RECORDS FROM ÚŠTA

Varneminde - at the mouth of the Vrana river

A dozen or so clean-shaven guys in pilot jackets and parachute boots are carrying a crate of beer. I remember that German neo-Nazis also traditionally organize May Day celebrations. I'll have to find a part of the beach away from them

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Varneminde: On the river, Photo: D. Dedović
Varneminde: On the river, Photo: D. Dedović
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

A man who dips his toe in the sea is, they say, connected to all of humanity. This recently occurred to me when, on the Lycian coast of the Turkish Riviera, I let my toes immersed in the Mediterranean waves connect with all the shores of the world. I remembered the farthest point from that place where I had also once dipped my toes in the sea - Germany's Baltic coast. Images of the fishing town of Varneminda, which has been a tourist center for a century and a half, surrounded by the districts of the East German port of Rostock, appeared before my inner eye.

Coming to the Scandinavian hem

I shaved there one spring. From Berlin, where I lived at the time, Varneminde is easy to reach by train. The day for driving through the endless North German plain was ideal - the sun made a play of light and shadows that I recognized - it is on the almost poetic canvases of Emil Nolde, the man who expressionistically immortalized Nordic landscapes - poppies, reed fields, endless sky, turbulent sea .

It was only the end of April, but even here, within reach of Scandinavia, sunny days turn the proverbial melancholy into joy. I look at the map in the tourist brochure I brought with me. We are used to seeing geographical maps as places where the center of attention is - countries. However, the maps showing the seas are much more interesting. The Baltic Sea unites the Scandinavian world. In fact, it is a huge fjord of the North Sea, from Oslo in the north, through Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Riga, Gdańsk. And on the southwestern coast of the Baltic Sea, on the golden coastal border of sand, is the German town I'm just entering. We have passed the main railway station in Rostock and are approaching the last station. The journey from Berlin took two and a half hours.

Arrival of the ship
Arrival of the shipphoto: D. Dedović

Varneminde is not Rostock

Although it has been considered a part of Rostock since the 90th century, this place has preserved its own identity. A bridge leads from the railway station to the town over the closed branch of the river Varnov. The bridge can be opened at an angle of XNUMX degrees, once ships passed there, and now the bridge is a tourist attraction. Until the XNUMXth century, there were only two rows of houses in the village, one on the coast and one behind it. Both have been preserved to this day. These former houses of fishermen and helmsmen, smugglers and deck boys give the place a special charm. It was recorded that the mandatory distance between houses had to be such that a pregnant cow could pass through it.

The old town center on the branch of the river is full of cafes, restaurants, and pastry shops. And right next to the water there are trailers-traffic where you can buy herring, as well as all other Baltic fish, salted, marinated, smoked.

Seagulls fly around, quite fed. They are not afraid of people, sometimes they even dare to approach the tables, waiting for an opportunity to stick their beak in someone's plate.

Before the pandemic, Rostock had more than a million visitors a year, and 900.000 of them can be thanked for its town on the sea, which is twenty minutes away by city railway.

From the lighthouse to Neptune

The lighthouse at the beginning of the promenade by the sea was built in 1888 and was intended for sailors who sailed under heavy Baltic fog to the port of Rostok, located further south upstream, on a wide, sheltered river. On the right is the widest beach of the Baltic Sea, up to 150 meters between the dunes on which there is a promenade and the border where the waves reach. The entire area is under natural sand. There are houses on the beach that protect from the wind. Here in the north of the continent, it blows even in August. Those who do not like the harsh Mediterranean heat will enjoy a different kind of summer vacation at sea.

Of course, that comes at a price. Back in the days of East Germany, a hotel was built on the beach itself in 1971 Neptun. With its 18 floors and 340 rooms, it was a socialist gem. Such guests as the then West German chancellor Willy Brandt or the leader of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro, stayed overnight in it. The first East German disco was opened in the basement of the hotel. However, it was rumored among the people that eavesdroppers were installed in all the rooms, so the hotel became known as the base of East German debevacs.

The whole area struggled a lot with the transition after the reunification of Germany, but the resort managed to retain guests and become more and more in demand.

After privatization, Neptun is a five-star hotel. Enjoying luxurious accommodation and the view from a double room over the beach, towards the horizon where the border between the sea and the sky is barely discernible, towards Denmark, costs only 250 euros. Perhaps, for the more frugal among us, it is wiser to take a good hotel in Rostock - if booked in time, it can cost around thirty euros, and to go to the beach by public transport.

Tourism and bald people

I spent a few days in the seaside town when everything was much cheaper. That April I completely forgot it was a football club Hanza from Rostock had the most notorious fan groups in Germany. When I went out to the beach near Neptune I also remembered that it wasn't April anymore - it was the first of May. And when among the many ordinary citizens on the beach I saw a dozen guys with shaved heads in pilot jackets and parachute boots carrying a crate of beer, then I remembered that German neo-Nazis also traditionally organize May Day celebrations. I tried to find another part of the beach. I soon heard chanting and yelling from the direction I came from. I didn't see the police around.

At the beach
At the beachphoto: D. Dedović

Although I think that tourism is so important for this part of Germany, that in the meantime the authorities have found ways to keep problematic guys away from tourists, this unpleasantness is etched in my memory. Those guys were a badly healed scar on the East German social fabric.

Free physical culture

Today's visitors to Varneminde will rather be surprised by the mass nudity. Namely, swimming trunks and costumes are mandatory only on the first kilometer of the beach, where it is located in front of the resort. On the other few kilometers, the East German tradition - FKK - is alive and well. It is the German abbreviation for "free physical culture", and in our country it is known as nudism.

We can philosophize about the fact that the GDR, as an unfree society, encouraged nudity on the beaches as a form of compensation for freedom, but a bunch of male and female naked bodies is not exactly a sight for everyone's eyes. Admittedly, I personally think that the amount of fabric, especially on ladies, has been reduced both on and off the beaches to almost invisible strips in the last ten years, so the victorious West is getting closer to the defeated East. But someone will tell you that a person is naked only if they really claim to be naked. Or that nudity is in the eye of the beholder. In the east of Germany, people are mostly proud of the fact that they bathe naked in the Baltic Sea and then lie down on the sand with their whole bodies - thereby showing that they are more free than many in the West.

Crow's River

Historians say that Germanic tribes moved from here to Thuringia in the XNUMXnd and XNUMXrd centuries AD. Slavs appeared on the coast of the Baltic Sea in the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries. They settled in the delta of the river which they named Vranina rijeka - today's Varnov. The root of the name has a Slavic word vran, varna, vron, for a crow. Linguistically, therefore, the German resort on the Baltic Sea has the same root as Vranje. For some reason, our distant relatives saw that water as black. It must be that Varneminde - translated as the mouth of Varne or Varnov - caught the eye of the Slavic founders of the place as a natural port.

On the river
On the riverphoto: D. Dedović

Settlers not only built the river and the settlement at its confluence with the sea, but also the later city that was located where the river spreads, overflows - grows. Rostok is - growth, a place of growth.

After the Slavic era, the Frisians, then the Saxons, moved to this estuary. The fishing settlement became important during the heyday of the Hanseatic League, to which nearby Rostock belonged, because it was right at the exit to the sea. So in 1321, Rostock took care of getting possession of Varneminde. A sleepy fishing village woke up at the beginning of the 1834th century. The chronicles record that in 1.500 there were 1.000 inhabitants and - 1882 bathing guests. It foreshadowed a bright future. As early as XNUMX, a railway was built all the way to Berlin.

On the Baltic docks

I still had to visit the pier, located right behind the train station. The docks in Varneminde face the river's mouth into the Baltic Sea. Denmark is across the road, the boat line to Gedser is a kind of water bus. On the right, ferries to Swedish Trelleborg and Gdańsk depart on the wide river from Rostock. But a special attraction is cruise ships - multi-story hotels on the water. Their departure from Varnev to the sea is an event in itself. According to the reports of local environmental activists, this has its price - the air before the appearance of cruise ships was healthier.

Pier 7
Pier 7photo: D. Dedović

Pier 7 - that's the name of the dock where you can combine your tourist experience - buying souvenirs, a variety of gastronomic offers and a view of the huge ships that slowly disappear in the dusk. I was sitting on those first days of May in the first decade of the second millennium by the huge window of a restaurant on the docks, on the sandy edge of Scandinavia. I ate herring in a scone, drank strong northern beer. Wine arrived here as a fashion from the distant Mediterranean, and beer and clear North German grain brandy have always been the favorite drinks of local fishermen and sailors. I admired the ships like a boy, promising myself that one day I would board one of them.

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