Rostock; Thursday, 26 July, 2012

I was out early to head to the station and off up to the island of Rügen off the Baltic coast of Germany. Germany’s largest island it’s also home to one of its strangest landmarks, a massive building complex started by the Nazi’s that was never used as it was intended.

Prora was built for the “Strength through joy” programme, sort of a Nazi holiday camp, where party members would be able to enjoy sunny holidays on the Baltic. Five massive blocks of building with thousands of rooms were built to house the masses, but by the time most of the site was complete the country was at war and the Nazi holiday camp never opened. Partly used as a hospital during the war the site was eventually left to rot.

Today some of the site is finally being renovated and brought back into use, but lots of it remains empty and eerily quiet, just yards from a packed beach.

Having taken in the bizarre sight of Prora I headed further along the Island to Ostseebad Binz and picked up the islands Steam railway along to one end of the island at Ostseebad Göhren and had a look around there, then it was back on the train to run almost the full length of the line over to the town of Putbus.

From there I caught the train up to the North Eastern corner of the island at Sassnitz and had a look around there before it was time to wander back to the station and make the journey all the way back to Rostock (the advantage of ending in Sassnitz being it’s where the direct trains to Rostock start from, so I could collapse, exhausted, into the seat and just sit there for 2 hours)

I quickly stopped in the centre of town for a light dinner and then headed back to the hotel to pack and go to bed.