Happy Hunden: a day on the beach in Timmendorfer-Strand

Now that we've reached our goal of walking down every strasse in Lübeck at least once, we decided the time has come to spread our wings and start exploring our new state of Schleswig-Holstein. This state borders the Baltic Sea and extends from the border of Denmark down to Hamburg. There are some interesting-sounding little towns here that we'll be exploring in the coming weeks.

We don't have a car (don't need one, with all this mass transit available), so this morning we walked to the bahnhof to find  a place to go for the day. There was a train leaving for Berlin, and one for Copenhagen, but we were interested more in a day trip today. We settled on a town called Timmensdorfer-Strand, partly because it was the destination of the next bus leaving the bahnhof, and partly because our map showed that it's on the Baltic Sea and has a beach.

The half-hour bus ride from Lübeck to Timmensdorfer-Strand wound through pretty villages, past small fields of what looked like sugar beets, and around woods with their ubiquitous walking paths. (Everywhere you go in Germany there are walking paths, and they all have someone walking on them.) We weren't sure where to get off the bus, so we picked a likely spot, and promptly were lost in Timmensdorfer-Strand, unable to figure out which way to go to find the sea! A teen-aged cashier at a gas station pointed us the right direction (some things are the same everywhere you go), and we were soon in the upscale village center of Timmensdorfer-Strand, eating gulaschsuppe at the Weihnachtsmarkt.

After lunch, we followed the path down to the beach, and joined the other folks walking there. The most unusual thing -- to an American, anyway -- about walking on the Baltic beaches is the dogs. German dogs must be the happiest in the world: they're allowed in restaurants and on beaches and they apparently don't need to be leashed, as they all were running free and were having the time of their lives. They're so well-socialized, we have yet to see a fight, and it was so entertaining watching them greet other dogs and immediately start to play, I could have watched them all afternoon.

We walked out a long pier to check out this elegant building, which turned out to be Japanese tea room. We didn't stay for tea, but continued back into town for a kuchen and kaffee at the bakery chain, Junge. 

Along the way, I saw this poster. I don't know if Americans do this, but I think it's a great idea: a Christmas tree bonfire!

Tomorrow we are off to Bippen to visit friends Guntrum and Eva at their farm for the weekend. Tshcüss!