Like a real German in Sassnitz

Next we headed toward the island of Rügen, in the Baltic Sea. If we’d been experiencing the ‘real Germany’ by staying away from other tourists and visiting small towns, we were now traveling head-first into one of the biggest tourist destinations in this part of the country. This is also the ‘real Germany’. It's where East Germans go on vacation. 

Sassnitz harbor

I tend to think that all Germans are like the ones I meet in Hannover. They are either educated city types, immigrants, or wealthy small towners who keep a few horses at home. In Rügen we were surrounded by another sort: Germany’s middle class, working class even. Social divisions are easy to notice here. How does this look? A few missing teeth, some beer bellies, lots of short, spiky haircuts on women, and socks with sandals, of course. In Germany, even your hair dresser or supermarket cashier gets a paid vacation.  Full-time employees legally must have 5-6 weeks of paid vacation time per year.

Oh, you mean what does the place look like? We were in Sassnitz, which is a lovely harbor town. There are ships and seagulls and cafes along the coast. But it’s a bit like a Lake of the Ozarks for Germany, a Wisconsin Dells even. Everyone’s walking down ‘the strip’ and they are all shopping for tacky T-shirts. I keep expecting to see a sign for a Kozy Kountry Kitchen around the corner. We stayed in a hotel attached to an appropriately kitschy but cute seafood restaurant. It overlooks the harbor – pretty great, actually.

Sassnitz coast

This is where we stayed in Sassnitz

There are benefits of going to a place, even a touristy place, that's not in the Rick Steves guidebook and where few foreigners dare to tread. Mostly it’s great for my German language skills. No one tries to talk to me in English. And if I pronounce a word wrong in German, no one stares at me as if I am speaking in Martian, or Pig Latin, or Esperanto.  They just answer me back. They don’t speak English, so there are no other options. The other benefit is that I feel like we are doing what people who live in Germany do in the summer. Not the people who head to Mallorca, but everyone else. They pull out their short shorts and their sporty sandals (socks optional) and head to the coast.

On Tuesday we hiked into Jasmund National Park, just outside of Sassnitz, and walked along the chalk cliffs.  8.5 km later, we reached the end of the trail. After eating the fish sandwiches we’d bought off a boat that morning, we got on the bus back to town. That’s right, the city bus. Public transportation in Germany is awesome. 

In Jasmund National Park

Chalk cliffs at Jasmund National Park

Sassnitz used to be the main terminal for ferries heading across the Baltic. The terminal is now a museum, since the ferries moved a few miles down the coast years ago. You can see where the cars drove off the ferries up to the swanky high-rise hotel, with its indoor swimming pool and its small but tasteful Lenin memorial. Now the memorial is overgrown, and the hotel is still open but crumbling. 

The old ferry terminal

The Hotel Rügen, past its prime, memorial on the bottom right

If you look closely, you can see Lenin's profile on this stone

There are swankier resorts on the Baltic Sea coast, and even nicer ones on the North Sea. But I was glad we went to Sassnitz - it was pretty and offered a lot of places to buy a tie dyed T-shirt that says "good girl gone bad".