Weißwasser, Germany, town near Polish border

[wolram]

Just south of Cottbus, driving through this place on the way to the Polish boarder,
the reason i remember it is becaues instead of soil there was sand, i often wondered why.

 

[matthyaouw]

Large areas of Europe were covered by windblown sand and dust during the ice age. If the soil is poorly developed for whatever reason, it'll seem very sandy. Just a possibility

 

[Andre]

Sorry forgot to work on this thread, anyway wind blown (aeolian) sand areas are rather common in the lowlands of Europe. The idea is that during the Younger Dryas with low sea levels much of the sandy sea floors were exposed and got blown deeper inland, accumulating at some places for some reason.

Some formations like the Veluwe in the Netherlands are much older though as they show glacial features (erratics, drumlins) of pre-Eemian (Saalian) glaciation of about ~150,000 years ago.

http://www.njgonline.nl/publish/articles/000297/english.html

 

[wolram]

The wind blew all this sand to just this one small area? memory fails but this area did not seem to have been cultivated ,but surly the land would be modified my man back into production.

 

[Andre]

Well, again there are wide spread patches of windblown sand areas all of the Dutch, North German and Polish lowlands, covering soils of thousands of years old. That blowing sand from the Younger Dryas has a tendency to cluster locally forming sand dunes. Why in specific places? That's rather part of chaos that forms climate, weather, erosion and sedimentation.