Mecklenburg-Lower Pomerania

I hope to travel on a holiday along the German Baltic coast sometime. I shall use my trusty ‘Rough Guide to Germany’ as my first and last reference book. Originally written in 2008, and still not done in 2018, but there’s still time, although I have got rid of the Rough Guide as it was out of date by then. I shall perform a recce trip to Binz and in 2024, I saw an ad on the Guardian’s secret escapes for a Hotel on the waterfront in Lubeck which would be the start point for the original plan.

Locality & Map

Courtesy of Google Maps

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If touring, I’d like to visit

• Schwerin
• Bad Doberan
• Rostock/Warnemunde and
• Rugen Island, where Binz seems a good place to stay.

So I checked out how to get to Binz on Rome2Rio and they had a couple of routes, but excitingly, via Copenhagen and a ferry to Sassnitz. whch would make the Hotel noted below useful.

No planes to Rostock but one could fly to Stettin £220, or Hamburg (£85-£200). The train from Hamburg is priced quite reasonably, one would change at Rostock. There are very few direct flights from LCY to Hamburg, which means that the trains are tight i.e. very risky.

I was playing holiday porn, and found, in expedia, a hotel in Sassnitz, with various routes, by plane, bus and train and in one case a ferry.

When

This area is very busy in the summer and also very dramatic in the winter. I need to decide. I don’t need to travel in the school holidays anymore.

More Advice

There’s plenty of that

• Mecklenburg Western Pomerania from wikivoyage.
• Here’s a picture gallery from pxhere.com

How to get there!

Doesn’t seem that easy, flights are either difficult and expensive, or just plain expensive (to Rostock). The inter-rail shop is here. , but if I google, Hamburg to Rostock the train fares seem exceptionally reasonable, the tickets from Berlin are more expensive but are still cheaper than a round of cocktails. Jan 2019

The man in seat 61 talks abut German railways here, and Berlin to Germany here., and here is the DB search engine.

Via Hamburg

Expedia recommend LCY to Hamburg, and probably other London airports too but that’s as close as they can get although both Stettin and Copenhagen are possible, but further away by train. Not sure about Stettin, it seems expensive compared with Hamburg and Berlin.

Via Berlin

I have now checked the Berlin journey from LCY; BA do a number of direct flights and so the trains might connect better, but I have decided to train to and from Berlin and on the way home, stay overnight in Berlin then fly home in the afternoon and let the timezones work for me. .

Via Brussels

And on by train, and Koln, it seems, not very convenient, nor particularly cheap.

Where to stay

In Binz,

I have an Expedia trip page, but my favourite at the time was Dorint Strand Hotel. although I eventually chose somewhere else, Arkona Beach Hotel, a bit further North, nearer the train station and on the beach.

I returned to the Arkona Beach Hotel in 2024. I was offered a map to the National Park Jasmund which is north of Sassnitz and I need to work out how to get around the park without a car. I aslo took a boat ride to the chalk cliffs with this company, Alder Schiffe, who also offer an all day trip round the island which should be fun.

There is a tourist tax card, called the “Binz Bucht Karte”, levied by the hotel in my case, but available from automats, which gives one free access to the beach, its toilets and a local bus (R27) which travels thankfully between Binz and Prora; I didn’t want to walk back, but was quite proud of having got there. Being Germany, a number of outlets are closed for the weekend.

When I stayed in 2023, there was no staff nor a ticket machine at Binz station, so I want a weekly season ticket for the whole island. This may be available, from Trainline, Omio, or VMV.

English

English is not as ubiquitous nor as good as in Berlin. For my second trip I used duolingo for 9 months and found it helped.

Reviews

The Guardian and Observer say

• Islands in the Baltic, from the Guardian July 2008.
• Kick back in the Baltics, from the Guardian June 2007.
• Hitler’s Holiday Camp, from the Observer August 2001

Wikipedia has an entry on Prora, the site of the Observer article.

At Heiligendamm [wikipedia], some of the villas which date back to Imperial Germany have been taken over by the Kempinski chain but that’s probably more than I’ll want to pay.

Lubeck

I wondered what art galleries there might be in Lubeck.