I’m back ….

… from my summer vacation.

Although, summer hasn’t started (according to the calendar, summer starts on June 21st), I was on summer vacation and came back Saturday evening. The last 2 weeks I was at the Baltic Sea on the Island Usedom. It’s the most north-eastern part of Germany, next to the border to Poland. Usedom is known for being a very sunny area, so that they advertise with the slogan “the sun-island”. Despite, many parts of Germany suffered from bad weather with heavy rain and even some over-floodings, Usedom was dried out: 3 weeks without any rain, when we arrived. When we arrived we had nearly 30°C, crisp and cloudless blue sky and a smell of salt, resin and blooming flowers.

Not far from our vacation home, there was a white beach with very fine sand. Some beach chairs were waiting to be rented. You know, I love being at the sea. I love walking along the shore, listening to the birds, the soft wind and the sound of the waves.

On Usedom you can find several towns and villages. Not all of them are located at the coast. Usedom is the second largest island of Germany (Rügen is the biggest one, located next to Usedom). The island is 66,4 km broad and a bit shaped like a banana with much bigger ends (up to 23 km) then the middle part. The Baltic sea does not have a huge tide. You often even notice the difference between high tide and low tide.

Usedom is located not of the Germany capitol Berlin only in a about two hours drive distance. So, you can find many people from Berlin, here. At the end of the 18th century, rich people from Berlin started to go for vacation and spotted i.e. Usedom as a beautiful place for recovering from the stress and the dirt in the big city. At first, local farmers and fishers gave rooms to the city-people.

Next, entrepreneurs built villas and mansions for the rich visitors. These houses followed a very certain building style with ideas coming from the ancient greeks and romans. Today, that style is known as “Bäderarchitektur” (Resort architecture). I’ll show you some more examples in future posts. Fortunately, most of them are already well reconstructed and in very good shape.

To make the trip more comfortable, the coastal towns built piers in addition to the railway stations. So, the people were able to come by ship and have not only a comfortable stay but also a comfortable trip. We were for your stay in Ahlbeck, the town with the oldest pier. You can see it in the image above.

In the urban hinterland, you can discover many interesting villages by bike. The island has a dense network of bicycle tracks. Most of the island is quite flat, so you don’t have many problems with hills or so (despite, there are a few). You can even find a few lakes on the Island.

Take care!