Our day started out with a little bit of a walk along the beach and through town, including some grocery shopping in the super market and on the open market that happens here every Wednesday.
Then Uschi, Imke, and Dorothee came to our apartment so we could all take a two-car drive to a nearby beach. But because of Kai‘s classic „ready 10 minutes after scheduled departure time“ we had different start times, and trying to find a suitable beach AND each other turned into a complicated logistics maneuver. I had found a beach resort town that sounded appealing in the description that we found in our tourist magazine for this summer—even though the name of the town, Damp, isn‘t appealing in English regardless of a German or an English pronunciation („dump“ or „damp“? Hmmm….). But it was built up in a really ugly 1970s minimalist way, and although the beach was fun to walk on, the 45 minutes of parking / meeting point logistics were not, and the promised windsurfers and kitesurfers were not in evidence. We walked around a bit, and then went to a restaurant which also turned out to be a disappointment. Although they were very few guests, our service was painfully slow and when the food we ordered finally arrived, a couple of meals were only lukewarm. Dorothee sent hers back (which kept us there longer, since they fried her a fresh fish); Uschi ate hers, but with mounting dissatisfaction, since the fish she‘d ordered was just below par in preparation. I had various types of pickled herring (Matjes) which I have to have once on every German trip, and they were fine but not fabulous. Kai‘s lasagne had a very chewy bottom leaf, and Mark‘s goulash soup tasted basically like chili. So nothing was quite what we wanted! It would have been funny if we hadn‘t been so grumpy about it. Once we were done and had peeked at the other half (the North side) of the beach, we started to feel more cheerful, especially since the weather was gorgeous—sunny with a few clouds and temperatures in the upper 70s, just right for a walk on the beach. We decided after some discussion to drive convoy-style to another beach which seemed more rural and peaceful, so Mark, Kai and I, armed with the iPhone‘s directions, got us to a beach between two resorts, called Weidefeld, which was really nice—wide, quiet, and with less seaweed than we’ve seen elsewhere. Uschi and Dorothee sat down at the local cafe (there was just that one—nice) while Imke, Kai, Mark and I walked down the beach, dipped our toes in the water, and practiced skipping rocks. It was truly lovely and even though there were no surfers here either (the wind must just have been going the wrong way), we had a very good time. We walked back to the others and had ice cream cones/sandwiches (just the regular commercial kind, nothing special, but very beach-appropriate), and then drove back home. We would have stopped at a little place near the estuary of the Schlei, the river just north of Eckernförde, but Kai had had enough, so we just drove the 20 miles / 30 km back, parked the car, and returned to the apartment.
I had invited the others to dinner at 6:30 and so I got started on the cooking (simple: pasta and salad) fairly soon afterwards, and we had a lovely, hot, and punctual meal that outshone the restaurant stuff by far with very simple ingredients. We had some leftovers, plus pasta with pesto (and diced ham for those who wanted to add it), a salad and some tomatoes with mozzarella, and strawberries with yogurt or ice cream for dessert. All with a view of the Baltic from the window at our great big dinner table. Then everyone except Kai walked along the promenade to the so-called “Spieker,” a former warehouse on the quai (from when Eckernförde was a much more important trade town). Uschi had found out earlier in the day that the ground floor is a culture center (with a minimal bar and funky decor) that features different concerts almost every night, with just a hat being passed around. Tonight, the band was a five-man outfit in their 50s and 60s that played blues and had a bit of a Blues Brothers cover band flair. (Name: Blues Bandits.) They played a variety of blues and traditional Rock’n’Roll, including a few tunes from the Blues Brothers movie (“Soul Man;” “Sweet Home Chicago”), and were highly entertaining. The singer wasn’t great, but had a good gig going, and the other musicians were quite good. The classically stoic bass player was the most impressive as a blues brothers imitation, but for the second half, they all took their trademark hats and jackets off because it got too hot. Everyone in the audience (maybe 20-30 people) was somewhere between my age and my mother’s (50s to 70s) but both the band and the audience had a really good time. We were there until the encore (“Sweet Home Chicago”), and when we left at 10:30, it was still light enough to see. Mark and I went straight to bed when we got home, but it appears that Uschi, Imke, and Dorothee sat up with some snacks and wine until 12:30! They are much tougher than we are when it comes to partying, clearly. 🙂