Stay-cation

Why go on vacation when I have everything I need here?


Coming back from 2 weeks of mind boggling ancient beauty, I expected to return to my cold, rainy, quiet harbor town for some detox and productivity. This is evidently not in the cards for my near future. Shucks.


No no, Flensburg is not rainy my friends. Quite the opposite actually (much to the dismay of the famers, who claim that Flensburg is in a drought after 3 whole weeks {gasp} with no heavy rain). Considering I don't have a farm to tend to I am absolutely giddy about the weather and have reacted accordingly by extending my easter vacation on into my Flensburg Un-real daily life.


As is customary with vacation blog posts, I feel it is only fitting to show you my life in the formerly-miserable (weather)-but-look-how-beautiful-this-is northern corner of the world via pictures.


Day 1 of un-real life vacation started on Friday by sharing a beer and freshly caught shrimps with my norwegian friend, Bastian, and room mate, Christoph, on the beach in Glücksburg. This is an old picture of the beach but it hasn't changed much in 9 months.

Though not raining (which is atypical) it is still REALLY windy, which is very typical. These little boxes protect beach goers from the ever-present baltic wind.

The next day I woke up early to meet up with a colleague and his wife to take a bike tour of the west coast of Schleswig-Holstein, which is about 30 min away from Flensburg by car. The sun rises around 5:20am nowadays so by 8:30am when I headed over to Wolfgang's, it was already quite warm and beautiful. Spring has finally sprung!

Beautiful Cherry tree outside Wolfgang's house. I never thought I'd see leaves or flowers again--this is quite the reward for a long hard winter. 

 The first stop on our West-coast tour was a tiny town (I mean, what ISN'T a tiny town up here...) called Husum.


Husum is the home of writer Thedor Storm who famously wrote about "Die Stadt am grauen Strand, am grauen Meer"--aka the city on the grey beach on the grey Sea. Wolfgang and wife seemed to be pretty excited about him and actually I think my german professors mentioned something about him before I left. I liked the views better. Sorry Professor Prager.


Anyway, because only tourists take pictures of silly everyday things like post offices because they are "cute", I decided to document the little town. Flensburg is  similar--but a bit bigger.

I'm really going to miss pedestrian only towns when I get back to the US. While I hated having to walk everywhere when I got here, I now enjoy getting my daily I-should-do-something-outside fix just by running errands.

We got to the Harbor at low tide so I got my first glimpse of "Watten"--aka tideland mud--and it was not very pretty. But it's apparently therapeutic. So there you go.  Here's a picture.

Boats really have to calculate when the come in and out... timing fail.

After our small-town excursion we followed the low-tide to Hamburger-Hallig (the dictionary definition of Hallig is "any of several small undiked islands off thecoast of Schleswig-Holstein" if that tells you anything) and rode bikes until we hit the actual "Watten-Meer" or the mud-flats of the North Sea. 

A lone bike-rider through the Marshlands en route to the North Sea. This is probably what we looked like to the thousands of Sheep we passed by.

After about 45 minutes of bike riding through serious winds we made it to the mud flats. For those of you who were interested in Flounder-Kicking, this is where it is done. For those of you who have NO idea what I am talking about...email me. 

My shoes taking in the view.

My feet taking in the Tide-land mud.

After smushing through the therapeutic mud for a bit, the tide came RACING in, and we had to book it back to land. 


We stopped for some more photos while riding through the Canola fields on the way back. I've decided that Schleswig-Holstein is amazing. 

Typical Northern Germany with the windmills. I guess the wind is good for something!

After we biked our way back to the car we drove for about 20 minutes until we reached the other awesome thing about Flensburg/Schleswig-Holstein: Denmark!

The border is actually (and inconveniently) in the middle of the road. My right leg is in Germany and my left leg is in Denmark. Trippy. Notice the thatched roof on the Denmark side. This is typical, and seen quite often in Denmark/Northern Germany. Great insulation and lasts for about 30 years before you have to replace it.

We putzed around Denmark for some time enjoying the nice weather and walked until we got to this church. In the wake of Royal Wedding Fever I feel it is relevant to mention that the Crowned prince  of Denmark married his princess in this church a few years ago. Now where was THAT on the news? Evidently Denmark is not as interesting as Great Britain, though I beg to differ. 

Built in the Middle Ages and as beautiful on the inside as it is plain on the outside.  The metal X's are seen on most old building here to prevent them from expanding (as stones are apparently wont to do) with age. 

After a long day of fighting head wind and taking pictures we finally headed back to Flensburg to enjoy a dinner on the terrace until the sun went down at 9:30pm and I biked home.


Day 3 of vacation happened on Sunday. After watching the Flensburg Sea Lords--the American Football team in town--dominate the Hamburg Pioneers in their season opener with a friend of mine, I headed to the beach with my roommates to do what people here seem to do when the weather is nice: Grill.

It was a bit cold, but a very german array of Wursts and Pork and Beer kept us warm.

We stayed until the sun set at 9:17.

Life is a beach. 

Then we took our freezing butts back home.


Today I took a long walk along the beach and then decided that life was too incredible not to blog about. SO here I am, and now you know.


Only 51 days, 11 hours and 15 minutes left of this vacation. Approximately. Going to do my best to document and enjoy as much as possible.


See you soon!