Lost on the countryside: On a path in to nothing


One million guests a year, nightmarishly crowded beaches, construction boom and long traffic jams on arrival and departure. The island of Usedom is the Germans' favorite sunny island. The island is only 66 kilometers long and 24 wide in the Pomeranian Bay, a money machine for hoteliers and kneipers

Walking away from the beaches.
Walking away from the beaches.

Beach hiking on Usedom works surprisingly well. When certain rules are observed. The challenge of this trip is clear - no hotel, no campground, no guesthouse and no Airbnb room. Just nature, for a week, with a tent on the beach or in the forest. Part 1 told the start of the journey. Part 2 reports on the progress of the crazy plan. Part 3 leads us into the land of hermits and allied bombs. We have to go further. Let's see what will become of it.  

Spotting a deer
Spotting a deer

The path in to nothing

Even in the morning there are no people to be seen. The path now goes back briefly and then along a road that marks the only safe way through the exclusion zone. As almost everywhere in the northeast of the island, which comes in the year to almost 2.000 hours of sunshine, there is after a short stretch of road-only bike but no hiking trails, although this is supposed to be the European hiking trail E9. What was missing first? The hikers? Or the hiking trails? It's all a thing of e-bikes this time, the elder germans are riding like profs, wild and ringing.

They have hills here!
They have hills here!

Peenemünde, the only major village on this narrow side of the islet, comes to just 300 inhabitants, a Konsum, a restaurant, a submarine museum, a physics exhibition and the remains of the imperial purpose-built buildings of the Third Reich weapons industry, which have long been considered the main attraction of the region. "In the past, out-of-towners didn't even come close to Peenemünde," describes the waitress at the "Alte Wache," "there was the National Peoples Army sitting all over the place and you needed a pass to get in to town."

Harvest time on the countryside.
Harvest time on the countryside.

Today, the town lives from the concreted legacy of the rocket pioneers, because "there's not much here in the way of beaches". But a need of countless Usedom vacationers to use their brought or rented electrical bicycles to get to all kinds of interesting or less interesting destinations.

For many years taboo

The Peene side of the island, however, remains taboo for most. Here, where the only attraction is the high-water dam, along which an old LPG path winds, the endless chain of cyclists thins out. Already at the material bunkers of the Brauchitsch troop, blown up after the Second World War, there is only an occasional ringing of the bell. It becomes quiet again and the land becomes wide, fields and primeval forest-like groups of trees characterize the landscape. The sea is no longer to be seen and at Mölschow, a small point on the country side, there is also no longer a hint of the scent of the Baltic Sea in the air. 

Behind a small forest.
Behind a small forest.

Usedom here looks like the country-esk Mansfeld, an non event glowing in the sun from which there is no escape. The shelters marked on the hiking maps do not exist, nor is there a piece of flat meadow where the tent could be pitched before the approaching thunderstorms.

Saved by a piece of forest

The hike turns into a search, across harvested dust fields and through dry irrigation ditches. Deer and hares say good night to each other here. There are no more tourists, and no people at all. Then finally a piece of forest with lawn behind it, protection from the gusty west wind and out of sight for curious farmers in the village. In the pladder rain of a summer thunderstorm the evening comes to an end. 60 kilometers done. 25 to go.

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A few more pictures for you:

Endlessness.
Endlessness.

The tent (in the middle) was getting wet in the thunderstorm at night
The tent (in the middle) was getting wet in the thunderstorm at night

But if you wake up the sun is behind the trees
But if you wake up the sun is behind the trees

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