It’s been crazy since the beginning of the year 2020, And since the lock-down I have been working from home constantly, and naturally the idea of taking a vacation was distant, the fact that I’m working from home feels like I shouldn’t take a vacation, my mind just pushed it to the back of my head, until I felt I really need some time off.
Around the end of July I thought of taking off one week and go somewhere, As I love the sight of the sea, My wife started planning for the journey, she choose one place to visit for couple days and see some water, walk on the beach together and smell different air.
I was raised in Port-Said a small city north of Egypt, the city is surrounded of most of it’s sides by water and Suez canal is cutting it in two halves, so I was raised on the idea that I can see the Mediterranean sea all the time, I can walk for 15 minutes from my home to the beach, living in Cairo and Berlin after that for 4 years wasn’t easy for me, so wherever I go in this vacation I need to see water everywhere.
We found a good place to the north of Germany called Scharbeutz, A small city on the sea, and has some other small lakes here and there, not so different from Port-Said, So we decided to go there.
Transportation ¶
Scharbeutz doesn’t have public transportation that I know of, And I don’t have a driving license as I hate driving, so we thought we can take our bikes with us.
I tried to buy train tickets for us on DB website but the website showed me error in the last screen that all bikes positions are reserved, even when I get past this screen and reach the payment screen after I accept the 3D authorization step from my phone I get an error from the website, so I gave up.
So taking our bikes isn’t an option anymore, we thought that we can then take the train to Scharbeutz then rent 2 bikes for 3 days (our staying period there), So we asked on a Facebook group called “We <3 Scharbeutz” about bikes rental shops and we got a good recommendation for a place called “Tobisrad” in a walking distance of the station.
Accommodation ¶
Next was our stay, we tried Airbnb and booking.com, I wanted a place with water view in-front of it, and we found 2 places, one I contacted the first one he changed his availability so that all the days I’m asking about is busy, for the second one we succeeded at booking it from booking.com it was a nice one room apartment with a nice view on a lake.
Food ¶
We didn’t overthink this one, so the first trivial thing is to drop to one of the large super markets and get some breakfast/dinner food, and for lunch we’ll decide on daily basis.
Activities ¶
We wanted to stay for 3 nights, so we thought our highest priority is walking on the beach, get wet and just enjoy the sun and the water.
Second day we thought of visiting an amusement park called Hansa-Park we watched a YouTube video about it and it had many roller-coasters and other nice activities we’ll enjoy.
For the third day we can go for a tunnel that has a nice ceiling with Aquarium in it.
Arrival ¶
Our travel from Berlin to Scharbeutz took us 3 trains to get there, there is no direct trains from Berlin to Scharbeutz so most options are 3 trains, found one journey with 2 trains but it was too expensive so we opted for 3 trains early in the morning, I booked it on my phone from the DB application, on the IC train the inspector scanned the Aztec code, we changed the train to RB then RE trains but we were not checked for tickets there.
Finally we arrived to Scharbeutz, we used google maps to find the bikes rental shop which was in a walking distance from the station and we rented two bikes for 3 days, then took it to our rented apartment, it took us around an hour to reach it, we underestimated the distance from the beach to the apartment, on google maps it’s one street from there but in reality it took around 15 minutes by bike to get there.
First day ¶
The check-in was straightforward and the apartment was as I expected, everything was in place and working perfectly, add to that the huge TV on the wall that made me really happy.
The view of this apartment is taken out of some romantic movie, it looked directly on a lake that has some ducks and a private swimming platform, when it rained in the third day it had 2 beautiful rainbows.
We took a walk beside the lake then decided to get back and take the bikes around the lake in a full circle, it was a nice ride, and I learned that people greet each other there with “Moin” instead of “Hallo” :)
Second day ¶
We took a ride to the beach, normally I have to pay to get in there, but with the check-in we were given 2 cards we can use during our stay to access the beach, also we found that it gives us discount for mini golf tickets :) the card is called “ostsee-card”.
There are 2 mini golf courses around the city one of them beside the tobis bikes shop, another one on the beach side, it’s a nice experience to play it.
We found a ride-sharing scooter called e-floater but it doesn’t have an App, you need to scan a QR code and register on the website, We also found another ride-sharing bike called Obike, I installed the android application and it crashed whenever I opened it.
These are few pictures of the beach
Third day ¶
That was a fun day, really thrilling, we took the bikes in a long ride to Hansa-park, then used the tickets we booked online to get in.
The park ticket lets you access all rides inside it for no additional cost for any number of rides/times you want.
I think we enjoyed all of them :) even the little pony ride that’s made for the kids :) , The most thrilling one for me was a roller coaster that was extremely fast and spins like crazy (Der schwub des karnan), The second one was a lighter version of it (Fluch von Novgorod) I liked it very much that I took the ride twice.
The fourth day ¶
It was time to checkout, also that was straight forward, the host was very friendly gentleman, We met him in the morning, checked-out and took off to return our bikes, Then we walked to the station waiting for the first train back to Berlin.
Conclusion ¶
It was a relaxing couple of days (not mentioning all the screaming in Hansa-Park :)) and I think I would do it again, I even thought of getting there in the morning and getting back in the evening, It’s a nice place, clean and has many relaxing view on the beach, It remind me too much of my home city.