took hundreds of photos. My fellow travelers had brought along fancy cameras that took time to unpack as we cycled, while my little cell phone was always handy and took ‘good enough’ images for my research.
T&C: Any more trips planned?
GG: Well, the current the situation with Russia has thwarted those plans. I’d been eager to travel to some backwoods of Siberia. So I’m back to using reading as my primary research tool. However, my mom liked to quip that Winnipeg, my hometown here in Canada, is as cold as Siberia, so maybe I won’t have to travel, after all.
T&C: Thanks for sharing your Baltic bike tour with us. It’s sounds like the research was useful for the novel, and it’s been fun for us to hear about your experiences!
Crow Stone by Gabriele Goldstone
East Prussia, January, 1945. The Soviet Army breaks through into East Prussia and civilians, no longer trusting Hitler’s promises, struggle through winter weather for ships on the Baltic coast. Can Katya get there in time? What happens to those who are left behind? Inspired by the author’s family stories. Available through Ronsdale Press: https://ronsdalepress.com/products/crow-stone
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What an adventure to take! Traveling by bike to slow down the experience to the pace of the historic period was brilliant strategy. Thanks for introducing me to this series of historical novels.
The image of Gabriele finding her uncle's house in Slavskoye — still standing, bullet marks and all, tended by a stranger who had no idea of its history —WOW! It's the kind of detail you simply cannot invent at a desk. As someone who believes that places hold memory long after the people leave, I love that she chose to slow down and let the landscape speak rather than rushing through it as a tourist.