However one of the aspects of expatting in an adopted city abroad is physically LEAVING that adopted city. "It is so hot here, we need to escape the summer heat of Berlin to the coast for some fresh breezes," you tell yourself. Much in the same way the bourgoisie have been doing here for the last 150 years or so. There are various places across the northern coast of the country to do this and one of the popular places is Germany's largest island "Rugen."
Rugen is mostly dotted with small beach towns, a couple parks with chalk cliffs and sun-baked fields. "Grune Allees" (Green Alleys) of overhanging trees have grown along the roadways, providing shaded tunnels that criss-cross the open fields.
We rented a car, did some last minute research about the island of Rugen on the Baltic Sea coast and took off on a Saturday morning.
Day One: Getting there, a fort, and Stralsund.
Here was our reserved auto, which apparently can hold 4 adults and 4-5 suitcases. Lies! Jasper and Cody took one look at it and exclaimed that it was a new kind of car where the entire family gets to sit in the front seat. It is a Fiat 500, which is slightly larger than Barbie's Cabriolet, yet has a shorter wheelbase than a lawn mower. To the car's credit, there was actually a small trunk, which initially helped me silence any clear-eyed analysis of the situation that I was BARKING MAD to sign this thing out for four days.
Later on, when I scraped my chin on my left knee everytime I tried to look in the rear view mirror and Jasper's foot permanently resting on top of my head, I took the time to rethink it. Well, too late! We left our flat, tuned right on Grunewaldstrasse, left on Hauptstrasse, and followed it all the way out of town.
The scenery north of Berlin is strikingly similar to North Central Ohio. Flat and slightly rolling hills are alternatively covered with sudden stands of forest and cleared fields. While we were enjoying the freedom of the highway I began expressing the need to stop at a place "off the tourist" route. Cassandra found a couple options and we randomly chose one called "Breest." We exited the car, walked around some ancient stone buildings and happily discovered a recently-restored 13th Century castle.
The Klempenow Castle now houses several artist workshops and exhibit spaces. A small cafe serves drinks. We sat inside in the coolness inside 3 meter thick walls to get out of the heat and snacked on our homemade picnic lunch sandwiches. Also exciting was a sweet spielplatz for the kids that incorporated a water pump, carved wooden sluices and sandy basin for the lagoon they created. Germany's kid playground advances again demonstrate their world-beating capability.
Lack of earthquakes lets people build things in brick that actually last for hundreds of years:
We arrived in Stralsund, the gateway city to the isle of Rugen. It's altstadt ("old town") is a UNESCO World Heritage site with all the necessary cobbled streets, winding passageways and freakishly-scenic ancient churches and fortification walls. Of course the main square was filled with tents for the local pottery fair! I bought a mug.
Stralsund is a "Hanseatic" city, a trading confederation of city-states that dominated the Baltic from London to St Petersburg between the 13th and 16th centuries. The Hansa architectural style is evident in the massive church structure, which was built also to house the trading offices of the merchants.
Dinner at our hotel "the Jadghof" (Hunter's Lodge) on the outskirts of Stralsund. End of Day 1. The key to less-stressful dinners with kids is for you to come up with a game. Any game. Kids love games. Frequently the parental stress related to children is due to the fact that you are too lazy to think up and execute a game because this is all the children have any interest in doing.
Will they sit quietly and pay attention to the surroundings? No. Will they ignore previous customers' food scraps underneath the table? No. Will they repeatedly lick the salt shaker? No, but only after you pry it from their hands while they are screaming at you for your intransigence.
So you have to get on their level and play a game. Adult brains are not oriented to this, which is really too bad because games are fun. Thankfully Cassandra is good at this. I am not. I need to get better at this. Here, we are passing the time while waiting for our food. Advantage: you will be able to get thru your beer if you are playing a game since the children have something to focus on. Otherwise they'll be jumping across the table at each other and everything will be knocked on the floor.
Will they sit quietly and pay attention to the surroundings? No. Will they ignore previous customers' food scraps underneath the table? No. Will they repeatedly lick the salt shaker? No, but only after you pry it from their hands while they are screaming at you for your intransigence.
So you have to get on their level and play a game. Adult brains are not oriented to this, which is really too bad because games are fun. Thankfully Cassandra is good at this. I am not. I need to get better at this. Here, we are passing the time while waiting for our food. Advantage: you will be able to get thru your beer if you are playing a game since the children have something to focus on. Otherwise they'll be jumping across the table at each other and everything will be knocked on the floor.
DAY TWO:
In the Baltic you march up to the beach Frau and pay her 8 Euros to get your "Korb" (basket). The Korb life is my answer to the beach: I usually can't stand much time on the beach as I immediately get sun burned and am therefore super paranoid about skin cancer. But the Korb is the solution to all these problems! A little key unlocks the wooden grate and then you can cozy up deep inside it to read a book or relax with a beer. You're on the beach yet not really! It is wonderful.
Of course with children there is very little reading of literature or relaxing with beers so that is a little bit of a stretch, but I did manage to get some chill out time in the Korb while Cassandra supervised the sand play. More korbs, this time at the beach at Binz:
Further proving its worth as a destination, Rugen has a steam locomotive that runs between an island town and a few of the beaches. The station is right next to the beach at Gohren. Daddy and the kids rode the rails into town while mommy followed up in the Fiat, meeting us at the station.
A Grune Allee! My theory is that farmers planted trees along the roads so they wouldn't have to be always schlepping back and forth in the harsh sunlight.
Some backstory: Karl's is a farming collective that has dropped little strawberry huts all over Berlin. Everytime we pass one the children begin mewling and begging for strawberries. When that doesn't work they start threatening violence and/or self-immoliation until we agree to buy them a liter of strawberries. They are overpriced, but still quite good. The Karl's strawberry fortune has enabled the firm to construct a series of Experience Villages across northern Germany and of course there is one on Rugen a few kilometers from the steam train stop.
The ErlebnisDorf is a German version of Disneyland, with a few major exceptions:
- No parking fee.
- No entrance fee.
- No staffers managing the activities.
A small track offers go-carts. Kids just need a Euro from mom and they can race the cart around the track for 3 minutes. No staffers. Kids can run over and smash into each other and no one is in charge. Another "experience" is a 20 foot-wide air-filled rubber "trampoline". A sign says to take your shoes off before jumping around (and potentially falling off) this thing.
Another play spot is the "smokehouse" with some play "meat bits" on the walls. In the center of this hut is an open firepit with burning logs. No screens, guardrail or boundaries. Just a plain open fire burning in the middle of this hut. Someone had to be stoking this fire periodically throughout the day. Yet that person was no one to be seen. This is a wonderful introduction to the very German "be responsible for yourself and your kids" concept. Also, personal injury litigation is nearly unknown here which may have something to do with this lax approach. Amazingly, the children had no interest in the fire - they were heading towards the bungee swing instead! Also unsupervised.
The only staffers at Karls are located inside the main building, which has a 3 storey kids climbing gym, racks of strawberry jam products and a cafeteria with beer taps. Someone will take your money to buy the schnitzel and hefeweizen but otherwise the place is pretty much self serve. The children obviously went crazy with raw, energetic play-lust.
Naturerbe Zentrum. To illustrate the power of forests and their inhabitants, an ecological collective here has built an Earth Nature Center on top of a ridge on the east side of the island. A raised walkway brings you past forest exhibits until you arrive at the payoff moment, which is climbing a circular rampway that spirals up and beyond the tree canopy.
After this we went back to the beaches, this time to Prora, a long beautiful stretch of sandy beach several miles long. It has the ignominious distinction of being chosen by the Nazis in 1936 as the ideal spot for Germans to recreate through a program called "Strength Through Joy." To this end, between 1936-39 they built an enormous tourism infrastructure that would have housed 20,000 people once completed.
The war prevented it from being completed, and now the ruins stand just off the beach, half hidden in a pine forest. The site itself is yet another example of how this country is forced to deal with its Nazi past: leveling the site feels like the right thing, yet it is a historical ruin. Tons of Nazi ruins in Berlin are protected as historical sites under the idea that if we don't raze it, it will remind us never to let such things happen again. Also, no one has come up with the money to develop the property. So the massive complex of former hotel and outbuildings, which stretch 4.5 kilometers along the water, sit and gradually fall apart.
After Prora we cruised down the coastline to Binz, the schwanky Baltic resort. Well, apparently it is schwanky, even though it was news to us. Binz did turn out to be quite schwanky in the end. We walked out on the pier to watch the surfers.
DAY FOUR:
Zingst, Bikes, Another pier, Ice Cream, Autobahn homewards. Kids demonstrate the spacious Fiat 500.
We left our bikes, got some food and turned onto the highway South. 145 km/hr on the Autobahn coming home while the kids were buried in an iPad movie and Cassandra was crashed out. Amazing that the Fiat could pull that, but I wasn't complaining. Next weekend I think we will stay home and bake in Berlin to catch our breath.
DAY THREE:
Breakfast in the Stralsund Altstadt. Naturerbe Zentrum, Prora, Binz pier walk.
Looking up!
Looking Down!
Looking out over the island. And over lots of Germans climbing upstairs for the view.
After this we went back to the beaches, this time to Prora, a long beautiful stretch of sandy beach several miles long. It has the ignominious distinction of being chosen by the Nazis in 1936 as the ideal spot for Germans to recreate through a program called "Strength Through Joy." To this end, between 1936-39 they built an enormous tourism infrastructure that would have housed 20,000 people once completed.
The war prevented it from being completed, and now the ruins stand just off the beach, half hidden in a pine forest. The site itself is yet another example of how this country is forced to deal with its Nazi past: leveling the site feels like the right thing, yet it is a historical ruin. Tons of Nazi ruins in Berlin are protected as historical sites under the idea that if we don't raze it, it will remind us never to let such things happen again. Also, no one has come up with the money to develop the property. So the massive complex of former hotel and outbuildings, which stretch 4.5 kilometers along the water, sit and gradually fall apart.
Once you get past the ruins, the beach opens up. It was extremely windy this day, as we can see with Cassandra and a small wolverine that has jumped onto her back!
Sand dunes are for jumping over, if nothing else.
After Prora we cruised down the coastline to Binz, the schwanky Baltic resort. Well, apparently it is schwanky, even though it was news to us. Binz did turn out to be quite schwanky in the end. We walked out on the pier to watch the surfers.
DAY FOUR:
Zingst, Bikes, Another pier, Ice Cream, Autobahn homewards. Kids demonstrate the spacious Fiat 500.
It was $20/day to rent 2 adult bikes, one kid bike for Jasper and a trailer for Cody on the island of Zingst. Miles of amazing bike trails all up and down the island/beaches. We unexpectedly had our first nude beach experience. We learned some best practices for hanging on the beach in the high winds: bring a few stakes and some sturdy nylon wraps to fashion a wind break for yourself.
Our beach had no korbs, so we wrapped up in towels and sweatshirts and turned our backs to the wind. Sand blew down the beach, lightly stinging open skin. Kids of course did not care and were thoroughly engaged in rock collection projects. Soon we got back on the bikes and followed the trails back to town after routing through a forest and along a dike.
We left our bikes, got some food and turned onto the highway South. 145 km/hr on the Autobahn coming home while the kids were buried in an iPad movie and Cassandra was crashed out. Amazing that the Fiat could pull that, but I wasn't complaining. Next weekend I think we will stay home and bake in Berlin to catch our breath.
No comments:
Post a Comment