As I stood alone and lost on a graffiti-splattered train platform in the pitch black of a November night in northeastern Germany, a thought crossed my mind: This was not how I expected my wellness vacation to begin.
My goal when I set off for Germany was to feel well, even if only for a few days. It wasn’t that I was unwell, per se. I didn’t have any chronic illnesses that I expected the Baltic Sea air to cure. The hotel, opened in 1971 with an eye to attracting western guests to the GDR, was the first in Germany to be certified as an “Original Thalasso Centre,” a designation handed out to beachfront centres that pump in seawater to fill their swimming pools and the showers and tubs in their treatment rooms.Hotel Neptun offers thalasso vacations that include daily individual and group seawater treatments, along with more than 30 exercise and relaxation class options.
For the next 25 minutes, jets of water moved up and down my body, giving me the gentler equivalent of a vibrating massage-chair treatment. At one point, as I stared out the window at the Baltic sea without a to-do list or a podcast or a Twitter feed to fill my mind, I noticed an unfamiliar sensation. I was daydreaming.Hotel Neptun
A stunning coastline of chalk cliffs at the ancient beech forests of Jasmund, Germany’s smallest national park.On Rugen, I found another, more outdoorsy way to satisfy my quest for wellness. Blessed with a rare blue-sky day in November, I drove with a guide from Binz to the nearby town of Sassnitz, where we hiked through the towering, ancient beech forests of Jasmund, Germany’s smallest national park and home to a stunning coastline of chalk cliffs reminiscent of Dover or Calais.
On my second full day on Rugen, the weather turned grey and the wind off the Baltic became so wild that I was nearly blown off the long and gorgeous pier in Sellin, another resort town that, similar to Binz, is full of beautiful Spa architecture – whitewashed buildings with ornate, gingerbread-like wooden balconies.Christian Thiele