We have travelled north again, following those well-travelled routes through the pine trees and past the lakes that have taken us back and forth to the Baltic shore over the past couple of years. Our destination is Koserow on Usedom and this time we are travelling with friends, here for a week to make a short film that will be a companion piece for my upcoming book about this coastline and the stories it can tell. It is fitting that we have come to Koserow, because it was here that the idea for the Ghosts on the Shore came to me. It was during the easter holidays and I had two books with me. One was Europe by Jan Morris. The other was Marshland by Gareth E. Rees.

Sitting in an old GDR-era dacha at the foot of the Streckelsberg with its ivy-clad beech trees and legends of witches and gluttonous cities lost to the waves, I sat one night with some beer and whiskey and wrote down an idea for an essay or maybe something longer that would tell some of the stories of the German Baltic between the old inner-German border to the west and the line in the sand that divides Germany and Poland to the east. Marshland inspired me because it suggested to me that there are many ways to tell the stories of place. Jan Morris provided me with a quote:

The Baltic she wrote, is the most ominous and eerie of Europe’s waters.

Why is that? I scribbled it down on my notebook. To answer that question became the starting point for my own explorations. The next day I talked to Katrin about the idea, about her own family history that would become a central part of what I wanted to write.

That was nearly three years ago and now the book is finished, to be published by Influx Press – just like Marshland – in June. Over this week we have returned to some of the places I travelled to for the book, to create this visual companion. We have talked a lot about the stories of this shore, of previous visits, of memory and legends. We have been to the beach and the town, the frozen inland sea and to the top of the Streckelsberg. And once again I have been captured by the melancholy beauty of this part of the world. It is amazing what can happen, given four days in a cabin by the woods, a couple of good books, and the time and space for a few drinks and a lot of conversation.

Ghosts on the Shore: Travels along the German Baltic coast will be published by Influx Press in June, and you can already order your copy via their website now.