Hanseatic Greifswald: An Afternoon in an Old University City, Greifswald, Germany

Greifswald is a small city in Western Pomerania, located on the Baltic Sea near the German islands of Rügen and Usedom and just 80 km from the Polish border. The city is well known for being a university city; in fact, out of a population of around 60,000, over 11,000 of them are university students! Just like nearby Stralsund, Greifswald was part of the Hanseatic League in the Medieval period, during which the university was founded in 1456, making it the fourth oldest university in Germany and the second oldest university in Northern Europe (after Rostock).

My family and I were on holiday in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, based in the city of Stralsund, when I received a message from an old friend on Instagram. Runa, who I’d met at the Stone Age gathering in Lejre back in 2018, lives in Greifswald and asked if we would like to spend the afternoon seeing her and her beautiful city. I didn’t even know that she lives so close, so it was a lovely surprise!

And so we travelled to Greifswald to meet up with Runa, but we also discovered a beautiful, quaint city well worth exploring. A city I’d never even heard of before! ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).