The German Island of Rügen and the Trail of Tears: aka, Kelly Relearns to Bike

After the weekend in Berlin, we split off from our friends to go up to the island of Rügen in northern Germany. Still wondering where it is? Maybe this will help: 

Rugen is pretty dang close to Copenhagen and southern Sweden, which means that most tourists in Rügen are either German, Danish or Swedish. Given that most of the towns on Rügen are devoted to tourism as a major source of income, that's a lot of Scandinavians! Swedish, Danish, and German are all related Germanic languages, and in their written forms there are a lot of similar words, but we thought it was interesting that if Scandinavians and Germans talk to each other, they use English whenever possible instead of one of their own languages. We didn't see anyone while we were there who was obviously American, though maybe we did and just assumed that they were Swedish since they were speaking English! The Swedish accent in English is so adorable and if they're really good, they just sound like Minnesotans to me. 

Will had been to Rügen a few other times over the past seven years, and it was awesome to get to explore the things I've heard so much about. On our first evening we took a stroll around this pretty lake that is very close to the center of the town of Binz, where we were staying. 

This sign was posted on the edge of the lake, and WP tells me it translates roughly to "Searching for food is our job, we don't need your help. Thank you." An adorable little note from the ducks and swans of the lake!

Apparently this lake is also a popular spot to film music videos. While we were there this crew was working on a music video, with the singer mostly lip-syncing: 

The main drag in Binz has a lot of shops and restaurants, and this hilariously named "Spa Pharmacy", which is funny if you're into English/German puns (has this Apotheke been very naughty?): 

We walked through town to the beach to get our first look at the Baltic Sea. Right along the boardwalk, there was this amazingly intricate sand castle, which was actually a teaser for a sand castle exhibition at a local museum. Why you would have an indoor sand castle exhibition, I have no idea, but this one was pretty cool: 

I also got a kick out of these little beach benches. You can rent these wicker chairs during the day to sit on the beach and have some shade. In Italy they had big umbrellas that you could sit under in groups and are patrolled by people to take your money, here they have small individual chairs that are locked until you pay for them. Sometimes it's small things like this where you see a lot of cultural variation. 

After enjoying a nice dinner along the seaside, we started our walk back to our bed and breakfast. On the way we ran into the most out-of-control family fun concert. We were drawn by the sounds of German-accented singers doing a cover of the Pitbull song "Give Me Everything":  

There was a huge crowd of people watching and dancing, I guess this was just a free concert put on by the town for tourists. After a few American songs they moved on to some German classics that the 50+ age range seemed to get really into. Here they are doing "Good Feeling": 

After a little dancing with the Swedes and Germans, we headed home to get some sleep for our big day of BIKING. That's right! The next morning we rented a couple of bikes, and my first stressful biking moment took place. I had to test ride the bike for the rental guys to make sure I had the seat at the right height. This probably sounds easy to most of you, but you probably bike more often than... once every 15 years or so.  I didn't fall off the bike, but I was pretty shaky getting started and made them lower my seat even after the worker tried to convince me to keep it up high by saying "you're riding the bike, not walking with it between your legs."

So after getting our helmets strapped on, we walked our bikes over to the bikes-only trail (of which Rügen has a pretty extensive network), and we started making our way toward Prora Beach, about a 4.5km ride from Binz. I actually did pretty good getting to the beach, and even got more comfortable turning and stopping (somewhat) gracefully. The trails to the beach were all pretty flat, and actually went right up to the sand. See, photographic proof that I was on a bike: 

When we got to the beach it was nice to take a little break on the sand with an Apfelschorle (awesome German beverage, a mix of apple juice and sparkling water). We dipped our feet in but didn't go swimming because, as you might guess, that Baltic Sea water is cold! For only being a few kilometers outside Binz, this beach was pretty deserted, possibly because of the weird history behind it. There is a huge building right on the beach that was built by the Nazi government between 1936-1939 to house 20,000 German workers at a time. Hitler also wanted it to be easily convertible into a military hospital in case of war. The original idea was to cycle all the workers through this one beach resort for their annual vacations. The building is pretty imposing and now stands mostly abandoned. Because really, who wants to build a resort out of Hitler's former beach hang out? They can't tear it down either, because then they'd likely be accused of trying to revise or forget the historical significance. Right now the only things there taking up a tiny portion of the building are a museum about the structure, a youth hostel (which definitely does not hold 20,000 people), and a few stores and cafes. 

Here's a photo of the Nazi building that I took from Wikipedia. This is the land side of the hotel, the beach is on the other side: 

And here's my photo of the beach: 

After Prora we got back on our bikes and headed for town. By this time, I had some muscles wondering why they hadn't been used in years, and I was feeling a bit sore. But it was all good, because we were heading for town which meant we were heading for lunch! 

After lunch (at a Chinese/Thai restaurant that was pretty tasty by European standards) the plan was to go up to visit the Granitz Hunting Lodge, a castle nearby mostly used in the 19th century for hunting by the local nobility. There is a cute little tourist train that goes from Binz up to the castle, which is located on top of a hill. Originally, we were planning to take that cute little train, but after a morning of successful biking, we got cocky. We thought, hey, it's only another 10 kilometers roundtrip, we can do it. 

The beginning of the trail was pretty easy, and went past lots of scenic pastures of horses and goats. 

Once we started ascending, the forest got a little thicker, and it was easy to see why you'd put a hunting lodge in the area.  

Getting up to the top of the hill was hard. I have a lot of respect for the cyclists of SF, who all us non-bikers have all seen struggling up a hill and thought "it doesn't look that bad." It IS that bad. I went to a lower gear and was going so slowly that I could have walked faster and eventually had to walk my bike up to the top. Ugh!

The hunting lodge was pretty cool though, and I'm glad we made it up there. Here's what it looks like from the outside; it has a circular tower on each corner and a really tall one in the middle:

Here's the entryway, filled with many years' worth of antlers: 

On the second floor there are more antlers all around and this really cool small spiral staircase connecting a couple of rooms: 

To get to the top of the middle, highest tower, we had to go up these steps that hug that outside of the tower. If you have any fear of heights, these steps would be pretty bad for you. Not only are they super narrow with a low handrail (all original pieces from the 1840s), but if you look down you can see through them because of the intricate pattern: 

They had security guards located at the top and bottom of this staircase, and only allowed one group of people to ascend or descend at a time, because with too many people it could get dangerous. From the top of the tower, the view was amazing. We could see down to Binz and all the surrounding towns and fields: 

This little pink building is part of the visitors center. I like how you can see the how thick the forest is that surrounds the hunting lodge:

We thought it was fun that out on the viewing deck they had these markers indicating how far away various cities are located. Straight ahead in the this photo, Oslo, Norway is located 643 kilometers away:

Apparently if it starts to rain they don't let people up on top of the tower, partly due to lightning and partly due to slippery iron steps on the way back down. We made it up to the top just in time. After we climbed back down the steps and got outside, a light rain started (a "summer rain" which means that it was still warm outside, so still biking weather.) You can see it out in the distance in this photo: 

After our tour of the lodge we had to get our bikes back to the rental agency before 6pm. When we left the lodge it was about 5:20pm, and we had a little over 5km to go. Instead of taking the bike route that we took on the way up the mountain, we decided to try a different, more direct route, in hopes of making it back to town a little faster. So in the rain we started on the new path, which we quickly found out was actually not meant for bikes, but cars, specifically ones with four-wheel drive. First came the cobblestone steep downhill section which turned our arms to jelly as the bike bounces along, then the sticky mud and big puddle section that brought our bikes to a slow crawl, followed by my personal fave, the tiny country one-lane-in-each-direction highway. Luckily we didn't end up having to bike on the highway for more than a couple kilometers, but it was still scary! There was no bike lane, so we tried to stay as far right as we could, though cars sometimes had to drive slowly right behind us waiting for traffic coming the other direction to pass. Thank God that German drivers are used to having cyclists on the road. 

After we made it back safely to a bike trail, I started crying. What a baby! At this point we had about 15 minutes to get the bikes back to the rental place, and crying definitely doesn't make you bike faster. After drinking some water and making proclamations that "I'd never bike again/this is horrible/why didn't we take the cute little train" (all of which I've since revoked), we got back on the bikes and named our adventure the Biking Trail of Tears (no disrespect meant to the original Trail of Tears of relocated Native Americans in the 1830s).

We got the bikes back on time and were pretty happy to get rid of them. I am proud of myself for trying to bike again, and proud that I successfully biked about 20km in a day! I think next time we're in a place where there are lots of bike trails and I won't be forced to go on a highway, I'll do it again. It's nice to know that I can, and that I probably won't fall off. Will was happy as a clam to be back on a bike (and to finally see me on one), and I think even more excited to get back to his road bike in California. From Rügen we made the four-and-a-half hour train ride back to Berlin and had an afternoon to sight-see there before heading back to the States. 

To avoid confusion: we're back home in the US already, but since getting home I've been a little delayed posting about the end of our big trip. One more post and then we'll be all caught up!