Living in Berlin opens up a whole new world of weekend trips. It seems hard to find the time to relax and get away from it all, so I decided to commit to buying train tickets. I was pretty tired when I made my way to Gesundbrunnen, from where the trains in the direction Ostsee depart. The train arrived late and more and more people with bikes and camping gear crowded on the platform. I managed to find a seat in the hallway. People were sitting everywhere; on the stairs and hanging near the doors. As we slowly made our way up north, stopping at the tiniest of stations, where people were basically dropped off in what seemed to be a field with a small station building, the train got quieter.
In Stralsund I changed to the train that went to Binz. We were now at the Baltic Sea, crossing a bridge to reach the Rügen peninsula. I got off at Prora, where I’d booked a bed in the youth hostel. When I got off I just saw a lonely road. I walked along the bike path, past a big gray terrain that housed the oldtimer museum. At the very end of this small town was the HI hostel. It was absolutely gigantic! There was a field for camping, lots of sports facilities and it really is a place for camps as well as family holidays.
The building itself has a fascinating history. At the end of the 1930s, Hitler started building what is known as the Colossus of Prora. The German Labour Party actually set up a whole tourism organisation, aiming to make holidays possible for the masses and boost the German economy. One of the projects they started building was a huge simplistic building in Prora, which would be able to house 20.000 people at once. It was meant to become the ultimate holiday spot, with all the amenities you’d wish for on a holiday. Unfortunately the buildings were never finished and nobody actually enjoyed their holidays here until now.
The houses were never quite finished, but those parts that were, served as housing during the second world war, as a military base when the Soviets came, and later as a military base for East Germany. In the early 2000s the blocks were sold separately and developed into hotels, apartments and a youth hostel, which is now the biggest one in Germany. It’s still a quite bizarre spot, especially around the hostel. The building itself has been given a fresh look, but still adjoins a ruin. A bit further down the road, is a building in even worse shape, surrounded by fences, with trees growing inside.
I must say the Nazi party chose a beautiful piece of Germany for their project. The area has a forest right next to the beach. Whereas places like Binz or Sellin are super crowded, here you have plenty of space at the beach. And, from the beach you cannot see the ugly building! If you want some peace and quiet, it’s a great place to stay. However, your evening entertainment is pretty limited and there aren’t many restaurants around. At least you can book the hostel as an all inclusive, with meals served in the big cafeteria. It’s all pretty clean and sterile, more like a hospital than holiday place. The atmosphere is missing. I wonder what the nazi leaders would make of this place.
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