Ralswiek-Rugen Rugen Island Germany
Frequently Asked Questions
On the shore of the Great Jasmund Bodden, an inland lagoon on the island of Rügen, a couple of minutes from the hamlet. From the gangway on, everything is done on foot.
A hamlet on the island of Rügen nestled between gentle hills and old trees, on the German Baltic. The call plays the Baltic countryside card: calm, greenery and a solid weakness for pirate stories.
A walking loop to the manor and the Bodden shore takes about an hour. With more time, aim for the Jasmund chalk cliffs or the resort of Binz, by excursion.
A late nineteenth-century seigneurial house now a hotel, whose terrace looks over the hamlet rooftops to the lagoon. A shaded path circles the estate and opens fine views of the water.
Klaus Störtebeker, a fourteenth-century privateer and leader of the Victual Brothers, a Baltic raider turned folk hero. Every summer since 1993, the Störtebeker Festspiele revive his adventures on a natural waterside stage.
More than a hundred actors and stunt performers, galloping horses, cogs manoeuvring on the water and a closing firework display, before stands seating thousands. It runs in the evening, summer only.
The empty stage and its moored ships can still be approached, a full-scale set standing on the shore. The banks invite a quiet walk among reedbeds, wooden jetties and anchored sailing boats.
Not from the hamlet, but by excursion. Jasmund National Park to the east protects chalk cliffs plunging into a turquoise sea beneath a UNESCO-listed beech forest; the Königsstuhl viewpoint is its highlight. Allow half a day.
The main seaside resort on Rügen, about half an hour by road, with its white colonnaded villas, a legacy of nineteenth-century resort architecture, and its seafront promenade.
Yes, and that is its particularity. The almost enclosed body of water stays smooth even when the Baltic turns rough on the other side of the island, which explains the sailing vocation of the place.
