Kevin??
So where did we go on Holiday? Well we did a tour of the german Baltic coast in our old but trusted motorhome. We spent two days driving from Havixbeck (home) to Lübeck and stayed there overnight. Lübeck is famous for ist Marzipan. From there we troddeled north to Travemünde on the coast just right of Denmark when you look on the map.
Travemünde was fine and we spent some time on board the Passat. The Passat was one of the flying P line ships along with ist sunken sister the Pamir and others. It is one on the few surviving 4 mast barks and is a magnificent beast. I intend to model this ship at some time in the future.
From Travemünde we travelled eastwards following the coastline and took in Boltenhagen and Wismar (very nice) before moving on to Warnemünde. Warnemünde was typical tourist Germany where one must pay holiday tax to be there and entrance fee to get onto the beach, which is plastered with these wicker sand chairs. UUgghhzh! So a quick look here they gone, away from the tourists and away from the Blackpool sea front of the Baltic.
10 Km to the east of Warnemünde is an area called Hohe Dune (high dunes). Wonderful! Hardly a person on the Kilometer long unspoilt beach, more parking space than you can eat, no fees or taxes and no rules eg. No dogs, no kiteflying, no nude bathing, no swimming, no digging or anyother of the regulations that Germans put upon their tourists.
So a fine night was had here with kite flying, relaxing and peace and quite except for the sound of the sea!
The next destination was the Isle of Rüggen with ist 120m high chalk cliffs and all! This is a very beautiful island offering everything fron sandy beaches, cliffs, forests and quaint old east german villages. Everything on Rügen costs, so it is a little expensive but well worth the visit.
After a couple of days on Rügen we tootled off to the, for me, highlight of our trip, the peninsula of Usedom with the first stop in Peenemünde. (the Pamphlet about the museum comes from here). So that you have an idea, Peenemünde is about half an hours drive from Poland and the peninsula of Usedom has been relatively untouched since WW2.
At Peenemünde we visited the museum on the Pamphlet....wow, what an amazing feeling and atmosphere this place has. The old Nazi test and development site of liquid powered rockets. The V1 and V2 are the most famous of these but much more was done there than you can imagine. Ist a good job that the war ended when it did and that the Germans ran out of money or the world would look very different today. This place is well worth a visit.
Then it was off to discover the very eery and interesting peninsula of Usedom right up to the Polish border. As I said Usedom is virtually untouched since WW2 and the whole peninsula is a reminder of the past. During the DDR times Usedom was basically avoided by the Russians and apart from the coastline was not used. In 1989 "the wall" came down and Usedom belong once again to the west. The BRD was forced to spend trillions to start to rebuild old east Germany, which is why I have to pay unification tax, and get the infrastructure up and running. Motorways, rail and air networks were the proirity and places like Usedom were bottom of the list. So far down that they haven`t got there yet. The result is that most of the woodland areas or still out of bounds with signs every 20 Yards warning of the dangers from munitions and phosphour. Even in the woods that are open you still find rusting relics and tank wire from back then. The whole place reaks of the past, it is, for an ex military man like me, somewhere that I can soak up history......wonderful.
From Usedom we spent the next four days driving homeward via Waren (Müritz) and the Mecklenburger Seeplatte (Mecklenburg Lake District). Very nice but a bit too flat for me. (I much prefer our Lake District).
So thats about it, I hope that answers your question and that you have enjoyed the report. I shall post a couple of piccies should you be interested.
