At the end of a long, hot summer, we were off to middle Europe. As is usual with our holiday plans, 'scope creep' led us from an initial few days in Berlin for the European athletics championships in Berlin, into a royal progress overland northwards by train, ferry and car to the northenmost point of Denmark.
We have always had a fondness for Berlin, going way back to partition days, and today it’s a comfortable, prosperous city. Now it’s knitted back together, but still the scars of the Wall are visible here and there. As we walked the streets, memories of the cold war scenes we saw in the early 80s played like a faded black and white movie superimposed on this shiny new city.
Scars too of earlier conflict: the plaques on the streets showing where people were dragged away to oblivion; the rubble site of Gestapo HQ, the old Soviet war memorial … But for all that, Berlin today is a buzzing, lively and very green city. We hit the tail end of Europe's long hot summer there, but temperatures started to fall away after the first day.
But the feeling soon passed. Wandering through the Tiergarten and the city's spacious boulevards and squares – filled with leisurely families on bikes, groups enjoying a beer in shady pavement cafes, and lovers just taking in the sun – all seemed right with this city.
We also went to the Konzerthaus for a performance and a fine hall it is: its gorgeous interior has been beautifully reconstructed since reunification, like many a building here. And we walked for miles, through areas rich and poor – along the canal and to Charlottenburg, and to Kreuzberg, and the museum district. I was reading Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood, and many familiar streets and names provided another layer of history to overlay the present.
Next, we followed Christopher and went north, passing close to the Polish border, through an endless vista of flat arable land. Each village has neat red and white gabled houses, a couple of abandoned factories by the station, an area of allotments filled with ramshackle dachas, a water tower, a steepled church and a wind farm. Proceeding by smaller and smaller, more and more local trains we finally reached our destination: Ruegen Island. Isherwood stayed here in the early 30s, and his description of Sellin, “almost entirely of boarding-houses, in various styles of seaside architecture – sham Moorish, old Bavarian, Taj Mahal, and the rococo doll's house, with white fretwork balconies” is just as true today. The woods are still there, too, and we had a lovely walk through pine trees and beech hangers, from Binz, where we were staying. We even encountered the “little train” that took Otto back to Berlin, a narrow gauge steam train that still threads its way through the woods. Both resorts are surprisingly calm and upmarket. Binz has a long, carless promenade and an established clientele. The resorts here front the gentle arc of sandy beaches facing the “tepid shallow Baltic” of the Ostsee, where people came for a sea-bathing cure. There is a fine Kurhaus and many villas from the turn of the 19thcentury. We saw a surprising number of grandparents with young children: we speculated that this was a favoured spot for the East Berlin elite in the soviet era. Just out of town is an extraordinary 4.5km long hulk, Prora, built in the 1930s as holiday apartments for workers, but never completed due to the war. It just goes on and on: the nearer end is now being modernised, though the grounds are still almost derelict. We couldn't imagine who would want to live there.
Continuing our northward journey we took the ferry to Trelleborg in Sweden, and then to Malmö, where we found ourselves in the middle of a huge street festival, the squares filled with stages, loud music and fast food stalls: quite a shock after the peaceful days on Ruegen Island. But we immediately moved on, crossing The Bridge (no dead bodies spotted!) to København and our train further north: a very comfortable, spacious train (and cheap) sped us across Denmark's islands and up the Jutland peninsular.
Aarhus is a big (by Danish standards) port city, and still very active, with an attractive centre. There is a brick cathedral, part romanesque, part gothic, with a huge tower, and a school that has operated continuously since at least 1195. Aarhus also has perhaps the most amazing modern public library anywhere, Dokk 1, by the harbour. We stayed a bit out of town in a classic 60s Nordic brick modernist hotel across the bay. Unfortunately, the management have filled it with bog-standard hotel furniture, ghastly carpets and crude paintings of pirates rather than mid-century classics. But it was still great to sit on the terrace watching the evenings draw in; the food was excellent (the Danes are particularly good at breakfasts); and there were lovely walks through the woods and along the beaches nearby. Next day we drove out to the gently rolling countryside of Mols Bjerge National Park and to Ebeltoft, a very pretty little fishing village of single storey half-timber houses with hollyhocks round the door. Later we were joined by Marc and Nigel, who joined us for the final part of the trip. We undertook our final northward stage, by car to the farthest point of Jutland, where we were to stay for a week in Skagen.
Pictures here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/keithuk/albums/