SYLT
In one day we managed to see much of the island of Sylt. Sylt is an island that is slightly north of the border with Denmark. It is shaped like a T with a causeway from the mainland for a double train track with no road for cars or trucks which have to come over the causeway by flatbed train. The large town of Westerland is at the center of the T with one long side of the T stretching up to the town of List and other side of the T extending down to the town of Hernum. We bought a day ticket which allowed us to go anywhere by bus.
We had brotchen and coffee at a bakery near our apartment and then took a bus to Keitum, which is almost a fairy tale village with elegant vacation homes of the very rich in manicured gardens. The features that must struck us about the white plaster houses was the thatched rooms made of sheeves of long grass. We actually saw one roof being thatched. And surrounding each house was a stone wall with a bed of flowers along the top and rounded waves of bushes behind the wall. There was almost no variation in houses with either custom or regulation making every layout and house the same.
We walked around Keitum and then took the bus up the northern arm of the T to Kampen for a late breakfast at the famous KupferKanne. But we missed our stop to get off and so rode the bus all the way north to the harbor town of List, a tourist town with gift and food shops and a view of Denmark across the sea to which a ferry ran.
And then we took the bus back to Kampen, another wealthy picturesque town with a long walk to the Kupfer Kanne, a WW2 bunker turned into a restaurant with an underground cafe and outdoor eating places between the shrubbery. Breakfast was over but we had delicious quiche and delicate apricot lichen with coffee. The other visitors had had their cars transported in and came and went by car while we walked back to the center of town and then took the long bus ride down to the southern tip of the island to Hornum, which Kathe and Elke had come on school trips 70 years ago and imagined what it must have been like for them. We walked on the long white sandy beach with a field of barnacled black rocks spread near the water, and then circled through a nature park, heavy with moss of many colors and the first buds of spring, and then finally returned to our apartment. I had walked six miles and was bushed and fell in bed immediately.
On of the surprising things to me was how most of the island was empty, enormous sand dunes covered with purple moss and yellow flowers. Most of the island is kept empty with no development but with carefully laid out walking trails and bike paths. Many visitors to Sylt come to hike or to ride bicycles, often electric, through the dunes. There are also small sections of the island that are thickly wooded. People and their vacation houses are squeezed into the few towns that we visited where the beautiful shops and restaurants are.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 