The Rose Garden
We docked in Warnemunde just before 7. I woke up about 6, and walked up to the top of the ship where I had a cup of coffee, and watched the process of docking the ship.
After breakfast we took the train into Rostock. The station is just across from the ship, maybe 200 m away. We got an all day ticket for €4.70 each. Once again, no one ever checked that you actually have a ticket once on the train.
This was formerly East Germany, and many of the apartment buildings along the railway were typical period construction, square blocky concrete buildings. There is also a pipeline all along the tracks, I assume a water line, and it is thoroughly decorated with grafitti the whole way, though I doubt that is particularly an indication of anything East German.
The train ticket was also good for the tram into the center of town, so it was a good deal. However, we had trouble finding the tram. We have Rick Steves’ book “Northern European Cruise Ports” and it has been an excellent guide to finding our way in to the cities. If you read it, and follow the directions when he says to go down to track A, you will find the tram. However, we went up to the street expecting to find a streetcar, and that was the wrong way to go.
The Steintor, "Stone Gate"
Our first stop was at the Steintor, the stone gate to the old walled city. Just to the left of this is the rosegarden, and although it was starting to rain, we spent the next half hour looking at the flowers. Along the edges of the garden were trees with a very fragrant white flower that we do not recognise. They are common, as we saw them in other places along the railway tracks.
Rose in the rose garden
Boat in St. Petris Church
From here we walked towards the town center and town square, where farmer merchants were setting up booths to sell food and vegetables. We went on to St. Mary’s Church which was just opening. It is a very large church. During the East German period churches were neglected, but now they are doing restoration work. Since Rostock was heavily bombed in 1942 all the stained glass is gone. The building was not repaired until the 1990’s. Most of the windows were either bricked up, or had clear glass. Hanging from the ceiling at one point was a model of a sailing ship. I thought it was odd, but we saw many more of these model ships in the other churches we went into today. We also went to St. Peter’s church which was open, and has a very tall steeple-tower, though it is of new construction since the original was bombed. St Nikolai’s church isn’t open, and the top part of it was converted into apartments, again during the communist era.
By about 11 am we were hoping to find a restroom. We found them, they are the automated self cleaning toilets, and they cost € .60. Unfortunately at this point we had no euros, so had to find an atm. We went in to one bank and it’s ATM’s seemed only to work with that bank’s cards. We walked around more in the rain until we found another, got some bills, and then were able to get them changed in one of the stores.
An incident happened while we were looking for a bank. It could have been very serious, though not for us. An elderly man, we think at least 75, came up behind us, speaking German, trying to catch our attention. Just as he caught up to us he fell, flat on his face. He had stumbled, catching his toe on the curb. It looked very, very serious as he was sprawled flat out, face down, and not getting up very quickly. He switched into English when Enid said she spoke no German. We were concerned that he was hurt, but he said he was ok, and then told us about the clock in the church. We believe that he must have overheard us wondering about directions (we had mentioned the tourist information office) and he was trying to help us find our way.
By about noon we’d reached the Kropelin Gate, on the west side of the city wall. It is no longer connected to the wall of the city, most of which was demolished post war. However there is still a part of the wall standing, so we walked along it for a way before heading back to the market square for lunch. We bought a bratwurst on a bun — the sausage was twice as long as the bun was — and ate it out in the square, since it had stopped raining. After that we walked around some more looking for a bakery we’d seen earlier with nice looking sweetbuns. We found it, or one that was similar, and had a couple of sweet breads. Our total cost for lunch was only about 8 euros.
Street in Warnemunde
We took the tram back to the train station, and got the train back to Warnemunde. We walked around here for a while as well. Enid was happy as she found a store selling Meissen china. It has very narrow streets with restored buildings. I’m sure it’s main function is to entertain cruise ship passengers, as there were many of them in the streets today. Overall it was a cool, rainy day, but we made out better than most of the cruisers, as we have our gore-tex rain coats and rain pants.
Enid in front of "Legend of the Seas"