A new motorhome deserves a proper maiden voyage. For us, that meant a trip around the Baltic Sea.
After many years with our faithful Toyota Land Cruiser 78 – affectionately known as the “Armoured Queen” – we had finally given in to comfort. Her successor, a Hymer MLT 570, quickly acquired the less heroic nickname “Plastic King”.
Age has its advantages, and one of them is realizing that a proper bed, a hot shower and, perhaps most importantly of all, a toilet on board are no longer luxuries, but necessities.
The plan was simple. Cross over to Germany, follow the southern coast of the Baltic Sea through Poland, continue into Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and finally sail home from Tallinn.
It turned out to be more than a test drive of a new motorhome. Around the Baltic Sea, European history lies packed closely together – from the Nazis’ holiday resort at Prora and the rocket research at Peenemünde, through old Hanseatic towns and castles, to the Baltic countries’ Soviet past.
Conveniently enough, our ferry goes more or less to where the Baltic Sea begins, to Rostock in Germany.
Rostock and Wismar
We drive off the ferry, stop for the obligatory breathalyser check and head east.
Rostock will have to wait this time. The old Hanseatic town was badly damaged during the war, and the GDR regime later left its mark on the city with concrete and a kind of pseudo-Hanseatic style.
The neighbouring town of Wismar is far more interesting. It had no significant industry and was therefore largely spared during the war. In addition, the old town has been well restored, with the classic red-brick buildings and harbour facilities typical of an old Hanseatic town.
We have been here before, however, so Wismar will have to wait as well. We continue east.
Rügen and Prora
Since we had brought bicycles and wanted a gentle start, we headed for Germany’s largest island, Rügen.
It is known for its miles of beaches and is well suited to cycling. We headed towards the eastern side of the island. Here there is a large national park and, equally important for someone interested in history, a rather peculiar structure.
The Nazis were concerned with public health, and as part of the “Kraft durch Freude” programme they built an enormous holiday complex at Prora. It is the world’s longest building complex, 4.5 kilometres long, laid out along an equally long sandy beach. Here, 20,000 people were supposed to enjoy seaside holidays.
But the war got in the way and the complex was never completed. After the war, the Russians and the GDR authorities took over the buildings and used parts of them for military purposes. The Russians also blew up parts of the complex, but most of it is still standing.
History comes first on our list, so we find a campsite right next to Prora and set off to explore.
“Unfortunately”, you might say, much of it has been renovated into holiday apartments by private companies. This has taken away some of the feeling of discovering something abandoned and secret.
We cycle along the southern section, which is completely renovated. Further north, however, the buildings are still in ruins. The area is fenced off, but there are holes in the fence …
The Museum at Prora
In the middle of the complex there is a museum. This part has not been restored, and you enter along grey, untreated concrete walls, up concrete stairways and through long corridors. The raw concrete reinforces the history of the building.
The darker sides of Nazism are also extensively covered. The Germans do not call such a museum a museum, but a “Dokumentationszentrum”.
A wide sandy beach runs along the entire complex, excellent for anyone who enjoys sunbathing or taking a rather cold dip.
After Prora, it was time for some nature, so we headed for the tip of Rügen, where there is a large forested national park with inviting trails for both cyclists and walkers.
Stralsund
Finished with Rügen, we made a quick stop in Stralsund, which, like Wismar, has a beautiful old town that is on the UNESCO list.
The town was bombed during the war and neglected during the GDR period, but was beautifully restored after reunification. We walked the streets for a few hours and had an ice cream before continuing towards the next historical stop.
Peenemünde
Our interest in history once again took us away from the autobahn. It was time for some rocket research, so we stopped at Peenemünde near the Polish border.
Peenemünde is more of a small settlement, but historically interesting because it was the site of German rocket research before and during the war.
The old industrial halls now house a large military history museum. Along the coast there are remains of test and launch sites, although many of the installations were blown up by the Russians after the war.
With a good map, however, you can still find some relatively intact test areas in the forest. I found a V-2 rocket test station after some cycling through fields and meadows. There were a few derelict barracks and a high, circular earth embankment with bunkers.
Not terribly exciting. I did get a couple of ticks as a bonus.
Poland – Gdansk
Once you cross the border into Poland, it is not far to Gdańsk.
The city has a beautiful and well-preserved old town, but for someone interested in history it is difficult to overlook the fact that this was also Danzig – the city where some of the first clashes between Germans and Poles took place before the Second World War.
If you have read The Tin Drum, or seen the film, the name Danzig will be familiar. At the time, the city was a Free City surrounded by Poland, with a large German-speaking population. German irregular forces attacked, among other things, the Polish post office in the city. The post office is still standing and is now a museum.
You probably need to be more than averagely interested in history to find it exciting. But the old town is beautiful and well worth a visit.m.
Mikołajki – An Unexpected Detour
We needed a stopover on the way to Lithuania and, by chance, ended up at a campsite in the small town of Mikołajki, beautifully situated among a complex of lakes and canals in eastern Poland.
By another coincidence, we discovered that Wolfsschanze, Hitler’s headquarters on the Eastern Front, was nearby. It was not much of a detour, so we decided to take a look, although perhaps we were beginning to have a little too much war history.
We followed Google Maps along narrow, winding country roads. Fields red with poppies alternated with small villages, making it a picturesque journey.
Unfortunately, that was where it ended.
The road ended at a barrier where a new railway line was being built. We bumped along an access road, but that also ended at newly laid railway tracks.
A little frustrated, we searched further on Maps, but the next alternative route would have meant driving an hour back again, so we gave up. On the other hand, we got to see a lot of the idyllic Polish countryside. It is not always a disadvantage to get lost.
Lithuania
Along the Nemunas River – Jurbarkas
After Poland, we headed for Lithuania. We had been given a tip about the area along the Nemunas River and decided to follow the river westwards towards Kaunas and Trakai.
Our first impression of Lithuania was flat farmland, large forests and run-down asphalt roads. Even the motorways are a patchwork of asphalt repairs and have deep ruts that make driving wobbly and tiring.
But the campsites turned out to be a pleasant surprise.
In Jurbarkai we found a lovely campsite, Kempingas Medaus Slėnis, where the host surprisingly spoke Norwegian. She worked as an architect for a company that supplied cabins to Norway.
The site was large and sheltered, with scattered trees where we found a spot of our own. Eventually we discovered that this was quite typical of campsites in the Baltics. Spacious, reasonably priced, well maintained and often with a small café.
Along the river there were plenty of brown signs pointing to various attractions. We settled for a couple of castles and an old manor house.
The latter was perhaps the most interesting. It had hardly been restored, but stood open, with no one around. Inside it was ghostly and dim, with animal heads, dusty furniture and masks on the walls.
We crept around, afraid of meeting the original inhabitants, but encountered no one.
Kaunas
In the end of the Nemunas river is Kaunas where we stopped to see Fort 9, a 19th-century fort and part of a series of forts surrounding the city.
During the war, it was the site of the murder of Jews. A large Soviet-style monument has been erected at the site. After the war, the Soviets used the fort as a prison for Lithuanians who were to be deported. In total, perhaps as many as 300,000 Lithuanians were deported after the war.
Kaunas has a nice old town and it is easy to park just outside the city centre, so do stop by.
Grütas Park – Soviet History in the Forest
Far south, towards the border with Belarus, lies Grütas Park, a fascinating reminder of the Soviet period.
When Lithuania regained its independence in 1991, statues and monuments to Communist leaders were torn down all over the country. At Grütas, many of them have been gathered together again.
A long walkway through the forest takes you past the dignitaries of Communism in majestic poses, interrupted by small buildings devoted to Soviet propaganda. In a strange way, it gives the totalitarian state and its brutal form of expression a face.
At the same time, the park is also arranged for children, with playgrounds and animals in enclosures, including ostriches and rabbits.
This part of Lithuania is sparsely populated, with huge areas of forest. If you drive eastwards along the border, you pass small, abandoned villages where black timber houses are left to decay.
Also impressive are all the places set up for wild camping. Along small rivers and lakes there are places where you can stay, usually with a fire pit and a toilet. Deep in the middle of nowhere, you suddenly come across a toilet!
Klaipėda and the Curonian Spit
We wanted to see the sea again and headed for Klaipėda, Lithuania’s only port city.
From the campsite a little north of the city, we chose to cycle the four kilometres into the centre, together with many others.
It was very well arranged for cycling, with wide asphalt paths through the forest along the sea. Lithuania is generally very well suited to cycling. Flat, good cycle paths and plenty of forest to shelter from the wind.
A short ferry ride from the centre takes you to the Curonian Spit, a 100-kilometre-long narrow strip of land extending all the way down to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
The island is essentially one long sandy beach with a forested ridge in the middle. Again, there are good cycle paths, allowing you to cycle all the way to the border. Lots of people on the beach, but few in the water, which was on the chilly side.
You can also take your car onto the island and drive all the way south to the border with Kaliningrad. There are sand dunes and beaches, and plenty of pine forest. The slender trunks bend towards the east, away from the wind from the Baltic Sea.
Apart from that, there is not very much to see. At the southern end there is a decent, somewhat overpriced campsite and a tiny town filled with tourists.
It is nice to walk in the forest, and you can catch a glimpse of the Russian guard post on the other side of the border.
But the ferry is expensive, €45 return, and in addition it costs €50 to drive south into the national park. Whether it is worth it is debatable.
Trakai Castle Island
Lithuania has many castles, and this is the most famous and most visited one.
We admired it from the campsite, where it rises beautifully on an island on the other side of the water.
On the mainland there is a small village with colourful wooden houses, and you quickly realize that this is a hot tourist destination when you see all the parked cars.
The castle has been heavily restored and is perhaps best viewed from a distance.
Žemaitijos nacionalinis parkas
Time for another hike?
Žemaitijos is a large national park with dense forest and many lakes. Here you will also find the “Cold War Museum”, with four missile silos for ballistic missiles and underground bunkers.
Stay at the reasonably priced campsite Stovyklavietė “Juodupė”. It is almost like wild camping, with access to a large beach.
Hill of Crosses
On our way towards Latvia, the Hill of Crosses near the town of Šiauliai was an interesting stop. Since the 13th century, this has been a pilgrimage site for Lithuanian Catholics, expressing national identity and Christian faith in a peaceful way.
People come from all over the world to place their crosses here, bearing messages in many different languages.
The Soviets tried three times to level the site with bulldozers. But people cleaned it up again, and there are now several hundred thousand crosses here.
There was a special atmosphere when a busload of pilgrims walked in procession and sang hymns before placing their crosses.
Latvia
A little outside the town of Jelgava, we ended up at the smallest campsite of the trip, Kempings “Cīzeri”.
In fact, we were the only guests at the little site on the banks of the Lielupe River.
We found the site on Google Maps, but still spent half an hour searching before we met the owner, who drove ahead of us across a field along barely visible tracks, where a clearing in the forest suddenly appeared.
The site was park-like, with short grass and scattered trees, without water and with an outhouse. It gave the feeling of wild camping and can be recommended. But call ahead and get help finding the place.
Gauja National Park
Fortunately, the road standard improved considerably when we crossed the border into Latvia, and good roads took us to Latvia’s largest national park, Gauja, named after the river that winds through the hilly landscape.
Camping Žagarkalns is located by the river, has a small bar and is a starting point for many walking and cycling trips along the river and into the forests.
The area has interesting geology, with many caves and springs. Along the river and up onto the rocky outcrops, marked trails take you close to nature. There is even a ski slope here. A welcome change from the otherwise flat landscape we have travelled through all the way from Rostock.
Here we also encounter the mosquitoes, which have excellent breeding grounds in the many ponds fed by the springs in the mountains.
The journey continues in a separate article about Estonia: Estonia by Road – Forests, Fortresses and Forgotten Places
The Cities
On this trip, we avoided the big cities. Vilnius, Riga, and Tallinn all have magnificent, restored old towns. Riga and Tallinn are cruise ports and full of tourists, while Vilnius is less visited. We’ve been to all of them before, as there are cheap flights from home. You can read about Riga here: Riga in Winter
