Warnemunde, Germany
Warnemunde, Germany Saturday, May 21, 2022
At yet another mouth “munde” of
another river that feeds into the Baltic Sea is another charming town where,
today we had signed up for a tour that would drive us outside the resort beach
city and into the countryside, but it didn’t leave til afternoon, so we
breakfasted, typed, then left the room by 10:30 so our stewards could
clean. Found a map just outside the bus
and took off to explore on a cool Saturday morning. Since it was Saturday, markets were set up
and locals were out buying at the fish market or purchasing ready-made salads
or smoked fish sandwiches and eating while walking and browsing. We enjoyed seeing local life for ourselves,
wandering, then returning to the ship to relax and prepare for the afternoon.
We boarded our bus by 1:30ish (there were two buses on this
trip), had a great guide Cornelia, who helped us with history and such as we
drove to Bad Doberan (translated “Good Bath”) , another resort town in the same
municipality. The bus temp read 11
degrees Celsius—about 58 degrees. Saw
houses—some with thatched roofs that last (with good materials) up to 100
years. But the reeds are mostly grown in
Russia, so the future of these roofs is uncertain—besides the astronomical
amount paid for fire insurance.
From here, it’s about 250 km to
Berlin and 250 km to Hamburg. Today we
would be traversing part of Mecklenburg state which is the biggest of Germany’s
states but has the least population at 1.6 million. Lots of green, meadows, forests,
and schwiebagartens: allotments offered to people who wish to grown their own
produce. This area was part of East Germany before the wall went down. “Now, the choice is more,” she said. It
rained while we drove the countryside, the first since February for them, so farmers
were grateful. She lectured a bit on the
bus while we waited for the heaviest of the rain to stop.
The rain let up, the sun began to tempt, so we disembarked the bus in awe of the 13th century Cistercian abbey church in front of us. Bright red bricks with decorations, flying buttresses. Lovely. Gothic brick architecture.
Walked through the tall wooden double doors and prepared to once again be awed. Tall, long, and a bit different than most of the opulent Catholic structures we’d seen thus far. At least two reasons for this: having begun in 1171, this church had changed ownership countless times, but most importantly as a result of the reformation in 1552 when the abbey was dissolved. After this, it served as a burial site for nobility as well as a place of worship for the Evangelical Lutheran congregation. Secondly, the Cistercian monks were workers and prayers; those who worked worshiped 3 times per day. Those who prayed did so 9 times a day. This church touts that it has more original structure than any other of its kind in Europe: 80%. It also has the oldest wing-altar in art history, the monumental cross altar, and a sculpted tomb that I don’t think we photographed. There are two main altars; the pews faced each other for Gregorian chants. The foundation itself is 5 m deep because it is set on mushy ground.
Next on our tour was to ride on a narrow gauge steam railroad (begun in 1886) for about 25 minutes to arrive at another resort town called Kuhlungsborn (literally, a forested area).
It was sunny by now, windy, but many many people were already there, enjoying a weekend on the sea. We ambled over to the coastline and enjoyed seeing families playing in the sand as the waves roared in. We had an hour to ourselves, so we walked both sides of a long street of shops that had spilled out their clothing onto the sidewalks and had great sales. Home In 6 weeks or so, so not so interested In adding to our suitcases.
The bus picked us up, retraced the
train route, then back towards the ship.
This is when we learned that the driver was new, not from Germany(they
have a worker shortage) and that he can’t speak German so our guide needed to
give directions to him in English. This
proved difficult for her as she is used to giving the directions to drivers in
German. She tried to tell him what to do
in German even though she was doing the whole tour in English and it created a
slight detour for us as the driver turned early off a traffic circle and we had
a ten minute unscheduled detour. I can
relate to her mistake. Violin music is
written in Treble Clef. I have played in
treble clef since I started playing violin.
When I play viola music on my violin I read in Alto clef with no problem—until
they write the viola music in treble clef which sometimes happens in the middle
of a piece. I almost always am lost at that transition
moment even though I am now supposed to be doing what I have always done on my
violin. No harm done on the detour, and as
our tour guide improvised, we got to see what a German gas station looked
like. Once back on track we made no more
detours and were dropped back at our ship. Nice day!!!
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