Germany Guide
Schleswig-Holstein
Travemünde
TRAVEMÜNDE at Lübeck's municipal boundary lives a double life as a major port and a small-fry beach resort. Bought for a song – Lübeckers paid Count Adolf III of Schauenburg 1060 Marks for the hamlet to safeguard the river for shipping – it became an opera. In the nineteenth century it was a German St Tropez favoured as the nation went crazy for seawater bathing. High rollers, including that inveterate gambler Dostoevsky, tried their luck in a belle époque casino and Emperor Wilhelm II competed in the Travemünde Woch regatta. Thomas Mann took his holidays here, enthusing about "a paradise where I have undoubtedly spent the happiest days of my life", and Clara Wieck gushed to future husband Robert Schumann about sailing trips.
The heart of the fishing settlement huddles around St-Lorenz-Kirche (Tues– Sun 10am– noon & 1–4pm), a humble church with a painted wood roof. From the adjacent river channel, lined by fish restaurants, you can embark for hour-long boat trips or cross the river to the four-masted barque Passat (Easter to mid-May & mid-Sept to Oct Sat & Sun 11am–4pm; mid-May to mid-Sept 10am–5pm; €3), Germany's last windjammer and sister-ship to the ill-fated Pamir whose lifeboat is in Lübeck's Jakobikirche. She is on a permanent mooring on the Priwall peninsula, a wild conservation area with plenty of beach space. Two ferries cross the Trave: a passenger ferry by the river mouth and a car/passenger ferry upriver (both daily 10am–6pm, till 9pm mid-June to early Sept; pedestrians €0.60).
The focus, however, is a beach full of wicker Strandkörbe, the hooded Rolls-Royce of beach seating. Its Strandpromenade is somewhat down-at-heel compared to Baltic resorts east, but is pleasant for a sunny day. Beach notwithstanding, the seafront Trave Sauna, Strandpromenade 1b (daily 10am–9pm), has pools and steam rooms, or as a modern interpretation of yesteryear luxury there are spa treatments in the www.a-rosa.de spa hotel (reservations required). The paraphernalia of a seaside resort eventually peters out to be replaced by the Brodtener Ufer, an unspoilt beach backed by trees and low, sandy cliffs with a restaurant, Hermannshöhe, after twenty minutes' walk.