Just a couple of hours driving north of Berlin and you’re into the vacation area of the Baltic beaches. Once out of the northern suburbs of Berlin the landscape quickly changes to a surprisingly pleasant, green countryside with lots of lakes and forests.
And in a nice change from most places in Europe in July, these beaches are delightfully uncrowded:
Unlike the concrete and steel jungle of Berlin, the towns and villages in this area are far more traditional, with thatch roof houses still fairly common.
Since typical East Germans couldn’t travel west, and most couldn’t afford to travel very far south to other communist countries even if they were allowed to, family vacations typically meant coming here to the Baltic.
It’s quite a nice place, actually, and for some reason it seems no one else wants to come here. Traffic is quite light, and cars with foreign plates are all but non-existent, even though Poland is very close and there’s ferry service to Scandinavia.
I’d have to guess East Germany acquired a poor reputation for welcoming foreign tourists and hasn’t managed to correct it yet. I’m not sure it’s deserved any longer as I found the east German Baltic coast a pretty agreeable place to visit, and a welcome relief from the crushing crowds almost everywhere else in Europe this time of year.
Of course, it may be the unexploded munitions:
While hiking or cycling on the trails in the area you occasionally encounter a fenced-off area announcing deadly danger, evidently old DDR military bases that haven’t been completely cleared yet. Remnants of the communist era do show up even in the most out of the way places.
Nice shots Jaeger. Actually, cordoned-off areas can be found in other places in Europe as well, most notably around WWI battlefields e.g. Vimy Ridge where unexploded munitions remain a hazard nearly one hundred years after the battles.
The Baltic coast certainly looks very inviting.
Hi Jaeger, These pictures look good (I’ve been trying to follow your German trip – sometimes the only way to learn about stuff and develop informed opinions is by actually visiting places and checking them out for yourself). Ignore kingstonladio.
I’ve heard that the Baltic is supposed to be beautiful. Because it is so shallow and several major rivers (ie. rivers like the Volga that I think goes through St. Petersburg) contribute fresh water to it, you do not get the salinity of the Atlantic and this completely changes the dynamics of sea life and other bio-type stuff – which makes it unique).
I’ve been to Germany lots of times but I have never been to Berlin or anywhere in the east of Germany.
I was staying in Weisbaden (outstanding hot sulfur baths – built by the Romans – you sleep like a baby for about 10 hours after doing this thing) for a couple of weeks and working in Tannenstein but I had the opportunity to visit a bunch of small towns (and big cities like Koln, Munich, Frankfurt, etc.) and villages along or near the Rhine. I happened to visit Mainz and did the Mass thing at St. Martin’s Cathedrel (big statue of St. Boniface outside – he’s the patron Saint of Germany and re-introduced Christianity to German’s after the dark ages). Anyway I had this big traditional German dinner thing in the old downtown and started talking to the owner. I was amazed at the old buildings and architecture (some which look like one of the house pictures in this post). He told me that the entire old city of Mainz was re-built in the last 20 years because it was completely flattened during WWII. They had rebuilt the old town to look like it did many hundreds of years ago (including buildings leaning precariously because they were so old). I thought it was amazing that they would actually do this and they had re-developed a sense of pride to be German and re-build the old town even after the terror and destruction and mess of WWII.
“empty beaches”
freezing water
Isn’t that the same beach featured in that Doctor Who episode that was the (at least used to be)last appearance of Rose Tyler?
Very interesting commentary! Thanks for this.
During the late Nineties in Prague, I worked with a Czech woman on NATO business.
She told me that, in the Eighties, she, her husband, their two children and their dog (an Alsatian!) once crammed into their Trabant “station wagon”* to drive from Prague all the way up through the GDR to go camping on the Baltic.
The other fascinating spot on the German Baltic is this one from the regime that preceded the communist one:
http://www.thirdreichruins.com/prora.htm
* For those not familiar with the old East German Trabi, this link should show you just how spacious the Kombi (station wagon) version is:
flickr.com/photos/42057291@N00/2333708006
I’m quite familiar with the Trabant Kombi, JJM. IIRC it was in ’88 that we all piled into one and drove from Jena to Berlin, to visit the science museum where some of Carl Zeiss’s equipment is (or was) displayed. About all I remember about the museum was that they had a heliostat, a telescope permanently pointed at the Sun with electronic tracking and the image displayed on a screen.
But the trip… evidently the Nazis were very good road builders, because the autobahn had been in service since then with no maintenance other than patching. And none of us had permission from the Stasi to spend the night in Berlin, so after the visit we had to drive all the way back. Pop into a hotel and register? It was to laugh.
By no means is all of the unexploded ordnance due to the DDR days. The Baltic coast was the site where a lot of testing was done, and a lot of that stuff is left over from WWII. The DDR didn’t have the resources to clean it up, so it just rotted in place until the Wall came down.
Regards,
Ric