The bathtub of Berlin: soaking it up on Germany’s sunniest island

Off the beach, villas ornate enough for a king; on the beach, fish-smoking huts offering delicious platefuls. Welcome to Usedom, an isle of delights

In whitewashed Strandkorbs, families huddle together, enjoying the last of the warmth from the faltering autumnal sun on their upturned faces. These striped beach baskets, some owned, others rented, are dotted along large expanses of windswept sands that seep into the inky Baltic sea.

The island of Usedom in Pomerania, surrounded by forests of beech trees, is known by some as the “bathtub of Berlin” and by others, slightly more poetically, as “sun island”. Dietrich Gildenhaar, a local author and guide, tells me that the island, north of the Szczecin lagoon in the huge Oder estuary, has been a luxury tourist destination since the Gründerzeit (Germany’s mid-19th-century economic boom), having been crowned one of the country’s sunniest places in Germany, with an annual average of more than 1,900 hours of sunshine. It is in two halves, the west side belonging to Germany and the eastern part to Poland, and has some of the region’s best beaches, with designated strips of sand for dogs and other sections reserved for nudists partaking in Freikörperkultur or “free body culture”.