Thursday, July 16, 2015
Clay was up early and went to the gym. I slept a while
longer but I was up before he came back at 6:30am. We had to be outside of the
Warnemunde Cruise Terminal by 9:15am to meet our Friends of Dave Tour. This was
135 Euros pp for a full day tour to Wismar, Schwerin and Warnemunde. It was a
good day and I can recommend it. So we went to Terrace for breakfast and then
back to the cabin to prepare. I put on sunscreen today since for the first time
in days there was no rain predicted and I have burned some over the last 3 days
without it since it was supposed to have rained. Oh, I am happy to report that
for the first time on this cruise we docked on our port side! Yeah! The port of
Warnemunde was just as we remembered it. With one exception, the swans had
youngsters that were so grown that they weren’t even fluffy anymore. We didn’t
see any young swans when we were here before.
So, we met Chris, our Friends of Dave guide and by 9:30am
the 14 of us who had showed up voted that we not wait another 15 minutes to see
if the 4 people who had signed up but had not paid their deposits would show
up. They had a full sized bus for us and everyone could have their own row.
Chris set everyone up with headsets and he had a microphone and we set off on
the bus. It was at least a half hour ride to Wismar. It was an old medieval
town with some destroyed churches. One just had a tower remaining and it was a
museum to medieval church construction in Germany. It was originally damaged by
British bombs at the end of WWII, but in 1960 it was blown up by the DDR. This
area is the German state of Mecklenburg and it was formerly in East Germany and
behind the Iron Curtain of the Soviet Bloc. They built a lot with red bricks.
We saw how they were made and then we watched a 12-minute 3-D animated film on
how they constructed such large buildings in the 1100-1200’s. The 2nd destroyed church we saw had
been recently reconstructed and was now in use as a theater. We walked around
for around an hour and then went for a big heavy German lunch. We had seen
menus and heard every option described by Chris on the bus and they were ready
for us. We had a private room at Brauhaus am Lohberg. They are a
brewery/restaurant. The food was good and hearty. Maybe too hearty for the hot
day and fairly early lunch. I had goulash and a huge glass of Riesling. Clay
had a big dark beer and a small Pilsner. He preferred the dark. He had a dish
that was a pork rib with the bone removed and stuffed with fruit and then
cooked. He liked it. I don’t know what it was called. There was a good
selection and we could have selected from the light appetite menu, but we didn’t.
We had about 20 minutes of free time
after lunch. We looked for a patch and bought Clay a very delicious ice cream
cone down the block. We walked by the deep harbor to where the bus had moved.
We drove about an hour for everyone to have nap time and to get to Schwerin. I
stayed awake and the bus was very hot. Clay slept. In Schwerin, we saw the
castle. It had been seized by the DDR for government use and is now the
Mecklenburg state parliament building. It evidently only has 12-14 rooms open
to the public and Chris said only one of them looked palatial. He said the best
views were from the outside and the gardens. So, we didn’t enter. We walked all
the way around it and up to the Markt Square of Schwerin. We had an appointment
with a private upstairs room at Café Rontgen. We could order cake and ice cream
or either alone from a pastry case. I had a raspberry mousse cake and Clay had
3 scoops of toasted almond ice cream. They had coffee and water upstairs at
tables for us already. After that we had
almost an hour of free time. Chris gave us each maps of Schwerin and showed us
where we were and that is where we met again later. We went to the Tourism
Information center in the Rathaus and found a Mecklenburg patch for 3 Euros
which we bought. We walked around the big church off the square and through a
grocery store and around a several block area before going back to the main
square to meet back up. Chris led us back to the bus through the old Jewish
Quarter and showed us the restored synagogue and some “stumble blocks” around the
corner. I don’t know if I’ve talked about these before but we’ve seen them in a
number of cities. I remember seeing them as far away as Tromso, Norway. They
are brass blocks set into the sidewalks in front of the homes where Nazis took
people (mostly Jews) from their homes. They list the victims’ names, dates of
birth and death if known as well as where. Some are simply listed as taken as
they were lost after that. His were especially tragic as it was a family of 4. The
mother and father were taken to Auschwitz where they were eventually murdered.
The son was sent to a separate camp where he was eventually murdered and the
daughter was never heard of again after the night the family was taken. She
simply vanished. Chris’ talk about it was very moving. We had more than an hour
drive back to Warnemunde. We stayed awake and spotted deer, cranes, and hawks
from the bus. The bus dropped us off outside the cruise terminal and we said
goodbye to our driver. We could either go to Marina or continue on a 10-15
minute walk with Chris to Warnemunde. Most of us went with Chris. From the
ship, it looks like the train station is directly across the street, but you
can’t get there that way! He walked us past the ferry station right in front of
the ship and down the waterfront until there was a small walkway with a sign
and arrow “Am Bahnhof”. Bahnhof means train station. We walked until we reached
a pedestrian tunnel and took the stairs down, walked through and up on the other
side through the train platform area and crossed a turning bridge to enter
Warnemunde. Tourist Info was straight ahead. He advised us to turn right and walk
along the waterfront to see the lighthouse. We did but avoided going past it
since he said the beach in Warnemunde was nude. Along the way Clay had a
Backfish sandwich. He liked it. Clay also found one of the few penny smashing
machines we’ve found in Europe and we got some 2 cents pieces for him to make
one as a souvenir. We walked back to Marina and got back around 8pm. We went up
to Terrace for the German buffet. I had a bratwurst with sauerkraut and pretzel
roll. Clay ate a salad and finished mine. There was a nice sunset tonight as we
waited to sail. We probably won’t leave early tonight. We have left some of our
ports earlier than posted, I assume because once everyone was back aboard they
just went ahead and sailed. We have a lot of people off to Berlin today though and
they will not be back until the last minute. At least, we were last month when
we were here.
Tomorrow Copenhagen, again. We’ll go it alone and I’m sure
we’ll have a better day than last time.
