Baltic island vacation tips

Back in the days of communism, people would travel to a tiny East German island just off the northern Baltic coast where holiday makers on the beaches were nude and women were often without a top or a bra in the village streets, shops and restaurants.

These were unique Hiddensee traditions dating back many years. Holiday makers before the communist era included Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, the great philosopher Zuckmayer and expressionist writer Gerhart Hauptmann.

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The communist Statsi (secret police) and the political elite used Hiddensee as their summer holiday Baltic travel retreat from the economic stagnation throughout the rest of East Germany.

The photo above of Hiddensee Island's popular northern beach is a snapshot of East German history showing the communists weren't as prudish as many might think.

The Baltic Sea is a block of ice during winter. The waters are chilly and invigorating for swimmers even at the height of summer.

Nevertheless, Hiddensee is a unique travel secret of northern Europe and is well worth a German airline ticket.

If you travel throughout Germany, you'll find some things such as train tickets and accommodation cost a little less in the reunified east of the country, where the unemployment rate is much higher than as in the west of Germany. For example, in the northern Baltic state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the unemployment rate was about 20% in mid 2007.

in 2007, unemployment in the east of Germany is more than double the national average.

Much of the money spent since reunification has gone into cities such as Dresden and Potsdam. However, the grey blocks of apartments from communist days still dominate other cities and towns.

Poverty is rife and many eastern centres have been dubbed "ghost towns", hundreds of thousands of their residents flocking west for a better life.

A huge amount of money has been spent to modernise the eastern sector of Germany since reunification in 1990.

Nevertheless, you'll still notice the dilapidated remnants of communist rule and a subtle difference between the people who used to be divided by the Berlin Wall.

It will be a few more years before the two halves of Germany are truly unified.

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