Bergen sits at the middle of Rügen, Germany's biggest island, on a low hill called the Rugard where a Slavic stronghold once stood. The Slavs, the Rani, ruled the island until the Danes took it in 1168, and the small hill-top fort fell to King Valdemar's men, who then converted the people by force. A short walk from the market square you find St Mary's church, one of the oldest on the island, built in brick in the twelfth century, with a plain, sturdy shape and a few faded medieval paintings inside. A tower on the Rugard, named after the writer Ernst Moritz Arndt, gives a view across the island.
With about fifteen thousand people, Bergen is the island's main town and has fuel, supermarkets and the other services that the villages lack. It is not a resort, which is part of its appeal: it is a working market town, a bit grey in the Eastern German way, with solid streets and a pleasant pedestrian zone. Visitors going to the seaside resorts pass through without stopping, so you can have a coffee in peace.
The riding on Rügen is a pleasure of a quiet kind. The roads are flat or gently rolling, often lined with old avenues of lime and chestnut trees whose branches meet overhead, and the whole island has a luminous, low-lying light, with the sea often visible at the end of a field. The famous chalk cliffs of Jasmund, with the Königsstuhl, lie to the northeast, and the white, tree-crowned cliffs, which inspired Caspar David Friedrich, are best seen from the beach path. Putbus, to the south, is a classicist town of white houses built for a prince, with a small steam railway nearby nicknamed the Raging Roland.
Summer is busy, and the roads fill with holiday traffic, bicycles and slow campers, so if you can, come in late spring or September. The wind is constant, and the weather is changeable, with sudden showers coming off the Baltic. Local food is fish: smoked herring, pan-fried flounder and the ubiquitous fish roll, along with sea buckthorn juice and liqueur, tart and orange. The bridge across the Strelasund will bring you back to the mainland, and the island will stay in your mind.