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A liberating adventure

On a relaxing break on Germany’s Baltic coast, Jeff Kavanagh discovers the locals are happy to bare all in the name of Freiko¨ rperkultur.

We are trying our best not to laugh. It is a brilliantly sunny, early summer morning on Germany’s Baltic Coast and perched at the end of a narrow wooden breakwater that stretches out into the water is a middle-aged woman performing yoga: naked.

It is not the first time my partner Aileen, our 7-year-old daughter and I find ourselves amused by the antics of naked people on the Fischland-DarßZingst peninsula, a 45km stretch of gentle dunes and placid sea an hour east of Rostock and a few hours from the Polish border.

Living in Hamburg, where Aileen is from, we are well aware the former East Germany has a long tradition of Freiko¨ rperkultur, and that ‘‘free body culture’’ was a way for its citizens to express liberty at public places such as beaches and lakes by stripping away any symbols of status or rank during the dark years of the country’s socialist regime.

The practice remains relatively popular on both sides of the old Iron Curtain, particularly by Germans of a certain generation who have long considered freeing themselves of clothes, whether on the beach or in the sauna, to be natural and healthy.

So, while we are accustomed to seeing people in various states of undress in hotel spas and at outdoor pools, we still – and this probably says more about us than them – find something comical about the yoga woman or the grey-bearded chap standing with his hands on his hips the previous day, staring out to sea like a naked Santa stranded by his reindeer.

Thankfully, where we are on the peninsula, near the small harbour town of Wustrow, there is no obligation to go textilfrei, and the people who have got their gear off are generally quite discreet about it, sunbathing at respectful distances from each other and close to the dunes.

After a wander along the beach and a fleeting dip in the sea – the water, we are informed by a fellow bather, is a brisk 14C – we slip back through the dunes to our accommodation for the five nights we are here.

Built in the 1970s to house holiday-making engineers and their families from Berlin – the capital is just over three hours’ drive directly south of Wustrow – the finnhu¨ tten are a collection of simple, thatched-roof A-frames with a couple of little bedrooms upstairs and a basic kitchen, living room and bathroom on the ground floor.

There are seven of them in all, scattered among tall, spindly pine trees and sandy grass like massive wooden tents.

Heightening the camping ground vibe, a wide pathway separates the huts from the dunes. From the moment it gets light, the pathway starts to fill with walkers in shorts and couples on matching ebikes zipping past, ringing their bells sharply to clear the path before them.

Some of the cyclists also have large saddlebags hanging from their bikes and are clearly doing part or all of the Baltic Sea Cycle Route, which threads its way 1140km along the coast, and up and around the lovely German island of Ru¨ gen between Lu¨ beck in the west and S´ winoujs´cie, just over the Polish border, in the east.

Back at the huts, we flirt with the idea of hiring bikes for the day ourselves, but instead laze around playing cards and reading on the hut’s sunloungers, before tootling a couple of minutes up the road in the car to Wustrow to grab lunch.

Fittingly for a region named Fischland, there is no shortage of places offering local seafood delicacies such as pan-fried whole flounder or fischbro¨ tchen mit Rollmops.

Unenamoured with the idea of bread rolls filled with pickled herrings and raw onions, however, we follow the advice of Jo¨ rg, the owner of the finnhu¨ tten, and head to the Wustrower Fischerschmaus for fish and chips.

The Wustrow Fisherman’s Feast, a couple of sea-blue weatherboard shacks on a street lined with large seaside resort hotels leading to the beach, turns out to be a popular spot, and its outdoor tables are busy with young and old tucking

into plates of fried fish and sour cream-lathered baked potatoes.

They are not exactly blue cod and chips from the Kai Kart on Stewart Island, which ironically was being run by an East German when we visited a few years ago, but the restaurant’s offerings are worth a visit, nonetheless. Suitably sated, we go for a stroll around town.

Despite the natural beauty of the peninsula and the many handsome, thatched-roof villas and guest houses that pepper it, there is no shortage of stark architecture on show in this part of the world.

In the rebuilding years after World War II, function rapidly trumped form as the East German government tried to solve the nation’s housing shortage by building as quickly and cheaply as possible. The result was the construction of frequently massive, prefabricated concrete slab apartment blocks known as plattenbau that rise abruptly out of the countryside and are clustered in less salubrious parts of towns and cities across the former German Democratic Republic.

We soon discover on our walk that Wustrow is blighted by its fair share of soulless-looking, beige abodes and blessed with lovely half-timbered houses and tastefully restored captain’s cottages.

The peninsula’s undoubted gem in terms of architectural elegance, Ahrenshoop, lies a few kilometres north, and it is where we have lunch the next day.

A once sedate fishing settlement nestled in and around the dunes, it found favour with the landscape artist Paul Mu¨ ller-Kaempff, who was so taken with its beauty and seclusion that he established an artist colony in the hamlet at the end of the 19th century. More than 125 years later, Ahrenshoop remains popular with artists, but also with cashed-up Berliners, whose luxury sports cars and SUVs sit on driveways outside old coastal manor houses renovated into chic holiday homes.

Further impacting its idyll are the swathes of local tourists moseying about having a gander at the impressive buildings, and eating ice creams and burgers in the sun.

Having indulged in both activities ourselves, we go for a quick splash in the bone-achingly cold sea, before heading back to the finnhu¨ tten and what has become our evening routine of dinner, cards, and sitting in the dunes to watch the sunset.

It is an understandably popular pastime on the peninsula, and every night families huddle on blankets, and couples in camping chairs sip sparkling wine and watch the sky turn a fiery orange as the sun sinks into the Baltic.

On our last evening, what appears to be a couple of university-aged women and a male companion throw off their clothes and rush – yelling and laughing – into the sea.

They are down the beach a bit and away from everyone else, so there is no sense of exhibition or the potential to offend, rather an unshackling from some of the burdens of everyday life and the joy that can bring.

Stuff Travel

en-nz

2023-05-29T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-05-29T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281792813403998

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