Family, surfing swans and a sad beach at Christmastime

Not a creature is stirring on a Saturday morning in Neustadt in Holstein. Photo by Dragonfly Leathrum

The best time to visit a coastal town is in the winter: frosty cold, deserted streets, gray skies, sleepy shops, and empty beaches for miles. Neustadt in Holstein on the Baltic Sea in Germany did not disappoint as a beautiful, quiet getaway.

The beginning of our walk along the coast in Neustadt in Holstein Germany. Photo by Dragonfly Leathrum

Andreas and I traveled there to visit his parents for a few days. We had a wonderful stay in a “French” shabby chic Airbnb in town. The rooms were full of knickknacks and EVERYTHING was painted white so it all sort of blended together. Not my thing and not Andreas’ thing either especially after he cut his finger and no band aid. Poor thing fell asleep with his hand wrapped in toilet paper hoping he would not bleed on any of the thousand white objects in the room. I’d love to share a photo but the proprietor asks that no photos of the establishment are shared.

Winkie the Viking display at the Christmas market. Photo by Dragonfly Leathrum

We had a lovely visit with his parents sharing fancy coffees at their apartment and a nice dinner by the water. We also had a wonderful German breakfast and I ate my first soft-boiled egg after a sad, sloppy job of breaking the top of the shell, rookie mistake.

Coffee time by the sea with Lothar. Photo by Dragonfly Leathrum

First time for everything. Stop laughing at my egg. Photo by Dragonfly Leathrum

Christa is a wonderful quilter. This is a gift she made for her friend. Photo by Dragonfly Leathrum

We took advantage of the gray, cold weather by walking a few miles along the Baltic following a sculpture trail towards the family campsite.

Christa’s favorite sculpture along the path. Photo by Dragonfly Leathrum

Swans in the surf. I have never seen this in America. I thought this was so cool. Photo by Dragonfly Leathrum

Neustadt also has a horrifically sad story to tell from the end of WWII on this coast. The Neuengamme Concentration Camp near Hamburg was emptied and the prisoners were put on decommissioned ships in the Bay of Lübeck to prevent them from being liberated alive by rapidly advancing British troops the last days of the war. The prisoners were put below decks without food and water, and survival gear was replaced with dynamite charges to sink the ship. Barges of women and children from Stutthof and Mittelbau-Dora camps were also sent to the ships already holding 9000 prisoners, but they were turned away because the ships were full. Their SS guards sailed the barges to the beach where they shot women and children aboard with machine guns. The ships were then mistakenly bombed by the British Royal Air Force. The few survivors able to reach the beaches from the ships were shot on the beach. When the British Army arrived later in the day, they found empty camps, burning ships, and corpses of the murdered on the beach. We visited a mass grave and a marker along the path. There is, of course, much more to this story.

A sign that needs replacing

The stone for the mass grave. Photo by Dragonfly Leathrum

We kept walking quietly after this …

Andreas wrote about this event in 2013 as well.