Warnemunde and Rostock: Farewell to Germany

June 17, 2013

Our final port in Germany was Warnemunde, a resort town on the Baltic Sea.  Warnemunde is about twelve miles from Rostock, another hanseatic port town.  Truly, the first leg of our cruise involved visits to multiple historic hanseatic ports in Northern Europe.  They have all been different from each other and none looked anything like what I had expected. I suppose I expected villages frozen in time.  The reality is that old buildings have been preserved or rebuilt in cities that have their own present day life and energy.  This is a good thing: otherwise visiting historic sites would be little different from visiting Disney World.

Warnemunde and Rostock had been a part of the former East Germany.  Little recovery from the devastation of WW II took place during the fifty years of Communist rule.  It was apparent that most of the restoration of Rostock and the resort development of Warnemunde have occurred since the reunification of Germany in the 1990's.

Michael and I took a local train from Warnemunde to Rostock early in the morning. Warnemunde is at the end of the local commuter line yet service was excellent with trains every twenty minutes or so.  We did our own walking tour of Rostock and discovered participants in the organized ship's tours at most of the sites we visited.  We used a map obtained from the tourist information center.  It must have been the same one used by the hired tourist guides as we all seemed to be following the sights in number order.  We did have to wait five minutes for the information center to open and used the time to visit the facilities at the local MacDonald's.  Aside from the cultural impact of this "international" restaurant on the local food habits, it is wonderful to find clean, free restrooms almost everywhere in the world.

Michael and I particularly enjoyed the main church with its historic but not functional mechanical clock dating from the 1500's.  We saw two other restored churches, the oldest university on the Baltic, a gate and part of the original wall around the city.  We looked at restored buildings on the main market square and walked on some back streets between the destinations marked on the tourist map.  We gained an appreciation of how well the residents managed to restore their architectural treasures while creating a livable, functional city.  The waterfront had changed the most.  Today pleasure boats fill contemporary marinas.   Rostock's river is not deep enough for large modern ships.  There is some sports fishing but no commerce flows through the small rail station next to the pier.  A few old rail cars are displayed there. The walk, the tram and train rides were a success.

After wandering in Rostock for several hours, Michael and I returned to the Silver Cloud for lunch and a rest.  In the afternoon, we ventured out again to explore Warnemunde, a surprisingly attractive beach resort community.  The temperatures were in the high 60's and the weather was sunny.  I gather that this is considered spectacular beach weather for northern Germany.  Though it is no Riviera, Warnemunde is a popular summer holiday spot. We could see from the sheltered beach chairs that people sit out on the beach in high wind and cool temperatures. Even though it was early in the summer season, there were many people on the beach.  Small crowds were enjoying themselves in the local restaurants and many adults and children were walking on the streets checking out the local shops for the usual tourist souvenirs. Warnemunde has become a European cruise destination but not all of the tourists were from the three cruise ships tied up at its docks that day.  Perhaps some of my positive impression is due to the sunny skies and moderately warm temperature.  Aside from Amsterdam, this had been the only sunny day so far.  Both Rostock and Warnemunde seemed more cheerful as a result.

The Kiel Canal: The Silver Cloud as a Large Riverboat

June 16, 2013

Michael and I spent most of this pleasant Sunday standing on Silver Cloud's upper deck watching the German countryside glide by and snapping photos like crazy.  The Kiel Canal just makes you want to take lots of pictures. The day began with our departure from Hamburg at 8:00 am. I saw the sights on the Elbe River all the way from Hamburg to the mouth of the river 50 miles downstream.

The first few miles or so near Hamburg were industrial.  Major dock complexes, huge cranes, oil refineries and power plants are strung out along the Elbe.  The small airfield with huge hangars and several parked airplanes that apparently is one of the Airbus factories was one of the more interesting sights.  Directly across the river were expensive looking houses overlooked this hardly bucolic view.

Just before our ship reached the mouth of the Elbe, we anchored in the river for a while with the entrance to the Kiel Canal in view awaiting our turn to enter the locks that provide a barrier from the open sea.  The locks are equipped with traffic signals.  A medium sized container ship eventually exited our assigned lock and the lights changed from red to green.  The Silver Cloud slowly moved into the lock, followed by a blue container ship.  Measured in number of ships transiting the canal, the Kiel is the busiest large commercial canal although the tonnage of the ships it can accommodate is less than that of the Suez or Panama Canal.  One hundred ships per day pass through the Kiel. 

At the time of our passage, one of the two western locks where we entered had been closed for maintenance so ships were lined up on both sides waiting their turn.  We observed viewing stands near the lock full of Germans watching the parade. 

Michael and I spent approximately the next seven hours watching the scenery go by.   The first few miles were past power plants, a Bayer Aspirin factory and various construction projects.  Very soon though, we were traveling through rural countryside.  We could hear cows and see people at restaurants and canal crossings watching us. Several hours into the trip, we saw a group of people holding up a sign, jumping up and down and shouting to us.  Michael thought the sign said something like "free Frieda" and wondered what kind of protest it could be.  Shortly thereafter, an excited German man on deck with us asked, "Did you see those people waving?"  He lived near the canal and his friends had made the sign to cheer him on his trip.  He told us he had watched ships on the Kiel Canal for thirty years and always wanted to be in one making the passage from the North Sea to the Baltic.  He and his wife had joined the Silver Cloud for four days from Hamburg to Warnemunde, Germany just to make the canal crossing.  We wished him well. North Germans don't usually get that excited.

At various points along the way there were pump stations, pumping water from land below the level of the canal up into the canal to protect the below sea level land from flooding and incidentally providing the water for the canal.  Shades of Holland.  Much of the farmland in Schleswig-Holstein province near the Kiel Canal is below sea level.  It was a beautiful verdant green with spring crops and pastureland.

The main highlight of the canal crossing for Michael was the appearance of a transporter bridge.  Michael loves transporter bridges.  He thought he knew where all of these remaining turn of the twentieth century curiosities were.  The big ones are in England, Wales, and Spain.  Here, attached to a railway bridge across the Kiel Canal, was a small platform big enough to hold a few cars and pedestrians, suspended on cables from the bridge superstructure.  It made trips across the canal carrying the cars a few feet above the water rather like a suspended ferryboat.

We sat out on deck in daylight until after 10:00 pm watching the Silver Cloud pass through another lock into the Baltic Sea as the sun set ever so slowly in the northwest.  How unique! We spent a day inland on a canal traveling from the North to the Baltic Sea and saving several hundred miles of potentially rough seas around Denmark.

Saturday in Hamburg

June 15, 2013

We had another very early morning arrival as the Silver Cloud motored into Hamburg harbor before 8:00 am having traveled 50 miles up the estuary of the Elbe River while we were sleeping.

Hamburg is Germany's largest seaport.  Miles of the river are lined with large cargo cranes. Container ships and tankers have docks and specialized facilities all along the river.  Silver Cloud docked at the still-under-construction port of Hafen City, and it being Germany we witnessed perhaps the silliest security precautions ever.  The ship's gangway was no more than 500 feet from the shell of a terminal building the Hamburg authorities were using as our cruise terminal.  Another ship, the Deutschland, had docked a few hundred feet further down the pier and its crew and passengers were using a second, completed, terminal building for exit and entry.  Passengers and crew from Silver Cloud were not allowed to walk to our terminal.  We were required to take a small shuttle bus the short 500 feet, then walk through the empty terminal past some guards to board the ship's chartered shuttle bus for the mile or so ride into the center of the city.

Michael and I had considered taking the fast train to Berlin and walk around Germany's capital city.  President Obama had inadvertently foiled that plan by planning his own visit to Berlin two days later.  All the main sights had been shut down for security purposes (Germans take their security seriously), so there was little point to such a trip.  Additionally, Michael was beginning to suffer from a cold and did not feel up to a grand adventure.

A ninety-minute ride on the hop-on, hop-off sightseeing bus seemed a good idea.  The narration was mostly in German with occasional statements in English for our benefit. Our tour guide, a fast-talking young woman, narrated the sights in a most depreciating way.  She made fun of the male pedestrians in the red light district and went on enthusiastically about various kinds of food served in the local restaurants.  It was just as well we only half understood the German narration and she spared us the inane comments and rude jokes in the English version. 

The sights themselves, or at least the selection chosen by the tour bus company, were not as impressive as I expected.  We weren't concerned about the various celebrities who lived or had stayed in the expensive homes by the lake, nor the bankrupt luxury hotel that caused our tour guide much merriment.  We did enjoy seeing the opera houses and public buildings as well as several distinctive neighborhoods. The "Rathouse" or town hall was magnificent.  Hamburg has seven or eight impressive churches that have been rebuilt since World War II, and we saw a small row of houses built originally in hanseatic times and rebuilt many times since.

Hamburg comes across as a thoroughly modern city with some history but not a must see destination.  Most of it was destroyed in the last World War, and the new construction seemed unimaginative.

A Beautiful Day in Amsterdam

June 14, 2013

I woke up and ran to the window only to see the Silver Cloud apparently docked.  We were against a wall with rubber bumpers; I could see brick paving but not much else.  I told Michael that we seemed to have arrived at Amsterdam several hours early.  He told me I was imagining things.  By the time I emerged from the shower, we were motoring slowly upriver (?) through a very industrial part of Holland, no city in sight.  Michael deduced that we must have been in a lock when I first looked outside.

Amsterdam, it turns out, is on the much-modified Amstel River 30 miles from the North Sea.  The Hollanders turned the river into a canal from the city to the North Sea, protected from the tides by a set of locks that keep the seawater mostly out of the river for most of its length.  The name Amsterdam is a corruption of Amstel Dam.  The city was built where the river had been dammed.  There are smaller locks in several places on the canals that ring the old part of Amsterdam. Hydrology is big with the Dutch; the old city is mostly slightly below sea level.

Our ship shared the wharf at the brand new cruise terminal with a much larger Princess ship that was making a "turnaround."  That means one set of passengers were getting off having completed their cruise and another set were coming on-board to begin another cruise.  Consequently, Michael and I had to make our way through a large crowd of people and their luggage to get to the exit into the terminal building and then to the street.  The shore cruise manager told us to "turn left at the cow."  This cryptic instruction became clear when we reached a plastic cow statue.  We probably would otherwise have become lost.

As in so many cities in Northern Europe, the central railway station was within easy walking distance of the cruise terminal.  Michael and I admired the station, got a good tourist map, bought an all day transit pass and headed for the Rijksmuseum, newly re-opened after a ten-year refurbishment.  We looked at paintings by the Dutch Masters (17^th – 18^th century) and the Dutch Impressionists (mid to late 19^th century) influenced by Van Gough.  We saw the Rijksmuseum's Rembrandt masterpiece "The Night Watch" masterfully displayed at the end of a long set of galleries as well as the same Van Gough self-portrait we had seen at the Van Gough exhibit at the Denver Art Museum last winter. Amsterdam's Rijkmuseum is the painting's permanent home.

We walked back to the central railway station passing through a number of distinctive neighborhoods and crossing many canals.  The red light district had many windows in which bored looking women clad only in skimpy underwear beckoned to passing men even at midday.

We were later told that the Russian Mafia controls the legal sex industry and that the women are Russian.  It is possible. Certainly, we heard Russian spoken by many of the young men prowling the neighborhood in small groups.  The red light district is confined to a few blocks; coffee shops (the term for legal marijuana shops) are all over the place.  Since marijuana smoke makes my eyes tear, my nose run and causes me sneezing fits Michael would warn me every few blocks to hold my breath as we passed a weed shop.

Amsterdam is a walkable city.  The weather was pleasant, mostly sunny, little wind and warm. Michael and I took back streets and main thoroughfares.  We admired the flowers, the pretty canal vistas and enjoyed looking at our fellow pedestrians while avoiding the ever present bicyclists.  I noticed that bicycle paths are marked in red brick or concrete all throughout northern Europe and it is advisable to stay off the red portion of the sidewalk.

We had decided to take a canal boat ride and found a good assortment to choose from near the central railway station.  We passed up the Grey Line boats for a local operator.  We had an excellent tour narrated in Dutch and English.  I took more photographs from the canal boat than I did during our walk.  Many of the centuries old historic buildings are still in use as residences and businesses today.  Most of Amsterdam is built on landfill.  The old buildings sit on wooden piles driven into the muddy soil and over time, the buildings have started to sag.  Many lean on a neighboring building.  There appears to be an entire industry devoted to shoring up these old buildings.  The narrow Dutch buildings with their various tall rooflines including a beam for a block and tackle (needed for moving furniture in or out of the upper stories) were most picturesque. A good Dutch beer in a local tavern, another tram ride, a walk to Rembrandt's house and an accidental discovery of Amsterdam's Chinatown finished off our daytime shore adventure.

The Silver Cloud spent the night in Amsterdam, sailing at 8:00 am the next morning.  Michael and I ventured out again after dinner in hopes of seeing the city bridges lit up at night.  We took another tram ride and walked back to the Silver Cloud passing through some different and equally attractive neighborhoods. Even though we stayed out until after ten-thirty pm, it did not become dark enough for the bridges to light up.  Something to do with northern latitudes and the approaching summer solstice.  We will not be seeing Northern Lights this trip; not even a dark nighttime much longer.

Amsterdam is a wonderful city.  I could easily spend days here visiting the museums and strolling the streets.

Antwerp from Antique to Expensive

June 12, 2013

We arrived at Antwerp very early on Wednesday morning.  Silver Cloud sailed 50 miles up the Scheldt River to this originally hanseatic city, now Europes's fifth largest seaport, before Michael and I woke.  We were ashore early.  The city passenger-ship dock is only two blocks from the center of the old town.  We were in the central plaza, the Grote Markt, taking pictures of the Stadt Huis and a fountain commemorating the alleged founding of the city before most residents were up and about.  The legend is that a young hero fought a monster and cut off its hand.  The hand landed at Antwerp, which means severed hand in Flemish, and then the hand became the city and its surrounding canals. Very fanciful.  We walked around a huge gothic cathedral with a very tall spire. 

As we usually do, Michael and I found the central railway station on our map and headed there.  The route led us through the major shopping streets of Antwerp.  The shops resembled those of Fifth Ave., New York but were located in elaborate nineteenth century former palaces and rich residences.

The railway station, another late nineteenth century confection, was a monument to the age of rail travel.  The historic exterior and waiting room complemented a very modern set of elevated platforms.  The station and train sheds were breathtakingly beautiful.

The real highlight of the Antwerp visit was our walk through the diamond district and tour of "Diamondland", a factory and show room open to the public.   A pleasant attendant admitted us through remote controlled sliding glass doors and allowed us to view diamond cutting and diamond setting through plate glass windows.  Following various exhibits on the way diamonds are valued, cut and polished, we were turned loose in the display room filled with showcased of diamond necklaces, earrings and pins.  I told Michael that nothing costing less than eight thousand Euros appealed to me.  Too bad that was over our budget!

The diamond district, only a few blocks in length, was very international.  Antwerp is THE major diamond center in the world and buyers and sellers from all over the world (South Africa, India, Canada and Namibia are the top producers, New York and Amsterdam the top retail centers) gather to trade raw and cut diamonds.  Michael said that he heard at least five dialects of Yiddish spoken on the street.  We passed many Indian restaurants and a few kosher delis.

On our way back to the ship, we stopped to view the castle gatehouse that was the only remaining part of the early city wall.  Further exploration was curtailed because it rained the rest of the afternoon. I would have liked to visit the Rubins House, a museum in the former home of the famous painter but we ran out of time.

The combination of history and modern livability we found in Antwerp was pleasantly surprising.  The buildings around the Grote Markt have been lovingly restored and preserved without making them into tourist shops or kitschy attractions.  Antwerp is a place I would love to return to.