When we arrived on Rügen the first place we stopped at was Bergen. It’s about as central as you can get and one of the bigger towns. We were lucky to decide on the first cafe we came to and found it to be old-fashioned and characterful. Cafe Meyer

“the oldest and most traditional confectioner’s coffee house on Germany’s largest island Rügen.  For more than 100 years, we have pampered our customers with coffee and sweet delicacies according to traditional recipes from our in-house pastry shop in a cozy cafe atmosphere.” [source]

As luck would have it we browsed through some of the leaflets and local information where Bärbel spotted an advertisement for a Culinary Evening Walking in the Treetops on Midsummer’s Eve. The final day for booking was that very afternoon so with my instant agreement she rang the office, we arranged to book and drove straight off to the Tree Top Trail to collect our tickets.

As the culinary evening was to start at 7pm we decided to just have a morning excursion and chose to drive to the nearby park of Juliusruh. This was my choice from the 111 places book.

The founder of Juliusruh, Julius von der Lancken, built this late-baroque park in the Rococo style. Due to financial difficulties he had to sell it in 1803. In 1835 the park was acquired by the town of Stralsund and ever since has been open to the public as a spa park.

The picturesque park, built on sand dunes, is divided from north to south by a central axis. There are partly exotic plants, many lime trees and a monument to the village founder, which is enclosed with beech hedges. The Juliusruh country house, built in 1795, no longer exists.

The main axis

Walking through Juliusruh Park today

The monument to Julius von der Lanken

The original plan

Bicentenary plans

Just across the main road from the park is a popular beach and we took a walk, had an ice cream and headed back to the car via a takeaway smoked fish counter.

Breege beach

The park cafe and fish counter