Międzyzdroje

A trip from Szczecin to The Baltic Sea 

For my first Erasmus mobility I have travelled to the north west of Poland, more precisely in the city of Szczecin. It was the winter semester and because at some point I had a lot of free time I decided to explore the surroundings. Before heading to anywhere else, I have asked people around about beautiful natural places or cities that are worth seeing within that area. Besides Berlin, almost everybody told me that I should go to see the Baltic Sea.

When I chose my Erasmus exchange city and looked on the map where it is located I was very happy and excited to notice that Szczecin is kind of close to the Baltic Sea and I have made a strong wish to go there during my staying in Poland. 

I made a little bit of research and asked around how to get to the Sea. I found out that there are some nice cities which I could reach by train. I spread the word to the other Erasmus students about the trip that I was about to do, but they were not so interesting in joining me and I couldn’t really understood why, but I didn’t wanted to give up on my desire of experiencing The Baltic Sea. Finally, a polish student with which I had photography classes wanted to accompany me because she really liked the see too.

Travelling with her made it a lot easier for me to handle situations like getting a train ticket when the woman who was selling the tickets was not speaking in English or when I didn’t knew how to pronounce correctly the name of the city I was about to travel to.

How to get out of Szczecin to see the Baltic Sea, a journey with the train 

We bought the train tickets for the city of Międzyzdroje - yes,very hard to read for me- and started our one day journey to the sea. The train tickets cost about 15 zoltys and it took us circa 2 hours to get there from Szczecin. In the train we discussed about our countries and the things we appreciate and others that we don’t like that much. It was a good time and we didn’t even notice how time flew by.

Since I believed that only in the mountain the spruces and pine trees were growing when I saw from the train’s window some very beautiful wild landscape with coniferous forests I got very surprised because I didn’t expect at all to encounter such vegetation near the sea area.

My polish friend had been to Międzyzdroje before and due to that she was a very helpful guide of our trip. From the small city train station all we wanted to do was reaching the shore and because Międzyzdroje was not a large city, but rather a quite small one, we were looking at the blue water quickly after maybe 10 to 15 minutes of walking.

Międzyzdroje, a little baltic resort

Agata told me that in the summer time the city is for sure much more crowded then it was in that late autumn day. Probably, in the hot summer days many people are coming here in vacation to enjoy the beach and swim into the water. In the period we travelled there, all humans could do was taking a relaxing walk on the sand while watching the long horizon over the sea. This was what we did too.

Walking on the sea and sand

Soon we reached a long pontoon on which we walked on get a closer look and feeling of the beautiful sea. The atmosphere was cloudy and a bit windy, but still it was a perfect day to be there. We started walking on the sand and even though it was kind of cold outside, we could not resist to take our shoes off and feel the sand in our barefoot. The sand was very soft and nice to walk on. Agata wanted to try the sea’s water and she got closer to the sea and waited for a wave to reach her feet. It was a cold water, but she enjoyed. For me it was too chilly to go in.

The fishing boats

In the distance we noticed a green area that seemed to offer a great landscape and we decided to head towards that place. We walked on the beach hearing the waves of the Baltic Sea and looking at some specific fishing boats that I had never seen before and which impressed me with their colorful aspect.

Going up the forest into a natural park 

After some time of walking, we arrived to many wooden stairs which were climbing up a hill towards a forest. The construction and configuration of the stair’s structure appeared well made and beautifully integrated into the natural landscape.

We climbed those stairs until we got to the end and to the highest point from where we could see the Baltic Sea much better. The view in front of us was so large and left us with no words. From up high the sea emerged far into the distance offering us a breath taking landscape. Down on the beach the people showed up so small in comparison with the huge blue stretching of water. We sat here for a while to admire the Baltic Sea’s horizon.

We found a trekking path that was beginning from the end of the stairs and came to the conclusion to follow it. Actually, there were two paths from which we could chose, one of it could even lead us to a park with bison named Zagroda Pokazowa Zubrow, but the location was 2 kilometers away and we didn’t had the necessary time to go there and came back in time for our train.

So, we continued on the path through Wolinsky Park Narodowy which took us back to the city. The forest was also very nice and friendly for walkers and trekkers. There were some spots from where we could see the Baltic Sea again.

Early sunset over The Baltic Sea 

We got hungry and a bit tired for walking around since morning and to solve this problem we found a nice place to eat and drink. I don’t remember the name of that restaurant, but they served us a delicious serving of fries and cheesecake. Because the place was positioned near the sea, we went on the beach for some last minutes to experience the early sunset. 

At that time, the sky got cleared, there was no cloud and the sun was shinning. We got the short, but nice opportunity to sit on the slightly warm sand and got the feeling like we were on a summer vacation. We took lots of photos with the birds fishing on the water's shores.

There were many people now on the beach than there were in the morning when we arrived doing various activities. A thing that also surprised me besides seeing the mountain vegetation near the sea, was the trekkers who were fast walking on the sand with the trekking poles, a fact that in my head was supposed to happen only into the mountain regions. I found out from Agata that this kind of sport activity is called Nordic walking and that it is very common in the northern areas of Poland and Germany.

After catching a glimpse of the sunset with it's warm light, we started walking back to the train station. We passed to a city bazar in which there were many stores, restaurants, ice cream little stores, terraces with drinks and food. The bazar was quite crowded at that time for the humans who came later to the beach to enjoy the beautiful afternoon autumn day. 

We didn't rushed through the stores, but looked a bit around to see what the people are selling and soon we realised that we would have to hurry to catch the train. I didn't knew why but for some reason it was much more harder to find the train station then it was to find the sea in the morning. We had a difficult time trying to find via Google Maps the right streets leading to the station, but finally, after some moments of anxiety we were right on time for the train which got us back to Szczecin. It was so crowded and we had to stand up almost all the way to the city, but even so, the experience was great and The Baltic Sea made me to come back at her later that year and of that trip I would write in my next article.