Day 11 on the Baltic trail: Osieki - Darlowo

Day 11 on the Baltic trail. Osieki - Darlowo. Yesterday's theme was Back to Beauty. After another sore-footed 20k along a dusty road, the light turned golden and we walked past gorgeous old farmhouses, lots of friendly storks and lush flower gardens.

This is particularly nice as we're now in one of my family's old hometowns. It would have been such a downer to finally arrive and find that it's so much uglier than the rest. Instead: prettier.

My great-great-great-grandmother is apparently buried in the town where we are now, Darlowo (Rügenwalde). We'll try to find her grave later, though I'm not sure the old German cemetery still exists. I think most of the old cemeteries have been razed. Yesterday we tried to find a Jewish cemetery that was on the map, but in reality someone had planted a field over it.

We also passed quite a few spooky, abandoned farmhouses and mansions. This one looks like no one's set foot in it since the German owners ran away in 1945:

Quite fittingly, one of the villages on our route, Iwiecino, is known as the Village of the Apocalypse. Apparently that's because the inside of its church is painted with scenes from the apocalypse. The church was locked so we couldn't see the crazy paintings. Oh well.

As we move east, the churches' names are becoming noticeably more creative and poetic, like something out of The Tin Drum. Iwiecino's church is dedicated to "The Mother-of-God, Queen of Poland". It used to be a Protestant German church but was converted into a Catholic Polish one in 1946.

Iwiecino of the Apocalypse

This stork may look like the one we saw a few days ago, but it's actually a new stork. I think we saw it in Iwiecino. Apocalyptic Stork.

However, Stork of the Day goes to this conference of storks: