tourism
The North Sea coast is getting ready for the season
A man and a woman walk along a dike on the North Sea: Preparations for the season are underway on Lower Saxony’s North Sea coast. photo
© Frank Molter/dpa
The holiday resorts on the North Sea coast are waking up from hibernation: shortly before Easter the first beach chairs come to the water. For the beach workers, the start of the season is a small feat of strength.
Shortly before Easter, holiday resorts in Lower Saxony are busy North Sea coast ready for the start of the beach chair season. In Norddeich, East Frisia, the first 300 of a total of around 700 beach chairs are being brought from winter storage to the beach these days.
“Now things are really getting started,” said Inga Graber, marketing manager of the Norden-Norddeich tourism service. After the Easter holidays have already begun in Lower Saxony, the coast is preparing for a wave of holidaymakers with the start of the holidays in many other federal states this weekend.
For the beach workers, the start of the season in Norddeich is also a feat of strength: the heavy beach furniture is transported from the warehouse to the water’s edge by transporter and wheel loader. The conventional beach chairs as well as sleeping, lounge and dog beach chairs then have to be brought into position using muscle strength. Play equipment, benches, trash cans and other baskets will be gradually set up in April.
“It didn’t take two minutes before the first guests were already sitting in the baskets that had been set up,” said beach worker Christian Striek. Even northern German bad weather with light drizzle hardly deters the first Easter vacationers from visiting the beach. Tourism experts are hoping for friendlier weather for Easter.
The first beach chairs are also coming to the water these days in other East Frisian coastal towns such as Carolinensiel. “We would also like to rent out the baskets for Easter,” said Marcus Harazim, marketing manager for the North Sea resort of Carolinensiel-Harlesiel. Elsewhere, holidaymakers still have to be patient – in Cuxhaven, for example. “Sand is still distributed on the beach around Easter,” said Marcel Kolbenstetter, press spokesman for the city. A lot of it was removed during the storm surge season.