Hunt for Amber on Rügen

Since last Sunday we are enjoying our vacation on the beautiful island of Rügen :) There are really so many things to do here, from walking to eating and discovering lovely places, and it feels like we are here already since two weeks, even it’s only 4 full days now – one of them was super rainy. On the rainy day we decided to try indoor UV light mini golf. Honestly, it was a bit disappointing. I really recommend to always check the course before paying the entrance. Our course was just too crazy difficult, not really for beginners like us and even not for professionals I guess! But okay, now back to this actifit post!

 

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Yesterday was one of our more active days. We had a nice walk through the city Sellin, we looked at many touristic shops, small cafes, interesting corners, old beautiful houses and of course we walked over the famous Sellin sea bridge with its lovely view and historic feel.

After some good walks the last days, we were already super tired around 1pm lol but with some tasty ice cream, crispy fries and enough water, this could be survived ;) My Fitbit was already buzzing for the 10k steps, and I had this feeling: Today I will smash my personal record of 15k steps easily!

And yes, this walk was not the end! We also planned to join a guided tour at the beach with the topic: Amber and Fossils.

We met in front of the town hall, or how they call it here "Kurverwaltung", where our tour guide told us directly some bad news: The chances of finding any amber today are really, really, reaaaaaally low.

She explained why – for amber, you need storms that push the treasures to the beach, and this has not happened for weeks. Also, even if something was there, we were coming too late, most amber would already be gone, collected by other people. There are professionals getting up at night just to go along the beach with a UV flashlight to spot amber as the first ones of the day. Sounds crazy but these professionals are pretty common here she told us.

 

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But no matter the chances of finding treasures, we stayed in the tour, because we learned sooo many interesting things about amber and all these crazy fossils that you can find here at the Rügen coast. The guide explained how these treasures are formed, why we can find them here and what stories they tell us about the long, long history of Northern Europe.

^{left: amber // right: normal stones}

 

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Our tour guide was really amazing – she also brought some very cool fossils and an impressive amber collection with her. The tour was mainly for learning and wow, we learned soooo much! If you ever come to Rügen – please do this tour in Sellin. It is 1000% worth it and it's free if you have the Kurcard (which you usually need anyway if you rent a place here as tourist).

My girlfriend and me, we didn’t find any super cool fossils or amber even though we looked everywhere all the time. One boy from the group found a stone full of little seashells and other signs that it could be a fossil. We are happy for him but honestly a little bit jealous too – not gonna lie!

After the tour we decided to continue walking in the direction to our apartment – and yes, we secretly continued hunting for amber or fossils. Of course, the guide was right: no amber, no fossils, just normal stones.

 

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But still we enjoyed walking at the quiet beach and taking some nice photos from the landscape and a sculpture called Kaysa:

 

When we came home, we were totally done – our legs were sore, our faces were red, we had a huge hunger and only a few more mana in our system. Now it is time to show off our treasures of the day: Nice stones:

Fortunately our energy was enough to make a fresh salad, to jump into the bed and watch a German TV show called Tatort. I have binged a loooot some months ago so now only old episodes from the 90s are left that I did not see yet ^^ 89 minutes of puuure 90s cringe later we fell asleep.

 

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Today the alarm pulled us out of the bed at 9am because we wanted to go on another tour to hopefully see some seals! Spoiler: Also not the best season, time or weather for this. But no problem, because the same lovely tour guide from the amber walk made the tour super nice again, and we learned a lot! She explained many interesting facts, starting from the old stories about head money on seals in the past, to fighting fishermen who said "seals steal our fish", to many cool things about seals, like their strong senses, how good they can feel with their whiskers under water, how they take care of their babies, where they like to live and sleep, and also where at the Ostsee you still can find them sometimes. Even without seeing seals, the walk was really fun and it was worth waking up early.

Now it is 9:30pm, we already enjoyed our dinner and I am taking my time to write this post. After publishing we are going on the next cringy Tatort journey until we fall asleep. Tomorrow there is a boat we wanna get and we need to get up at 9 again. Wish us luck!

Walking