Last week, I had the chance to explore a new part of Germany - I enjoyed a roadtrip from the lively town of Hamburg to the beautiful island of Rügen. Let me tell you about this trip here.
Itinerary: Hamburg - Lübeck - Wismar - Barth - Stralsund - Rügen - Schwerin - Hamburg
We started our trip in Hamburg, but continued our trip straight north (if you want to learn about the fantastic city of Hamburg, check out my previous post --> Link). Our first stop was Lübeck, a city that I already knew (check the post here --> Link) , but that fascinated me once again. Its medieval flair with the beautiful old houses and narrow streets is just wonderful!
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| Lübecks Holstentor |
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| A miniature model of the city - isn't it a perfect town? |
One of the best things to do in Lübeck is to explore the gangways of the town. There are hundreds of them and you always have the feeling that you would directly enter someones private garden when you walk through such a gangway, so it takes quite some courage to do it - but don't worry, the inhabitants are quite used to curious tourists and just close the gates if they aren't in the mood! :-)
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| A typical gangway - would you dare to enter? |
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| Just an example of what you can find at the other end of the gangway |
After a delicious chinese dinner, we continued our trip to our next destination: WISMAR, a beautiful hanseatic city with an interesting history. During more than 100 years, Wismar was under the Swedish regime. Therefore, once a year there is a huge party called "Schwedenfest" ("Swedish celebration"). What a lucky coincidence that it took place exactly the date we were in town!
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| Seaside of Wismar |
Our first stop this day was Rerik, a nice town between Wismar and Rostock. We had lunch at the waterfront and then put our feet into the Baltic Sea for the first time. What a refreshing feeling!
The weather was quite... well... Baltic sea'ish i would say.
While walking along the beach, we found a strange looking site just next to the water - it looked like a whole town, but none of the houses was inhabited, the houses looked quite broken, plants were growing out of them, and the sign didn't give us a very comfortable feeling: "Trespassing strictly forbidden. Ammunition-contaminated area. Risk of explosion." As we found out later, this site called Wustrow was used for military purposes in 1933 by the german army and later was taken over by the red army and was sealed off from the outside world. Only in 1994, the site was completely emptied. Since then it's not very clean what will happen with the island. An investor had planned to built a marina, a golf court, a hotel etc., but this project was denied by Reriks government. So let's wait and see what will happen to this village next toa beautiful beach!
Our next stay for the night was the town of Barth. We had booked an Airb'n'b appartment and were welcomed very warmly by our host Sabine, an architect from Barth. The appartment was brand new, the construction work just finished. I fell in love immediately with the chimney in the bedroom and off course slept wonderful while the fire was gently crackling and warming up my feet. :-)
The next day we decided to do what a lot of other tourists do - renting a bicycle and explore the "Western Pomerania Lagoon Area National Park" (Nationalpark Vorpommersche Boddenlandschaft), situated at the coast of the Baltic Sea. As it is a very flat area, the bike ride wasn't too exhausting, but we were happy to do some sports after eating all the "Fischbrötchen" ("fish sandwiches"), ice creams and big portions of fries (yes, the German kitchen is not the healthiest one and the portions for sure not the smallest!).
During travelling, the spontaneous decisions and discoveries are mostly the best ones, don't you think? So it was this day. We crossed the town of PREROW, where we saw a sign informing about boat cruises in the national park. One second later we thought "Why not?", parked our car and bought tickets for a ride with the "Baltic Star", a Mississippi paddle steamer boat. What can I say - this was THE.COOLEST.BOAT.RIDE.EVER!! :-) The flora and fauna in this area is just unbelievable and so that evening was one of my personal highlights of the whole trip.
The next morning we had to leave Sabine, her beautiful appartment and my beloved chimney. Before we crossed the bridge to the island of Rügen where we would stay the next 4 days, we visited STRALSUND, another very nice hanseatic city.
We visited the harbour...
... got surprised by the co-existence of old and new architecture (the white building is the new "Ozeanum", a museum about the sea and its flora & fauna) ...
... and enjoyed the beautiful old town.
Then we crossed the impressive bridge from Stralsund to the island of Rügen. Our hotel was located in Gager, on the peninsula Mönchgut in the southeast tip of Rügen. After waiting more than half an hour for check-in (the reception guy was a bit too concerned to offer his guests a veery warm welcome... :-) ) we finally got the keys and got surprised by a very luxurious appartment with sea view (--> Link) .
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| Our very luxurious hotel... Nooo, just joking! I just liked the roof of this bus stop. |
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| The view from our hotel |
There is a tourist attraction at the very end of the pier - the diving gondola. We couldn't resist and tried it. This gondola gets you 4 m into the Baltic Sea. Without getting wet, you can explore the Baltic Sea. The very green Baltic sea! And no, you won't see sharks or crocodiles, probably just some jellyfish. But drinking champagne while diving into the Baltic Sea is still a very comfy way to explore the sea! :-)
After our "dry diving adventure" we explored the city of Sellin and were fascinated by the architecture of the houses.
The next day we started our day with a delicious breakfast at "Dat Backhus" in Lobbe - a spot that would turn into our favourite breakfast spot in Rügen. Eating breakfast just next to the sea, do you wish for more?
This day we wanted to explore 2 more must sees in Rügen - the famous chalk cliffs and Cape Arkona (called "Rügens most northern spot", which is actually not true). We took the ferry with at least 100 other tourists. This pretty much killed the relaxed atmosphere, on the other hand we met some very funny people and had a blast talking to them.
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| The famous chalk cliffs of Rügen |
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| Cape Arkona with its 2 lighthouses |
The boat trip took more that 4 hours. Too long for us. The last hour we spent sleeping in the cafeteria. Not the worst idea as we would see later. One of the other tourists told us about the "Störtebeker Festspiele" in Ralswiek, a huge open air theatre festival. Spontaneously we decided to go there and check if there are still tickets. There were! The show was quite impressive, boats on the sea, horses, battles - and off course a wonderful setting!
The next day we decided to visit PRORA, a town in Rügen, famous for the enormous building complex (4,5 km!!), built by Nazi Germany between 1936 and 1939 with the idea to build a beach resort ("Kraft durch Freude", "Strenghts through joy"). It was never completed. It was quite a strange feeling to visit the site, even if it was never used for the actual purpose. Nowadays, it is turned into a new site with modern appartments and there already is a youth hostel in it. I'm very curious how it will look like in 10 years!
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| The model of the 4,5 km long complex |
In the afternoon we needed something more hearth-warming than in the morning - so we bought tickets for the "Rasender Roland" ("Raging Roland"), a steam-powered narrow-gauge railway driving from Putbus to Göhren. It was a very nostalgic ride - slow, stinky, but relaxing! :-)
The next day, we once again had brunch at "Dat Backhus", the house directly at the beach. I already got sad - how would I survive back home without breakfast in a beach chair? This life was just so perfect!
Later, we again were lucky because of a spontaneous idea - by turning left instead of right, we found the lovely village of GROSS ZICKER, probably one of the most picturesque villages in Rügen.
The next day, we already had to say Bye to Rügen and to drive back to Hamburg, but off course we tried to make the most out of the remaining hours. So we made a little detour and stopped in SCHWERIN, a beautiful town with an even more beautiful castle.
After this stop, we had to drive back to Hamburg, return our car and fly back to Switzerland. It was a wonderful week with a lot of spontaneous discoveries and beautiful sights.