Ostseebad Binz station

Binz is the largest seaside resort city on the German island of Rügen. It is situated between the bay of Prorer Wiek and the Schmachter See (a lake) in the southeast of the island. To the north of Binz stretches the Schmale Heide (the "narrow heath"), a tongue of land which joins the Muttland region of Rügen to the Jasmund peninsula. The land to the south and east of Binz is hilly, reaching a height of over 100 metres above sea level. Binz is known for its well-kept historical resort architecture and natural scenery, close to the Jasmund National Park and its chalk cliffs.

Schmachter See is a lake near Binz on the German Baltic Sea island of Rügen. It lies within the county of Vorpommern-Rügen in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It has an elevation of 1.1 metres above sea level and its surface area is 1.18 km2. It is part of the Schmachter See and Fangerien Nature Reserve. The lake has its origins in the Ice Age. At the end of the glacial period there was an ice front here. Today the lake has an area of about 118 hectares. Before about 14,000 years ago the lake, which was then still part of the Baltic Sea, had a depth of up to 15 metres. About 5,000 years ago the waterbody was cut off from the Baltic by the bar of the Schmale Heide. Its only link to the Baltic is the drainage ditch of the Ahlbeck stream. As a result of natural silting-up processes it is today a shallow lake. In the centre it has a depth of only one to two metres. In addition the lake has lost a lot of its former area. Originally it purportedly reached as far south as Nistelitz. The name of the lake comes from the settlement of Schmacht to the southwest, but which no longer lies on the lake shore. The Ahlbeck, which drains the lake into the Baltic Sea, was canalised in the 1950s. The mouth of the pipe or ditch is located on the beach of Binzer Strand and is marked by an information sign. A variety of animal and plant species live on the lake and, including 40 species on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. For example, the bittern reed warbler greylag goose, goosander, smew white-tailed eagle and osprey occur here. The shores of the lake are mainly covered in beech woods. At the foot of the slopes are seepage springs. Close to the lake are alder carrs and marshes. The shore itself is mainly fringed by reeds and quaking bog vegetation. At the northern end the lake is the village of Binz. Here, there is a promenade and the "Park of Senses" (Park der Sinne).

The Schmachter See and Fangerien Nature Reserve (German: Naturschutzgebiet Schmachter See und Fangerien) is a nature reserve in the German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and covers an area of 262 hectares. It was placed under conservation protection on 7 December 1994 with the goal of preserving and cultivating a section of the East Rügen hill country together with a silted lake and adjacent wet meadows, bogs and woods. The lake of Schmachter See lies immediately southwest of Binz. The village of Schmacht that lent the lake its name lies near the western shore of the lake. The nature reserve borders to the south on the parish of Serams and the B 196 federal road. The Fangerien is a beech wood on the northwestern shore of the lake. The condition of the woods is graded as "good". The poor state of the Schmachter See was improved as part of a major conservation project, the East Rügen Bodden Country (Ostrügensche Boddenlandschaft), which implemented re-naturalisation measures.

The Rügen narrow-gauge railway (German: Rügensche Bäderbahn, formerly Rügensche Kleinbahn or RüKB) – nicknamed Rasender Roland ("Raging Roland") – is a steam-powered narrow-gauge railway that runs from Putbus by way of Binz, Sellin, and Baabe to Göhren on the island of Rügen off the Baltic Coast in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. Since 2008, it has been run by the Eisenbahn-Bau- und Betriebsgesellschaft Pressnitztalbahn mbH. There is an interchange with the island's Deutsche Bahn mainline network via the Veolia-run OLA railways. The Rasender Roland is one of the island's tourist attractions. It serves several holiday destinations, mainly the bathing resorts in Rügen's southeast. The railway runs regularly along a stretch of 24 km (14.5 mi.) of track with historic steam locomotives and coaches, some of which are almost a hundred years old. Unlike the Deutsche Bahn national system which uses 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge, Rasender Roland uses the narrow gauge of 750 mm (2 ft 5+1⁄2 in). The maximum speed is 30 kilometres per hour (19 mph).

Prora Ost (German: Bahnhof Prora Ost) is a railway station in the town of Prora, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. The station lies on the Lietzow-Binz railway. The train services are operated by Ostdeutsche Eisenbahn GmbH.

The Southeast Rügen Biosphere Reserve (German: Biosphärenreservat Südost-Rügen) is a biosphere reserve in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which covers the southeastern part of the island of Rügen (including Granitz and Mönchgut), the lagoon of Rügischer Bodden between Putbus and Thiessow, the outer coast between Thiessow and Binz and the island of Vilm. In the biosphere reserve all the classic landscape and coastal features of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern littoral are found within one small area. The land is deeply indented here by the sea. One the one hand, peninsulas and coastal headlands are linked by narrow strips of land, on the other side they are separated by lagoons known as boddens and open bays called Wieken locally. There are fine-sanded beaches and rugged cliffed coastlines, at the foot of which are impressive rocky beaches. Broad belts of reed girdle the shores. Beech woods or poor grasslands are found on the sites of terminal moraines and meadows and pastures in the depressions formed after the Ice Ages. Cultural features include megalithic tombs of the New Stone Age, Bronze Age tumuli, medieval churches and village layouts, and the resort architecture of the Modern Era. It was made a biosphere reserve in 1990 as part of the GDR's national park programme. Area: 235 km2 Its variety of species includes its: great importance as a rest and breeding area for migratory birds, mainly various species of goose (greylag, bean and greater white-fronted geese) bee species: e. g. furry, apex-furrowed and cone bees; cuckoo and social wasps. colonies of seagrass, red and green algae in the nearshore areas of the Bay of Greifswald that form spawning grounds for Baltic Sea herring.The biosphere reserve has several core zones or total reserves. These include the Schwarzer See in the Granitz as well as the islands of Vilm and parts of the Mönchgut and Zicker peninsulas.

Granitz Hunting Lodge (German: Jagdschloss Granitz) is located on the German island of Rügen in the vicinity of the seaside resort of Binz. With over 200,000 visitors per year it is the most popular castle or schloss in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

The Colossus of Prora, commonly known as simply "Prora", is a building complex in the municipality of Binz on the island of Rügen, Germany. It was built by Nazi Germany between 1936 and 1939 as part of the Strength Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude or KdF) project. It consisted of eight identical buildings and was 4.5 km (2.8 mi) in length parallel to the beach, with the surviving structures stretching 3.0 km (1.9 mi). Although the buildings were planned as a holiday resort, construction was not completed and they were not used for this purpose. Prora, as it was known, was however used largely by the Nazi Party for propaganda, with the supposed strength and power displayed in the construction effort of the complex likened by the party to that of themselves. After World War II, the complex found various military uses, first by the Soviet Army, then by the East German Volksarmee, and then by the German Bundeswehr. Today it houses a large youth hostel, a hotel and holiday apartments. The complex has a formal heritage listing as a particularly striking example of Nazi architecture.

The Lancken-Granitz dolmens are a group of seven megalith tombs in the Lancken-Granitz municipality on Rügen, northern Germany. Erected during the middle Neolithic, when they were used by the Funnelbeaker culture, at least some were in use until the early Bronze Age. Three of them are encircled by solitary rocks forming either rectangles or a stone circle, one has a solitary "guardian stone" on its eastern side. The dolmens were constructed from glacial erratic boulders and red sandstone. In part subdivided into up to four compartments as common for the region, one dolmen showed a subdivision into six such compartments, which is an unusually high number. When the tombs were archaeologically assessed in 1969, Stone and Bronze Age funerary goods were retrieved, including flint hatches, stone axes, amber pearls, bronze needles and necklaces as well as an abundance of arrowheads and pottery.

The Oldtimer Museum Rügen (formerly the Rügen Railway and Technology Museum—Eisenbahn & Technik Museum Rügen or ETM) is a German railway museum based on the Baltic Sea island resort of Rügen in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany. It was established in 1994 and is housed in the museum section of the Nazi-built Kraft durch Freude ('strength through joy') building complex at Prora which is a protected monument. In the vicinity of the station, in a 4000 m² hall and in the open air, the following may be visited: Locomotives and other exhibits, especially those of the Deutsche Reichsbahn, but also other railway administrations: DRG Class 03 – no. 03 193 with streamlining made at the Reichsbahnausbesserungswerk Meiningen. The locomotive is now displayed with running number 03 002 DR Class 23.10 – no. 23 1021 (later 35 1021-1) DRG Class 44 – no. 44 397 (later 44 0397-8 when oil-fired, 44 2397-6 when coal-fired) DR Class 50.35-37 – no. 50 3703 (rebuilt from 50 877) DR Class 52.80 – no. 52 8190-2 (rebuilt from 52 2887) ÖBB Class 1018 – no. 1018.04 as E18 208 SDZ class P36 - Soviet steam locomotive P36-123 Culemeyer heavy trailer with a Kaelble tractor Steam-driven rotary snow plough Cars (not just East German makes) Lorries Fire engines, e.g. by Magirus Deutz and IFA Tractors

Lancken-Granitz is a municipality in the Vorpommern-Rügen district, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. Near the villages of Lancken and Burtevitz are several megalith tombs from the Neolithic. The Lancken-Granitz municipality consists of the following villages: Lancken-Granitz Blieschow Burtevitz Dummertevitz Garftitz Gobbin Neu Reddevitz Preetz (Rügen) Zarnekow

The Granitz (German pronunciation: [ˈɡʁaːnɪts]) is a wooded ridge in the southeast of Germany's largest island, Rügen, between the Baltic Sea resorts of Binz and Sellin. The woods cover an area of 982 hectares and are designated as a nature reserve. Since 1991 they have been part of the Southeast Rügen Biosphere Reserve. Characteristic of the Granitz are its rich stands of beech and sessile oak and its rolling landscape of push end moraines, which in some ways resemble a mountain landscape. To the north and east the Granitz is bounded by a cliffed coast on the Baltic Sea. In the south it adjoins the Mönchgut region and in the north, the narrow bar of the Schmale Heide. The 23-acre (9.3 ha) Black Lake (Schwarzer See) lies in the Granitz as do several kettle bogs. A number of non-native stands of conifers are being turned into a near-natural forest. No roads of any description run through the Granitz, but there are many cycle and footpaths. Local transport and access to the area is provided by the Rügen Light Railway and Binz Seaside Railway (Binzer Bäderbahn). On the highest point, the Tempelberg (107 m above sea level (NN)), Prince Wilhelm Malte I of Putbus had the Granitz hunting lodge constructed in the 19th century. Other landmarks include Granitz House, the grave site of Finnish warriors and the Cross Oak (Kreuzeiche). The name is probably of Slavic origin and comes from the personal name, Granza, used by the Rani tribe, which first appears as a prince's name in the Saxo Grammaticus in 1168. In 1888, the Waldhalle, a tourist restaurant, was built on the hill of Falkenberg on the clifftop path from Binz to Sellin near the coast. The building had to be abandoned and demolished in the 1980s as a result of coast collapse. Only a few remains of foundations on the cliff face of the Baltic Sea coast recall the existence of the building.