last nights dinner was fantastic…excellent food, very friendly waiters…and! a very good beer: schwarzer steiger from saxony, a dark beer, going tastewise in the right direction (guiness

breakfast this morning is equally good, the weather outside has cleared up completely and we have blue skies and lots of sunshine! after breakfast we try out the bikes provided by the blinkfüer and (after a brief detour to the nearest supermarket to stock up on water) we are off to ahrenshoop…the route is pretty easy, all we have to do is ride on top of the dyke for several kilometers then follow the signed bike route.

it’s a saturday and lots of folks are “on the road”: on bikes, on inline skaters, and just on foot; old people, families, teens, the whole range — at time it really is crowded. despite the blue sky and never-failing sunshine it’s not getting warm: a cold, moderate wind is blowing all the time from the east — excellent weather for being outdoors!

the bikes are OK — nothing to really write home about, on my bike the bottom bracket starts creaking and groaning and i am a bit suspicious about the seat post as it seems to be a bit far out; pushing it in, however, doesn’t seem an alternative though, as somehow i’ve never quite taken to having my knee on the same level as my ears…

we were quite eager to see ahrenshoop: it was “advertised” as “being comparable to worpswede,” an artist village that we already knew and that is rather famous for the artists and the work that was inspired and came into existence there…well, after our visit to ahrenshoop, all i can say, with all honesty, is that not only is ahrenshoop comparable to worpswede, but so is adliswil — we just don’t have to mention the result of the comparison, do we?…(so, no, ahrenshoop is not really the worpswede of the baltic)

what is quite impressive in ahrenshoop is the seamen’s church.

we go back on the bodden side of fischland-darß through a fantastic landscape across open grassland, dense and high reeds, and arrived at the old harbour of althagen. after taking a break to watch one of the two zeesenboots sail into the harbour we return to the bike route and make our way back to our hotel.

a nice day…ahrenshoop not quite up to its advertisement, but the weather was fantastic and the bodden landscape just marvelous.