Fishing and harbour festivities

You can experience traditional festivities and customs throughout the year during your Baltic Sea holiday in Vorpommern. The fishing and harbour festivities in the coastal regions can be considered to be a special highlight in spring and summer. Much hustle and bustle can be experienced at the annual Gaffelrigg fishing festival in Wieck, while the Freest fishing festival is a little more traditional. Here you can take trips on fishing boats and enjoy many culinary delights, from fish soup to smoked fish and fish sandwiches. High-fireworks over the Greifswald Bay are always the highlight of the festivals and are especially beautiful to enjoy in boats offering excursions.

At the harbour festivities in Anklam and Ueckermünde you can discover exceptional maritime promenades during your Baltic Sea holiday. Take a close look at traditional sailing boats and sailing regattas and visit the many huts and exhibitors on the waterfront.

Harvest festivities

At the time of the beautiful golden autumn, a lot of harvest festivities are celebrated in the agriculture-oriented regions of Vorpommern. For these celebrations, harvest crowns are made from the ears of corn in the summer, which are then put on display for the festivities. During the procession through the museum village, old agricultural machinery, carriages and folk costumes get presented according to tradition.

Horse riding advenure in autumn

When the first leaves start to turn colourful, time has come for the drag hunt in Vorpommern - across the wide meadows and fields around the Peene valley. Nowadays, drag hunts are no longer actual hunts. Instead, an imitation track is laid for the dogs of the Mecklenburg pack. Dogs and riders then follow this track according to very specific rules during an extensive ride. At the end of such a drag hunt, the dogs receive a snack as a reward and the riders feast together.

Christmas traditions

This contemplative time in Vorpommern is characterised by wonderful little customs and invites you to spend a special Christmas winter holiday in the region. Lüttenweihnachten is fun for the whole family, but is especially worth experiencing for children. Lüttenweihnachten (or Low German: Lütt-Wiehnacht) is the Christmas feast for the animals in the forest. It was inspired by a book by Greifswald-born author Hans Fallada, who wrote a children's book with the same title. In Freest, children from the village and guests come together with the forester to hang goodies on the trees for the forest animals and thus also make a nice Christmas for them.

Moreover, there are many traditional Christmas markets in Vorpommern that provide a contemplative ambience far away from the big city Christmastime crowd. The nice, thoughtful atmosphere will certainly get you into the Christmas spirit during your Baltic Sea holiday. Visit the markets for mutzen, all kinds of handicrafts and mulled wine that warms you from the inside.

Sailing a zeesen boat

The traditional zeesen boats with their brown sails were once built for fishing. When the fishing method of "zeesen" was banned due to predatory fishing, all these boats suddenly had no function any more, until a fisherman came up with the idea of organising special zeesen boat regattas in the 1960s. Since then, zeesen boats have mainly been used by enthusiasts for regattas or for tourists. Take a trip on the traditional zeesen boats during your Baltic Sea holiday, e.g.in Mönkebude on the Szczecin Lagoon. Feel the wind blowing around your nose and immerse yourself in the history of the old boats.