Day to Day with the Dea's: Warnemunde/Rostock, Germany

Today we ported in the little town of Warnemunde, Germany...ahhh...we love Germany!

Unfortunately the rain that was supposed to hit us in Copenhagen yesterday followed us to Germany today. We did get lucky that it didn't dump down rain on us but it was awfully gloomy all day, but it only made the brightly painted buildings pop out even more in the town square of Rostock. It was only a 20 minute train ride from the port to Rostock's train station.

Then we made our way to city centre on the tram. We only headed in the wrong direction for about 3 stops before we finally asked someone who understood where we wanted to head.

We made our way up Kropeliner Strasse in the Altstadt (Old Town) which was a lovely street with colorful houses and nice shops.

Rostock is home to the oldest university in Germany and here in the main university square is the Fountain of Happiness. There do seem to be a happy lot of creatures in this fountain...particularly the naked people behind us.

Addison found a new pair of shoes...and so did Kevin! After the kids fell asleep, we snuck into a shoe store and Kevin bought himself a new pair of Sketchers. We had to be pretty confident that they weren't going to hurt his feet as there wasn't any real way to return them later on.

At the end of the street was the medieval Kropeliner Tor. This Gothic styled tower was one of the former gates to the city and parts of the former wall that surrounded the city can be seen near it.

I really wish I understood something about the German language, but I've found that I can make a decent guess. I think that this incredibly long store name means that this is the University Bookstore.

For a special treat for the kids, they got to eat at McDonald's. I was pretty tempted to try the Nuremburger which was 4 little sausages all laid out on a crusty bun with grilled onions. But why get the fake version when you can get the real thing.

I found a little sausage stand out in the square with some amazing bratwurst loaded with mustard for only 1.50 Euro each.

They tasted so good that I had to have another!!!

St. Mary's Church was quite a site to see. This commanding gothic style church was like none other that we had seen...and we've seen a lot of big churches.

The Marienorgel (organ) dominates the front of the church and was originally built by a local of Rostock back in 1770 and continually worked on until it was finished in 1938. It has over 5700 pipes with the largest measuring eleven metres (32 ft) and the smallest is the size of a cigarette.

The St. Rochus Alter is a side alter in the church which is a shrine to Rochus the patron saint of the Black Death. It was set up in connection with the Black Death epidemic that effected so many in Rostock centuries ago. A friend of mine who visited the church just a few months earlier put it best when she said it looked like something out of a Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

This medieval astronomical clock is the only one of a kind in working condition with its original clockworks. On the top is an apostle go round giving hourly performances. In the middle is a clock with daily time, zodiac, moon phases, and month. On the bottom is a calendar that is valid until 2017.

The renaissance style pulpit is decorated with scenes from the passion of Christ. To get over the poor acoustics in the church, the pulpit was built in the middle of the church to get as close to the congregation as possible.

I loved the tall stained glass windows and this was one of the largest single stained glass windows in all of Europe.

After a nice day in Rostock, we made our way back to Warnemunde to check out our little port city.

The sea comes into the land via this waterway and it was beautifully lined with fishing boats and ships on each side.

Fun boats like this were in the mix selling fresh and fried fish.

Warnemunde has some beautiful beach and I had hoped that we would get to enjoy some of them but the weather was pretty rough. Even after we were almost blown away as we walked down towards the coast, we made our way to the Warnemunde Lighthouse.

Not thinking very much at the time about how windy it was on the ground, I forgot that it gets windier the higher you get up. Even though we sometimes feared for the childrens' lives, we did see some great views. Here we got to see back our path back to the boat and our ship just dominates the skyline.