Happy Campers Pt. 1

Us Germans, should the weather play along (and even if it doesn't) like to spend our summer holidays by the sea. Preferably our own sea. And if you are from the eastern part of the country chances are you have spent plenty a summer vacation at the Baltic Sea. There are a variety of places to go. In fact the whole coast line is dotted with beautiful small and even smaller towns and everyone has their favourite and absolutely swears by it.
I of course do too. But I'm always open to try something new. This year marked my first visit to the very small town of Rerik. And my second time camping. So I packed the positively huge backpack I borrowed from my cousin, met up with my friends at the train station in Berlin and travelled up north. 

 

Having arrived and after spending an incredibly small amount of time sorting out our tents we hopped into our swimsuits, grabbed our towels and headed to the beach (because why else would we be at the sea). The boys even found some stones to play around with.

 
However, having been refined into trains all day we couldn't sit still for long and after a quick dip headed back to the camping ground for a round of volleyball. At first, I stayed at the sidelines taking pictures and observing the game. 

That didn't last too long though and I jumped right in.

When, finally, we were all too spent to move anymore we headed back to our tents. Freshly showered and well-fed we decided to head back to the beach just in time to watch the sunset (minus two of the guys who thought they were to cool for cheesy activities like that, but they washed the dishes instead so who am I to complain). We didn't take the steps down to the beach itself but rather stayed on the edge of the cliff in a small clearing.

  

It really was quite a spectacular view. As you can see K was quite hypnotised by it too.

 
The next day the lovely S celebrated roaming this world for a quarter of a century and we wanted to make this day extra special for her.

Naturally we felt like this called for a cake...with her picture on it. I think the surprise was rather successful.

In addition she wished for us to go on a paddleboat tour with her which we happily agreed to. A short walk later we got dressed in bright orange vests, hopped into two boats and got started. 

Our birthday girl and her co-driver set such a quick pace that the other half of our merry lot could only stand back and watch us getting smaller on the horizon (ok, it wasn't that bad).

The view from the water was great and we soaked up the sun while partaking in a race or two. We also ventured out too far and had a bit of a hard time getting back into shallow water but that's neither here nor there.

At some point we switched and S got his well-deserved break.
 

 
Having exhausted ourselves we gorged on some ice cream before heading back to the beach. There almost everyone broke down exhausted and we didn't hear a thing from the guys for the next hour or so.

There is a lot more to follow even though we only stayed for three days. Unfortunately, I feel like this post is too long already so I decided to take a (dramatic) break here and continue on in the next one.