Trip 38 — Usedom Walk

Day 7: Usedom town to Świnoujście Centrum
Monday, 20 November 2023

Yesterday: 40598 steps/30.67 km/19.06 mi/5h 43m Grand total: 257908 steps/197.38 km/122.65 mi/36h 43m

"Wetter" is the German word for "weather" and the English word for how Usedom has compared with the previous Abecedarian Walks, yesterday in particular.

I headed out into Usedom town, from the innermost reaches of the Gasthaus Natzke, through the hotel's front gate, under the 14th- or 15th-century arch, along the church and town hall (where a woman and her two small dogs, one audibly critical of me, the other quiet, were the only life in the square on this rainy Sunday morning), up the cobblestone street, to the main road out of town, just over a kilometer in total — and then realized MapMyWalk had stopped counting somewhere by the main square, so I hurried back along the main road and through town and into the Gasthaus Natzke premises and all the way to the back building (it's an arbitrary practice that I start and stop the counter at the entrance to the building I sleep in rather than the entrance to the property, but it makes sense to be consistent), where I restarted the counter and did the whole trip out of town again, this time without a canine's scolding.

I took the paved bike path through fields to Stolpe; the plastic poncho made a racket in my ears from the wind. Between Stolpe and Dargen I followed the rural road, which was narrow and could have used a parallel bike path of its own for the amount of traffic. I had to check for traffic behind me every 30 seconds or so.

The rain had been moderate and steady; I'd had heavier rain on Jeju and Hiiumaa, but Jeju had had bus shelters and restaurants and markets to pop into, and Hiiumaa that weird Soviet telephone booth in the forest for cover. Here there was no respite for the two hours between Usedom and Dargen except for a tiny awning over a sign in Stolpe.

Dargen had a proper bus shelter, and I sat for a few minutes to study the route again; even with the poncho I wanted to open up my phone as rarely as possible on a wet day. Straight out of town, and then straight ahead beyond that.

The rain stopped for about 15 minutes. The road bent to the left, and then a lane veered off to the right; what was left of the pavement dissipated into a rough, overgrown track between rows of trees. It dwindled further into a grassy dirt track barely wide enough for a bicycle, though a cyclist would have had a hard time navigating it.

The track was sandwiched between trees and what was clearly someone's field. From the prints in the dirt, it looked as though the last creature to pass through here was a horse. I wasn't sure it was public land. Sometimes it was barely visible as a path.

It ended abruptly, but I could skirt around some mud and make it back to the road. The rain started up again, lightly.

The road veered left and I found the track again, allowing me to go straight. I swished ahead for another half-hour and crossed the driveway to the Heringsdorf airport. The track was now more obvious and signed, and it brought me behind the airport and into Garz, where I had originally planned on spending the night.

It's probably a good thing that that accommodation didn't work out. There was no place to eat in Garz, and the restaurants in Kamminke, the fishing village a half-hour ahead, had closed for the season.

The rain became barely a mist. A paved bike path brought me to Kamminke. It must be popular in the summer, judging from the large number of holiday homes and a large campground. Even its restored windmill can be rented out as a place to sleep.

The direct way to Świnoujście would have been north and across the pedestrian bridge into Poland, but I had to see whether the border could be crossed down by the harbor. The map showed the streets from the two countries almost meeting.

The street led steeply down to the harbor, and most of the houses were turf-roofed. There were a couple of people at the harbor, working on the pier and the fishing boats, which bobbed about in the wind. The pier held a few shacks, at least one of which was a self-serve restaurant in the high season.

I took the last street east and then south. A fenced-in German shepherd was trying to tell me something. I came to the end of the road, a tiny bridge over a small waterway. Poland was just a few steps away, but access was blocked by a fence. This area was for controlling the canal height and not for walkers.

I retraced my steps, past the dog, who barked "I told you so!", past a house with women playing cards, up the main street with sweet, earthy food cooking and a fire burning — my socks were soaked and I would have loved a few minutes on the sofa opposite. But I continued uphill and then to the right, across the short pedestrian bridge marked "Swinemünde" — the German name for Świnoujście.

Once again, I walked through a forest, along the muddiest patch of the week, and then across a long, sandy stretch before going north toward the city. I crossed over the new vehicle tunnel and followed the port on the Usedom side. There was a lot of river traffic here, plus a docked sightseeing boat called the Chateaubriand. It was nearing 4 p.m. and this was all I needed to remind me that I hadn't eaten all day.

I reached the ferry landing and completed the Usedom walk. Rather than return to the resort area, I spent the night in the city center, near the train line, where the Propaganda bar appropriately played "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head." This morning, I strolled the short stretch to the first station in Germany, through a mostly covered market whose vendors offered cigarettes, salamis, the kind of "Yakuza" jacket I saw the man wearing at the bar in Zinnowitz, knock-off clothing, and weed killer. This may be the most reliable place to get Roundup.

Usedom gave me the rare opportunity to take the train back through the island I'd just walked, to connect with a train to Berlin. The island train is hourly but the connection is only every two hours, so I stopped off in Koserow to do a little more browsing at Karl's Experience Village.

All I'd seen in my hasty trip through the store a few days ago was aisles of red, but today I realized the market was largely a tribute to the strawberry. It appeared on toys, in jams, in liqueurs, and in the bonbons whose creation they were demonstrating to a crowd of spectators in the back.

Even the toilet seat was strawberry-festooned, as I discovered when I sneaked in a restroom visit before the next train departed. That's when I noticed another entire market building near the amusement-park area. I stuck my face in for a moment, but it didn't seem like I'd missed much.

I saw my westbound train pull in; the eastbound one was already waiting. Karl's is right next to the station but the walking path is circuitous. You have to go around the building (why not have an entrance from the station?), and the proper access to the platforms is down a little ways along the path, requiring a bit of backtracking. Even if it's only a few steps, it's one of those nuisance detours that any reasonable person would agree has no practical or safety merit.

I can't be the first person to have hopped over the short fence — they practically encourage it by not making it higher. I made it to the platform for the eastbound train just as it started leaving, at exactly noon. My train was due to leave a minute later, but I couldn't get there until the eastbound train passed. Was Deutsche Bahn's version of 12:01 the same as mine?

The path cleared, and I rushed on with about ten seconds to spare.

No one checked my ticket on this train, the connecting train at Züssow, or the S-Bahn or U-Bahn local trains in Berlin. Local services are on the honor system and it's lovely not to have to fish for payment or anything when going into a station.

After days of solitude and sleepy off-season towns, I'd forgotten that Berlin was a year-round busy, crowded city. It's also a rainy one, but at least there are places to go inside.

Next trip: Quinchao Walk