This cannot possibly be our luck, can it? Here Caroline is in a Sanddorn shop selling all things Sanddorn, can you believe it? What is Sanddorn, you ask? It’s sea buckthorn, so that’s all cleared up, huh? Not if you are in America, as it’s definitely not a common item, not even on Amazon. Sure, you can find it as a supplement online, but this shop features it in no less than 25 food products and a bunch of other preparations, and from the number of people shopping at this store, it’s incredibly popular.
As important as it is to share information about sea buckthorn and its popularity in northern Germany, what I really want to tell you about is how lucky we are regarding how the weather is turning out. I now wish I’d screen-capped the forecast a couple of days ago when there was an 87% and 90% chance of rain, respectively, on Thursday and Friday. We were sitting in a local cafe enjoying a long breakfast as it was supposed to start raining at 11:00 this morning, but around 10:00, the forecast was updated, and so now we are out walking on the shore of the Baltic Sea, and we should be safe until about 3:00 this afternoon.
While the sky portends otherwise, here we are “mostly” dry, meaning Caroline has doffed her shoes as her modus operandi is in effect; no matter how cold the water she must dip her toes into the drink.
Strandkorbe or beach baskets (?) are all the rage at Germany’s beaches, especially on warm sunny days. This morning, with the threat of poor weather conditions, there was only this one guy, all alone, looking like he was asking himself, “What the hell am I doing here?” I might be wrong, but I think it might be Erich Honecker’s son, Steve.
We considered for a minute going out on this tall ship for sailing on the Baltic as for only €36 or $42, you get two hours under sail, but considering the lighting conditions and that we certainly didn’t want to find ourselves in some covered seating area looking out windows if the rain came up, we’ll have to save this one for a future visit.
This is proper beach attire for gentlemen in northern Germany. Notice the way he holds the umbrella; this is the correct angle; his form and gait portray his upbringing, while his hat protects him from damaging UV rays. Caroline believes he’s a secret police agent for the Stasi, but there’s no way I’m buying into that paranoia.
Whoever played this bad joke by placing a cairn at the water’s edge took Caroline deeper than she’d bargained for as she walked right into the sea.
I wonder what’s up the hill?
This neolithic sculpture has remained untouched here for over 4,000 years. It consists of white stones with provenance in southern Italy and is set on a granite boulder from Finland laid down during the last ice age.
I swear I’ve seen this particular cormorant in Oregon just this past November. Do they really migrate between cold and rainy climates?
We sat at a corner of the bay a good long while listening to a half dozen different types of shorebirds. Terns were hanging out with the ducks while the cormorants, swans, and seagulls were in the water, drying off or looking for food.
This early Mesolithic art has stood undisturbed for nearly 12,000 years, disproving the alleged history that says written language started with the Sumerians. If you look closely, you can still make out where twigs have been organized to spell out “Tree of Life,” which also proves English was the first spoken language on earth. Crazy, but you are seeing it with your very own eyes.
By the way, that nonsense about the Neolithic and Mesolithic art written above was added against my advice by that woman on the left of the photo. I only let her play these shenanigans because she’s cute.
The weather report has once again been updated in our favor with promises of nothing more than looming gray clouds blotting out the sun, but the rain has been pushed out until after 6:00 this evening.
So, from the Strand (beach) we take a steep trail from there into the Wald (forest).
To those who actually spend time reading these missives from the edges of Caroline’s and my experiences, I hope you enjoy the shorter blurbs where you need not scroll endlessly looking for the next photo.
You might remember, unless you too are old and forgetful, that just moments ago (or a few photos ago), we were way down there at sea level, and now we’re way up here nearly in the clouds. Our goal is to get way out there, depending on how difficult it is to hack our way through the jungle terrain.
For those who might be curious as to when and where I’m making all this stuff up, we are not in the day I’m writing about but already in the next day on a train to Berlin. I’m sharing this as I realize that by writing so little per photograph, I could run out of images to write to, and then I’d have nothing to do on this train but bug Caroline with more dumb comments in my crass abuse of German that should embarrass anyone in earshot that some American idiot is destroying their language to such vulgar effect. If only I knew how to write German, I could share an example; consider yourself saved, as you’d certainly have to sanitize your eyes mit Benzin.
Yesterday, we’d hoped to bike out to those chalk cliffs; well, that didn’t happen.
Being atop the cliffside we wanted to walk out to, my vertigo insists I’d be crazy to peer over the side that drops straight out of sight, tickling my dark hidden parts to such a degree that I would need to teleport to the bidet in our hotel room if I were to take a serious look. Without the ability to do just that, the immediate problem would then be that I’d have to clean “my fear” with my mask, thus foiling my ability to enter our hotel to change my soiled chonies, a conundrum I choose not to confront.
Like the dark side of the moon, this is the unseen bottom of the mushroom. I didn’t dare get closer as local legend has it that der böse Giftzwerg lives under the biggest Pilz im Wald (mushroom in the forest). After using this now for the third time in a blog entry, I think I should retire ever writing about “The Evil Poison Dwarf” (der böse Giftzwerg) again.
Hah, that would require self-control that my version of Tourette’s hardly knows. As a matter of fact, now that I’ve shared that I have some use of rudimentary German, I’m biting my nails, trying not to write the litany of ugliness I know. You can bet this has a thing or two to do with Caroline’s friend Claudia, who’d read this and find certainty in the knowledge that her friend’s husband is a Neanderthal, albeit one with great grammar, although she’d probably know that’s all my wife’s doing.
These leaf parasites are the spawn of the böse Giftzwerg that, after hatching, search out the biggest mushroom they can find, but don’t worry, we killed these with a fire we started using the flint Caroline found on the beach.
That’s Steve Honecker’s wife Leonida (transgender son/daughter of Leonid Brezhnev on the right) and their daughter Tiffany on the left. Ich hoffe, du hast Humor.
No trip to Europe would be complete without at least one visit to a yarn store; the closed shop in Frankfurt obviously didn’t count. At least I see a new pair of socks in my future to remind me of our perfect trip to Binz auf Rügen.
Because 14 kilometers wasn’t enough walking, we headed north on the Strandpromenade to check out some open-air market stalls selling various souvenirs to us tourists as no self-respecting local would buy the crap on offer. Instead of showing you those cheesy goods, I present you with “Path to Baltic Sea Through Forest.”
This is the Strandpromenade (Beach Walk) looking south as those yucky stalls were behind me where they belong. I wonder if I’ve done any good in sharing what the architecture of this seaside resort community looks like, but with gray skies, it’s been a struggle to capture things the way I would have liked to.
Dinner was a late lunch today, and before the shops closed (meaning the yarn store), we used the time for Caroline to explore some shopping options before dipping in for a Soft-Eis (soft-serve). Always on the hunt for hazelnut Soft-Eis, we read every menu we come across, looking for that wonderful memory we first experienced somewhere in the Austrian Alps some years ago.
Having dinner at 3:00 guaranteed I’d be hungry again, so we ventured back downstairs from our hotel room to this little fish joint called Happy-Happen for a late-night snack (actually, it’s only 7:30, but they close at 8:00) I grabbed the biggest fish sandwich I’ve ever seen. Expecting something akin to McDonald’s pitiful fish sandwich, I was handed the Tomahawk rib-eye version of Fischbrötchen, and my expectations of the lowly fish Mac will never be the same.
That rain that was supposed to arrive this evening never materialized, and with this beautiful night shot looking back at Binz from the pier, our two days of shoddy weather turned into perfect conditions for us to have an incredibly wonderful time out here on Germany’s largest island set next to the Baltic Sea.