Rügen: Part III

This is definitely going to be the end of this story. Here goes: Kelly and I didn't want to go back to the country line dancing immediately after leaving the museum, so we decided to take the bus to the tourist town of Binz, eat dinner there, and take a nice walk back to Prora. One of the coolest things in Binz was not mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide. I also didn't take a picture of it. But along the shore was a series of sciencey sculptures. They were great - one of them involved turning a crank to make a tornado in a big plexiglass tube. The one called "The Storm" was the coolest, but it's also difficult to describe. But it did a good job of showing turbulence. Some of the statues I didn't understand - there were signs nearby, but as expected, they were in German. One of them looked like a giant raisin. I have no idea what it was supposed to demonstrate, but Kelly has a picture of me clinging to it. If she sends it to me I can post it.

Anyway, then Kelly and I sat together and stared at the water. It was romantic, but I'm not sure how she would have responded to gay chicken, so I kept my hands to myself. We ate dinner, then began the 3ish mile walk back to our campsite and the line dancing. I was really excited when I realized that the beach we were walking on was an FKK beach. I've been fascinated by this since Luise explained it to me. I took a picture to prove it.


One of the problems with walking along the beach is that it's hard to know when you've reached your destination. We couldn't tell, so every so often we'd walk up the paths leading away from the beach. At one point we started we heard voices in the woods, which was a bit creepy. So we scurried back to the beach, where a fireworks display was going on in the distance. I suggested that it might be coming from the linedancing, and Kelly didn't believe me - but now I realize that I was right. According to the flier about the festival, "Sonnabend etwa 22:00 Uhr dasFeuerwerk von Fred Feuerstein" were scheduled. But at the time it seemed impossible far away.

Eventually, we figured out where we were from the Nazi ghost buildings. The story is this: The Nazi originally planned to make Prora a major holiday destination. So they build several kilometers of these barrack-style buildings along the coast. I foolishly didn't take any pictures, but they're huge gray buildings that loom over everything. They're mostly unoccupied now, except for a few museums in the bottom floor of some of them. Apparently, the Soviets tried to blow them up and failed. So now they're just creepy, silent reminders of Germany's ugly past.

This picture, which I borrowed from the internet, was right across from the campsite.
Once we left the beach, we walked along the road with theses sinister buildings to our right for maybe 2 kilometers. I keep saying creepy. The thesaurus suggests "macabre, ghoulish, eerie, and ominous" as alternatives. This picture was in the daylight, but they're more eerie at night. Anyway, we made it back, but we were too tired to participate much in the festivities that evening.

The next morning we decided that we'd see the beach in the daylight as we walked back to Binz (before taking a train to Bergen and then on to Jena/Leipzig). The beach really is beautiful there - you can see why the Nazis chose this spot. Here are some pictures. Also, it turns out that everyone on the FKK beach was clothed. Maybe because it was too cold.


We made it back in time for our train, and Chinese food for lunch, but not much else. And, since we rode first class on the way back, we decided to have beers brought to us in our seats.



And that, my friends, is finally the end of the story.