In September 2016 we were invited to a wedding near Gdańsk, Poland. Instead of flying in we decided to turn it into a road trip. On the way from Cologne to the wedding we checked out Dresden, the national park of Saxon Switzerland and finally Gdańsk. On our way to the wedding we found a really special place worth sharing; it was the village Kluki and the Słowiński National Park. With the vast and empty beaches, sand dunes and pine tree forests the park left a lasting impression on all of us.
We stayed in a village called Kluki in the heart of the national park.
Kluki was half village and half open air museum. It was about a two hour car ride from Gdańsk. During the day we saw some tourists wandering through the one street of the village. In the evening the tourists were gone and one could hear only the mating calls of the deer. We could literally watch the herds on the fields from Kluki.
Our accomodation was rustical. The rooms were small and simple, no tv but radio, with grandma like curtains and wallpaper. It felt like a journey back in time. The accomodation contained the only restaurant nearby.
The highlight was the spectacular coastline which was well worth seeing and the reason for this blog post. We walked along the white sand beach for more than two hours encountering only very few strangers. This is quite unusual for Europe to find such a beautiful stretch of land so untouched. Between the forests and the massive sand dunes some abandoned buildings gave us the feeling that nature reclaimed this place from civilisation. And indeed, the asphalt from the streets was old and cracking and some little paths disappeared into the dunes. If you are near Gdansk and are looking into nature activities nearby than you should definitely take a day to visit this national park.
