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Prerow, a Cold Beach Town
November 23-25, 2005
Dear Friends and Families,
Our Thanksgiving goal was Prerow (http://www.prerow.de),
a small vacation village on the "Darss" section of the Baltic coast, just east
of the "Fischland" coast. (I love the name!) It's a community of a couple thousand
residents, five kilometers (3 miles) of sandy beach, and, normally, dozens
of welcoming hotels, residences, and guest houses. In late November, the hotel
options shrink to just a few, but the place becomes a hidden getaway, just
what we wanted.
We arrived late Thursday, or at least it seemed late since
it had been dark for hours. Actually, it was only about 6pm. Night comes early
in this northern country. We wandered up and down some of the side streets,
looking for the thatched-roof building we'd seen in their website. (http://www.residenz-rennhack.de/).
When we found it, it seemed a bit cold and empty, but this was winter after
all. Inside, we were pointed up a grand staircase to an upper room that had a charming
small window peering out of the thatch.
 The
entrance of the Residenz was an excellent example of the local architecture.
Since the house color was almost a match for our plans in Pommersfelden,
we congratulated the owners on their taste! |
 Stepping
back, we could see the whole hotel, covered with the graceful sweep of
the thatch roof. Our room shared one of the "eyebrow" windows on the
left. |
 Other
homes and guesthouse in the neighborhood were equally dressed in bright
colors and soft and curving hats. |
In the evening, we searched for a small snack. Our Thanksgiving
afternoon fish dinner had left us with just a little appetite, which we hoped
to satisfy with desert. This turned out to be harder than expected. Near the
hotel, we saw a small, almost-deserted restaurant, but it didn't seem very
inviting and we assumed there would be more places toward downtown, wherever
that was. We were wrong. The only other open restaurant offered fish, and not
much else, certainly nothing interesting for dessert. After we reached our
limit of walking in the freezing weather, we returned to the Hans Kranch Restaurant,
the one we'd passed on earlier.(http://www.hotelhauskranich.de)
Now, a good story would have been that we had been wrong, that the Kranch Restaurant
turned out to be charming, friendly, and offering a wonderful assortment of
German baked goods and desserts. Unfortunately, that's not our story. The
dessert was plain, the waiter snooty, and almost every other table empty. We
wrote this off as simply the downside that balances the good of traveling
off-season. (The next night we were ready for fish again, and did have a good
meal at the neighborhood fish place.)
On Friday morning, we headed for the beach. The Residenz
Rennick sits a couple hundred yards from the Baltic Sea and the walk was over
a river, through a woods, and down to a stormy sea. By the time we got
to the beach, despite our heavy coats, we were getting pretty darn cold. Still,
this was what we expected and wanted.
 ---  |
All in all, Prerow turned out to be just what we had wanted;
small, quiet, quaint, and "different". During the Cold War, this was the front
lines of the Soviet Empire and some of the stark and plain buildings remain
but, at least in Prerow, the beauty of the place and the warmth of restored
and recreated old-time beach residences, make this a wonderful destination,
even in Winter.
John and Marianne
p.s.
Thatch.
One fascinating part of the new-old buildings along the
Darss Coast is the use of thatch for roofing. From our5 hotel window, we could
see up close the thick mat that seems to be the roofing material of choice.
Just outside of Prerow, we saw a cluster of new houses and we saw several
thatch roofs in the making.
The process looked both simple and complex, but the results
were charming.
Our hotel window. |
The new homes looked quite conventional
below the roof. On top however, bundles of thatch were being spread
and bound to a network of wooden board. Iron reinforcing bars secured
the thatch over the curved-top windows. |
|
|
After we got home, I looked (on Google of course. What was
the world like before Google?) for some websites to give more background. Here
are a pair of English sites, extolling the virtues of this ancient system:
http://www.buildingconservation.com/articles/thatch/thatch.htm
http://www.thatch.org/
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The
entrance of the Residenz was an excellent example of the local architecture.
Since the house color was almost a match for our plans in Pommersfelden,
we congratulated the owners on their taste! 
Stepping
back, we could see the whole hotel, covered with the graceful sweep of
the thatch roof. Our room shared one of the "eyebrow" windows on the
left. 
Other
homes and guesthouse in the neighborhood were equally dressed in bright
colors and soft and curving hats. 
