It took a few years, but I finally made it to Sylt over the weekend. Sylt -- but a slender sliver of a thing, way up in the North Frisian Islands. It's probably the most popular tourist destination in northern Germany, due to its 40 km of unbroken sandy beach, otherworldly dune landscapes and quaint thatched cottages. A train directly from Hamburg will get you there in three hours, concluding with a lovely view of the intertidal Wadden Sea separating the island from the shore. A railroad was built in the 1920s to connect Sylt to the mainland, and while you technically can't drive there, you can easily drive your car onto the double decker car train and remain cozy inside it while you are ferried across, then drive off at the other end and go about your business. Being such a large tourist attraction and hotspot for Wellness in general, there's a lot of money on the island, much of it in the form of very expensive vehicles. This long and skinny sandbar was created naturally and, well, what nature giveth, nature taketh away. The North Sea has been sweeping away its sand, eating away at the little land mass it has, and those who live and vacation there don't think too highly of this habit. Science has stepped in to try and stop the erosion, but permanent island-saving breakthroughs have yet to be made and until that happens, the future of the island remains uncertain.
Now onward ho to sands and skies.
