It's probably churlish of me to complain about sunny, warm weather wherever I go, but I had been told to expect it would be unseasonably cold and I had prepared accordingly. I have plenty of clothes for cold weather, not so much for hot weather. I've been carting this stupid jacket around with me from pillar to post, and it has been an average of 32 degrees wherever I go.
It was stinking hot on Rügen, and my "luxury" hotel room had two big windows facing the afternoon sun, no airconditioning, no fans, and nothing on the bed apart from duvets. I cannot understand Europeans. Duvets are not a year-round bedding option if you don't have airconditioning. That's why God invented sheets and light bedspreads.
Okay, maybe they actually evolved over several generations of textile production, but I'm pretty sure God inspired their evolution.
So far, I have not slept in a single bed that had anything to offer apart from a bottom sheet and a duvet (and some really uncomfortable pillows). Even if, for some unfathomable reason, the people in this continent were unable to understand that you could put two sheets on the bed, rather than just one, surely they have some awareness of the fact that duvet covers could be used separately from the duvets, and things would be much cooler that way...
Speaking of God, hotels and Rügen, I have to have to dedicate a "thank God!" moment in this episode.
I was under the impression that my hotel was in Sellinn, so the plan was to take the train into Bergen auf Rügen, then catch a couple of busses into Sellinn and try to find my hotel from that point. As the train was going through Rügen it ran beside a few roads for a while, and the thought occurred to me that, if I was ever going to try driving in Europe, this would be a good place to do it. Country roads, and all that...
So, in Bergen auf Rügen I made some enquiries about hiring a car and was directed to the Europcar in the town. The kind man behind the counter didn't have any cars available, but managed to find one for me anyway.
I had a brief moment of freaking out on the way to Sellinn. I had turned up a sidestreet I wasn't sure about, I was driving a manual for the first time in years, I was on the "wrong" side of the road in a place that turned out to be quite busy after all and I hadn't eaten anything for several hours. Oh, and it's been so long since I had driven a manual that I didn't know you push the gearstick down to get into reverse in modern cars.
Thankfully, another nice man (a passing Belgian) stopped and helped me figure it out. He also gave me an apple, for which I was incredibly grateful. It's a lesson I seem to keep learning over and over again - if you have the choice to "eat now" or "eat later", you should eat now. Later always ends up being much later that you expected.
When I got to Sellinn, I couldn't find the street I was after on the map. That's because my hotel wasn't in Sellinn. It was in Göhren. A nice lady gave me a map to take with me and showed me how to get to the town where my hotel was actually located...
Except the booking was wrong. When I got there, it turned out that my travel agent had managed to book me in for the three nights previous, and now the hotel was completely booked up and I had no where to go. The nice man behind the counter phoned around a few places and, on his fifth try, managed to get me into the last available room in another hotel. That would be the "luxury" suite, which was considerably more expensive than I had hoped.
This actually worked out quite well, though, because I decided to only book in for two nights and spend my third night at a hotel back in Bergen on Rügen, in a place near the train station. This meant that I had a car to get to all of the places I particularly wanted to see (and could take my time without worrying about bus or train timetables), and I could get the car back the afternoon before I left, rather than trying to negotiate my way through the town at some ungodly hour of the morning.
So thank God for looking out for me on this one. Between a spur of the moment decision to hire a car and a bunch of really nice people, I managed to have a good time instead of a series of disasters.
It turns out I didn't miss much by not staying in Sellinn. I saw everything I wanted to see in a morning. Göhren had even less to offer. I have no idea why there were so many people there. I didn't even take a good look at Binz, although I've been told it was one of the more popular sea-side resort towns. Considering how many people were in Sellin and Göhren, I can't fathom what Binz would have been like.
Sassnitz, on the other hand, was fantastic. I spent most of one day there, and probably could have stayed a little longer. It had a rather crappy beach, but you could walk straight from the town into the national park, and the parts of town I saw where so very... "porty". It's like what you imagine a European fishing port/sea-side holiday village might be. And there was this really funky pedestrain suspension bridge connecting the town proper with the harbour. Very cool.
And the national park was fantastic. I could definitely spend more time there, but I had to visit Hitler's holiday camp before heading back to my stinking hot hotel.
Prora was interesting. I don't really know what's there apart from one of the ugliest non-Soviet buildings I've ever seen and a really nice beach with a brick wall inexplicably in the middle of it... It was fairly late when I got there, and I particularly wanted to see the building. The Hitler connection didn't interest me so much as the sheer magnitude of the thing. I had seen pictures of this massive structure, and found the concept of such a huge, ugly "holiday village" incredibly fascinating. In the end, though, it was just another ugly building.
The beach was really nice (much nicer than the one at Sassnitz), but it was clothing optional, and I felt I would be out of place if I stayed around for too long without at least taking off my shoes. I like to opt for clothing, myself - everything I take off is just something I have to put somewhere or carry around with me, and then I just have to put it on again later... Much more convenient to just stay fully clothed in the first place - but it does make you look a tad over dressed when everyone else is either wearing a skimpy pair of togs or nothing at all, while you are wearing long pants, a long-sleeved shirt and shoes and socks...
Would I visit Rügen again? Maybe, but probably not at this time of year. There are just so many people, and it's quite warm, really. Too warm. Well, hot. It's hot.
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