Pillau
Russian: Baltiysk
From "Where Hoffman Told His Fairytales" [Page 91]...
Many of the girls had not even been able to sell
all the tickets in one booklet. She had not been aware of this, but there was a
reward for her diligence and enthusiasm. The best ticket sellers of all the
Königsberg girls’ schools would be spending a whole week at the seaside, in the
youth hostel of the old port city of Pillau. This place had many attractions –
there were rows of tiny, neat houses in the narrow streets, the fishing boats
and steamers created entertaining commotion at the harbour and the powerful
cone of light coming from the light-house swept tirelessly across the scene all
night. There was also the Seekanal,
or sea channel, connecting Königsberg to the sea. It all exuded a romantic
notion of faraway places and held a strange fascination for visitors from the
inland.
Russian: Lesnoy
From: "Where Hoffman Told His Fairytales" [Page 47]...
One Sunday, the goal was to make as much
use of the public transport ticket as possible. They were out of their beds by
sunrise in order to make the first Samlandbahn train to the Baltic Sea resort
town of Cranz. Even though it was so early they could barely keep their eyes
open, the children still gazed breathlessly out of the train window, and Papa
was careful that they didn’t miss a thing. Soon they were passing the only
mountain in the area, the Galtgarben, that stood 112 meters above sea level.
Then they were told to admire the lupines (or bluebonnets) that were the
national flower of the Samland peninsula and gave the edge of the forest a
bluish tinge. All the passengers who got off in Cranz immediately turned
towards the boardwalk, but not Papa. Instead of going with the crowd, he and
his family set off for Sarkau, where no train went.
It was a nine kilometre walk through the
forest, and one was well advised to take off socks and shoes for this hike. Sarkau
was not a resort, but a modest fishing village. As the family passed the
fishermen’s homes hidden in the woods, they noticed that the smoking of the
morning’s catch had already begun. They could see where the freshly smoked
flounder would be available later on by the plumes curling above the farms… the
entire forest smelled of it.
Finally they reached the beach, where the sky
reflected in the clear seawater, the endless white sand practically blinded
them and there were no other human beings as far as the eye could see. All they
could hear was the swoosh of the waves hitting the shore. They didn’t have to
go any further. Here they felt the force of nature’s inconceivable beauty, here
the world could end!
Gretel and her family were still on a tight budget. Yet she got permission to go on a little trip with the Young Women’s Christian Association that summer. Anyway, it wasn’t going to cost very much. They were to spend a few days in the youth hostel in the fishing village of Sarkau on the Kurische Nehrung, a peninsula on the Baltic Sea.
In the afternoons they would go on long hikes along the gorgeous Kurische Nehrung peninsula that stretched 98 kilometres from Cranz to Sandkrug, and which boasted dunes up to 66 metres high. It also featured a famous ornithological station.
Russian: Donskoye
From "Where Hoffman Told His Fairytales" [Page 94]...
To Gretel’s great delight, she got
permission in her last year of school to spend two weeks at the Landschulheim, or student hostel, in
Groß Dirschkeim on the Samland coast with some of her classmates. Due to the
cost, not all the children in Gretel’s grade were as lucky.
The hostel stood on a high cliff
with a grand view of the sea, and was nestled in a beautiful large garden
surrounded by a fence. It was run by an elderly couple who provided their
guests with five square meals a day. Groß Dirschkeim had the advantage of not
being overrun by bathers like other resorts. The west coast of the Samland at
this location shows a peculiar feature: While the rest of the coast is largely
flat, this section is an extremely steep cliff that falls more than 60 meters
down to the Baltic Sea.
Some of the bluffs have deep gorges and dense
forests, and offer stunning vistas of the open sea. Only a very narrow strip of
beach covered with sand and pebbles lies at the foot of the cliffs. Mighty
waves gouge the slopes, creating deep caves that cause the land to collapse
which in turn leads to erosion of roughly two feet per year. The Samland coast
was therefore placed under conservation, and access to the area was restricted.
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