A walk through an old town on the Baltic Sea.
In Eckernförde, no one talks much about how beautiful it is here. You just know it – or you notice it on your first stroll through the old town, when the Baltic Sea air hangs between the gables and someone somewhere opens their front door with a creak.
The houses stand close together, as if they need to protect each other from the coastal wind. Cobblestones that look exactly how you would imagine a North German afternoon to look in drizzly weather: a little grey, a little shiny – but authentic. Not a spruced-up backdrop, but a real piece of town that is alive. With flower boxes on windows, from which a cat sometimes peeks out. With bicycles leaning crookedly against old fences. And with people who still nod to each other when they pass by.
The old town is small – you can walk through it in ten minutes. Or in an hour, if you take your time. Maybe you stop because someone is shelling crabs in front of the door. Or because there is a handwritten note in the window of a tiny bookshop: -I'm at Coffee - right back -.
And then, of course, there is the water. The Baltic Sea is never far away, but in the old town it is the harbour that sets the mood. Old boats bob up and down, seagulls fight over fish scraps, and somewhere someone in rubber boots pulls in a net. It smells of salt, seaweed, and sometimes freshly baked cake from the café around the corner.
Eckernförde doesn't make a fuss about itself. But anyone who has ever walked through the old town will somehow remember this place. Not like a postcard motif, but like a small, quiet thought that lingers.
