There are those hiking trails where time seems to stand still for a moment. The Hochuferweg along the steep north coast of the island of Rügen is one of those. A day trip full of chalk cliffs, ancient beech forests, seascapes and the feeling of walking at the end of the world – and it all starts at the ‘end of the line’… station Sassnitz on the Ostsee island of Rügen.

If you take the train from Spiez in Switzerland into the Simmental, you are not just travelling through a valley, but through a small chapter of Swiss railway history. First, the line takes you through the green Simmental to Zweisimmen, where you change to a charming narrow-gauge railway. This takes you further every hour past cosy wooden chalets, cows with bells and the babbling Simme, towards the final station Lenk, below the imposing Wildstrubel.

Along sun-drenched wine terraces, colourful paths full of flowers and herbs and an endless Mediterranean Sea runs one of the most impressive hiking routes in Europe – not only for its scenery, but especially for its story. The Chemin Walter Benjamin is a former escape route through the Pyrenees, used by countless refugees to flee Nazi-occupied Europe. Among them was the German-Jewish thinker Walter Benjamin, whose name this route bears today.