Jun 3, 2008, 11:52 GMT
Nordby/Sonderho, Denmark - The blue-and-yellow bus of the number 631 line rumbled leisurely along the shore between Rindby Strand and Fano Bad. It had plenty of room: the firm sand surface on Fano's western coast is more than half a kilometre wide and 15 kilometres long. Swimmers and surfers often drive their cars right up to the water.
Fano, a Danish island in the Wadden Sea - an area of intertidal mud flats along the North Sea coasts of the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark - has more to offer than seaside resorts and water sports. Between its two main towns, Nordby in the north and Sonderho in the south, lies a varied landscape of fields, dunes and small woods that have remained unchanged despite the streams of tourists.
The ferry from the mainland port of Esbjerg, in south-western Jutland, takes about 12 minutes to reach Nordby, where most of Fano's approximately 3,200 inhabitants live. Narrow streets lead down to Nordby's harbour. A nice place to stroll is the town's auto-free shopping street, which is lined with boutiques, arts-and-crafts shops, and ice cream parlours.
The Fano Maritime and Costume Museum, located in an old villa in Nordby that once housed a shipping line association, displays model ships and the islanders' traditional garb. The past reawakens during the Fanniker Days in July, when many women don the old costumes. The dark dresses are festive, and the bonnets are adorned with large, colourful ribbons.
Fano was once impoverished and belonged to the Danish king. Its inhabitants were fishermen or worked the poor soil as tenant farmers. In 1741, the islanders pulled off a major coup after the king put the island up for auction. Fearing that it would fall into the hands of a notorious large landowner, the islanders pooled their savings, bribed the auctioneer, and succeeded in buying their homeland.
As the island's owners, they also acquired shipping and trading rights. Beginning around 1800, Fano saw a strong economic upswing. It boasted Denmark's second-largest merchant fleet in the 19th century. Hundreds of ships were built there. The construction of the steamship port in Esbjerg finally ended Fano's significance.
The island's era of prosperity shines brightest in Sonderho, whose old windmill is visible from afar. Many of the town's buildings have been listed for preservation. Walking along the narrow paths between thatched cottages with lime-washed walls of pink and yellow, visitors quickly get the feeling that they have been transported a century or two back in time.
Lovely little gardens surround the crooked houses, whose gates are often decorated with a figurehead or other maritime ornament. More than a dozen ship models in Sonderho's church attest Fano's era of prominence, when its men sailed the world's seas. There is even a fully furnished house from that era: Hannes Hus.
The modern age begins in the southern part of town. Numerous holiday homes are nestled in the dunes, some modelled on traditional farmers' cottages, others simply bungalows. The beach in the south is rougher and more picturesque than the wide one in the north-west. Amber collectors, their eyes peeled, wander past high dunes. Children play in small, half-buried bunkers, remnants of Hitler's 'Atlantic Wall.'
People who want to go for a swim head to Fano Bad, in the western part of the island. Organized bathing began there around 1870. Twenty years later, fashionable villas were built for visitors from Hamburg, Vienna and St Petersburg. That era ended with the outbreak of World War I, and the turreted hotels fell into a long, deep sleep.
A new hotel was not built until the 1970s. The unsightly block has remained one of a kind, though, because visitors to Fano normally live in a holiday house. The island is now dotted with more than 2,500 such houses, which generally rent for 500 to 1,000 euros (784 to 1,568 dollars) per week during the high season.
The busiest month on the island is June, when the Fano International Kite Festival is held. Some 5,000 kite fliers, as well as numerous spectators, come for the colourful annual event, which starts this year on June 19. For four days, the skies over Fano will belong to kites of many shapes and sizes: inflatable seals and giant salamanders, parasols, and balloons, to name a few.
Visitors not interested in such spectacles can retreat to tranquil areas. A particular gem is the Klitplantage or 'dune plantation.' Covering approximately 1,000 hectares in the centre of the island, the plantings in the meagre soil were begun in 1892 to stop the wind- borne sand. Narrow paths wind through a landscape of gnarled mountain pine as well as birch, beech and oak trees. Hikers can forget for a moment that they are on an island.
Adjoining the plantation to the east is a wildlife reserve enclosing two duck decoys. The islanders used to bag migrating eider and brent geese at these artificial resting places. Today the practice is prohibited, of course. The bog blueberries there may be picked, however.
Bird watchers can enjoy themselves at Gronningen, in northern Fano, an extensive meadowland once used by the island's farmers as pasture for their cows. The area is now a favourite place of peewits, common redshanks, plovers, curlews, and even peregrine falcons.
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