Month: September 2024

This morning after breakfast we went for a walk. The weather was windy and cool but very pleasant.

We have been surprised how few people speak English in the places we have been the last few nights. Google translate is awesome. You just take a picture of the German you want to translate and it instantly gives you the translation in English.

After our walk we drove southeast to a small town not too far from Berlin. Oktoberfest is going on in Berlin right now so rooms there were scarce and expensive.

For dinner we drove to a nearby town, Strausberg and had dinner in a restaurant built in an old train station. So far in Germany all our meals have been in tourist areas. Tonight Gasthof Strausberg Nord where we ate felt very authentic and local. The first page of the menu was all horse meat. It’s interesting how our cultural prejudices make us react to foods. We ordered one of the horse meat dishes and a fish called Zander. They were both delicious.

Another cultural thing is serving lard as a spread for bread. It is also very good.

Today we left the Baltic coast and drove inland.

Breakfasts at Hotel Bernstein were great. Almost all our breakfast buffets have had pickled herring and salmon. The fish section on this morning’s buffet was especially good. I liked the look of the fish wrapped around a pickle but I didn’t try it. I did have some of the sour cream pickled herring.

After breakfast we went for a walk along the cliffs in the opposite direction from town.

We stopped for groceries about an hour into our drive. Soon after that it started to rain and it has rained the rest of the day.

Hotel am Inselsee where we are tonight is on a lake. Hopefully the weather will cooperate in the morning and we can check it out. Our room has the bedroom upstairs!

We ate dinner at the hotel.

We were very lucky to have another beautiful day on the Baltic coast today. It’s kind of fun to look at the weather where we have been recently. Three weeks ago we were in Kiruna, Sweden. Today it is snowing there.

And four weeks ago we were sailing up the Norwegian coast. We belong to Facebook groups for the two companies that do that route. they have been having very bad weather the past week. Here is a Facebook post about it.

The two breakfasts buffets we have had in Germany have both had very good bread and they offer a basket for your bread. Very nice!

Today we did a lovely hike along the coast of the Nordperd Cape which is the easternmost point on the island of Rügen where we are staying. It was only about a 4 mile drive to get to where we started.

For dinner we walked down to the main street that ends in the pier and randomly picked a restaurant. We ended up at Gran Café Italia and had an excellent meal.

I thought it might be fun to share interesting, and unusual to us breakfast offerings. Sunday morning, at Strandhotel Seerose I couldn’t figure out what the flat round disks in the right bottom corner of the picture were. So I tried one. I’m still not sure. Duke suggested turnip and I think that’s the best guess.

After breakfast we went for a walk. This lady was renting beach chairs. You pay and get a key to your chair.

We checked out at about eleven and headed towards the island of Rügen. We had quite a bit of traffic leaving the island at the draw bridge. I think it had just been up and that’s what caused the backup.

Along our drive we saw this windmill and stopped to check it out. the first documentation of a windmill here was in the 1300s. It collapsed in 1972 and was rebuilt and became operable again in the 1990s.

We are staying on the eastern end of the island of Rügen at the Hotel Bernstein. We have been very lucky with the weather this last week. After checking in we went for a walk out to the end of the pier.

We had dinner in the hotel restaurant.