So...This Is Camping
June 24-26, 2016
When we moved from Seattle to Berlin, we had to make some tough choices about what we were going to bring along with us. The majority of our possessions were given away, indefinitely lent to friends, or stored at our parents' houses. After the Great Purge, there remained only five large bags between the two of us that contained all of the possessions we would transport on the airplane to Europe. One of those five bags was filled entirely with camping gear.
We love camping (clearly), and assumed we would be doing a lot of it in Europe. It came as quite a shock, then, to learn that camping, at least in the way we understand it in the Pacific Northwest, is essentially illegal in Germany.
One cannot simply go out into the woods, set up a tent, and enjoy themselves in nature overnight here. There are no federally protected lands where backpackers only have to fill out a form or pay a small fee for the right to hike and camp in the area. Most large tracts of wildlife where one might want to do this are privately owned, and permission must be sought from the owner to stay on the land, which ranges from tricky to impossible even for native Germans. For the more well-known and beautiful areas of Germany, like the national parks, setting up a tent is strictly verboten, with potential campers relegated to family-oriented camping parks with all the tents lumped together in a communal meadow.
The response to this by Germans who seek real overnight outdoor adventures is "stealth camping." No one bothers actually trying to get permission from landowners; that is a fool's errand. Instead, backpackers set up their tents hidden from plain sight, and only after the sun has begun to go down. Experienced stealth campers warn about having campfires anywhere there's a possibility of being seen, as Germans have a reputation for being both nosy and quick to call the cops on anyone breaking the rules. Tents should be broken down at dawn and hikers should then hit the trail and move on. Basically, it's a mix between camping and being a fugitive.
Because of the secrecy of these endeavors, it's not exactly easy for new residents to learn of good places to go stealth camping. Employees at the camping gear store ranged from moderately helpful ("Go walk around this giant area of green on the map and you'll probably find a place no one will see you") to seeming like they were ready to call the police just for asking about it. The Internet wasn't much more help. Though there were plenty of threads by Germans explaining how they stealth camped, none were specific about where, and understandably so.
So it was with a hesitant sigh that we decided to do things properly and stay in a campingplatz for our first German camping trip. The destination for the weekend was Jasmund National Park, located on Rügen Island in the northeast corner of the country on the Baltic Sea. After exploring the public transportation options, we decided that though it was possible to go that way, we would prefer the freedom of renting a car and being able to move at our own pace. Also, if Germany was forcing us to car camp, we might as well fill the trunk with beer we wouldn't want to carry otherwise.
The stereotypes about the autobahn are 100% true. People in Germany drive FAST on the freeway, and it can be pretty intimidating. You'll be cruising along at 90mph in the right lane thinking you're keeping up, then try to pass a slower car and instantly an Audi will appear behind you doing 130 and blaring their horn at you for being in their way and making them hit their brakes.
We stopped for lunch in Straslund, the last city before you cross the bridge onto Rügen Island. It's a quaint old town with classic edifices, a beautiful church, and a main square full of expensive touristy restaurants. We opted instead for a more locals-only cafeteria-style restaurant that offered two daily options: meatballs in sauce with potatoes or sausages served with potato salad. We got one of each and neither were particularly good, but they were at least filling and cheap.
Once on the island we found a grocery store and loaded up on food we could either enjoy raw or cook easily with our camping stove. We bought beer to put in our insulated cooler bag, and a bag of ice to fill it with. We didn't know then what a rare commodity this ice would turn out to be. Over the course of the weekend we would go to over a half dozen more grocery stores and gas stations and none of them would carry ice, which seemed particularly strange for an area with so many "campers." When we did finally find ice again it cost €8 for barely enough to keep our beers cold. With no ability to re-freeze reusable ice packs, we still have no idea how anyone camping on Rügen Island kept their food cold for the weekend.
We arrived at Campingplatz Drewoldke in the early afternoon on Friday. The right-hand section of the campingplatz was designated for tent campers, with the left side for RVs. The tent camping area was already mostly filled, but eventually we found a decently flat spot near the path to the beach with a view of the water. The possibility of seclusion here was pretty much impossible, and the idea that this sort of camping was "roughing it" seemed inconceivable. The were multiple large and clean bathrooms with hot showers, two shops with fresh baked bread, hot food, and all the items you could ever need, and a coffee shop with ice cream (but no ice). It wasn't quite what we expected, and not what we really wanted, but it's what was offered, so we appreciated it for what it was, bought some cold beers from the little store, and walked the hundred meters from our tent to the beach.
The beach was pretty gross. The sand was soft and clean, but the coastline was coated in a thick, brown sludge of organic sea matter that pungently wafted with the breeze. The thick buildup ended after you waded out 15 feet or so, but the water was still teeming with flotsam that made it impossible to see your knees while submerged waist-high. If the ocean is the world's blood, this was its menstruation. A pudgy German child wallowed in the muck in front of us on the shore, rolling around in the filth like a sea piglet, using his water wand to spray himself with streams of brown water. We turned our backs to the malodorous sea and soaked in the sun instead.
Even if you're surrounded by other humans in a place that is far from remote, the act of cooking a meal on a fold-up butane stove will always feel like camping. If you're going to car camp you might as well make the most out of it, so we brought along the somewhat bulky wooden table from our patio to cook and consume our food with some civility, though it was a minor luxury compared to the massive outdoor sets the families set up around us. After dinner we played cards and listened to music, and though it wasn't exactly communing with nature, it was a welcome outdoor respite from big-city Berlin. As the sun set it began to rain, and people started retreating inside their tents. A massive lightning storm broke out, so we put on our jackets and made our way to the beach in the downpour to watch the coastline light up dramatically with each strike.
From our campsite in Altenkirchen, it was about a 30 minute drive down the coast to the park. The draw of Jasmund National Park is the unique white chalk cliffs that adorn the coastline. Around the cliffs are 30 square meters of beech forest with a series of connected hiking trails, which was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2011. We asked the guy manning the information booth in our best broken German to help us plan out a route for a day hike, and he followed his finger along a paper map to show us a path that would take us along the coastline, through the forest, and back to the parking lot.
As it is with any national park, there were lots of people out walking the trails on a sunny Saturday in early summer. Before long we reached the main attraction of the park, a nearly 400-foot tall chalk cliff called the Königsstuhl, or "King's Chair." Getting up on the cliff itself cost extra admittance money and seemed like a tourist trap, so we opted instead to follow the trail along the coastline and get a good look at it from there.
Once we started making our way away from the Königsstuhl, there were less and less people on the trails, leaving us mostly alone to enjoy the beautiful old growth forests and panoramic views of the water and cliffs. We followed the coastline for several kilometers until we eventually found a set of steep stairs that brought us down to a pristine beach which was infinitely nicer than the stretch we had set up camp next to.
After a long day of hiking we made our way back to the northern end of Rügen Island for dinner and a beer, but had a hard time finding anything open. We used our minimal German skills to ask a woman at a gas station that didn't sell ice if she knew of a restaurant where we could get food, beer, and watch the Euro soccer match that was on, and her young son told us to go up to the next town and look for the Italian restaurant. By the time we got there the sunshine we had been enjoying all day was replaced by sheets of rain, making it hard to see anything in the winding and confusing streets of the old German coast town. We finally found it and settled in for some much needed nourishment, but quickly realized the restaurant was full and no one there had food in front of them yet. It took at least an hour and a half to actually get served, but at least there was soccer and beer while we waited for our pizza.
It was still raining when we made it back to the campsite, though this time there wasn't the added bonus of lightning (a bonus for Kirb, that is; Mazz can only tolerate it in limited doses). We made our way directly to the tent, where we spent the rest of the evening playing cards by flashlight, happy we had a car to put our gear in as the storm drenched everything around us.
In the morning we packed up our soggy tent and hit the road back to Berlin. We took a different route home to explore more of the coastline, heading south to the city of Binz. Unlike the smaller cities we had visited up north, Binz was clearly a tourist destination, with upscale shops, fine hotels, and a posh waterfront area. After exploring the town a bit, we did as the Germans were doing and had Fischbrötchen (fish sandwiches) and ice cream for lunch on the boardwalk. The weather was cloudy and gray, so the rows upon rows of beach canopies were empty, but we could tell this was a nice summer destination when the weather permitted. From Binz it was only 3 more terrifying hours of freeway driving back to Berlin, where thankfully we never have to drive a car anywhere.