Adventures of Wes and Laura

The Baltic

Friday night we went to a party in an atypically enormous apartment that had been remodeled from an old factory in the Kreuzberg district (near where we lived our first week), with six bedrooms (it was a Wohngemeinschaft or group house) and a common area big enough for 50 people to mill around in. The host was a Mexican-French woman who worked with Laura at GoBI, and she had a bunch of Latin American friends so it was a nice mix of people for us and there was more dancing than what you would usu. find at a German party, I think. We talked for a while with two Germans who work at the Potsdam Climate Institute (one of Europe's leading climate change research centers) and later spoke with an older (60's?) Iranian woman, who I would have never expected to be at a party like that, but was an entomologist (insects) who worked at the Museum of Natural History here in Berlin and had gotten her PhD from Univ. of Maryland years ago.

Saturday we woke up early and took a train directly north to Stralsund, an old medieval trading city on the Baltic Sea. I'm on the top of the Church of Mary looking out over the city in the picture. We spent the afternoon there before heading across to the Ruegen peninsula, which like Denmark, but much smaller, juts out into the Baltic Sea. We spent the night at a guesthouse (people rent commonly rent rooms in homes or separate houses for vacationers) in Sassnitz and enjoyed a huge seafood meal at a well-regarding restaurant by the wharf. Sassnitz is right next to National Park Jasmund where we hiked 10km the next morning on a forested trail just above stunning white cliffs and a still Baltic (see Laura in front of the cliffs). The picture shows the fog which rolled in and out while we were hiking. We were beat after a difficult hike and took the bus back to Sassnitz before heading to a beach town on the peninsula called Binz. We walked the Strandpromenade (beach promenade), a cafe and victorian-style hotel lined street just above the beach, and spend some time on the beach (see picture) before heading back to the train station. Our train didn't come but we found out in the information office that they were dont repair work on the tracks and we had to take a bus back to Stralsund and then a late train back to Berlin that night.

We have today (Tuesday) off because its the day Germans celebrate their re-unification. They dont seem to make as big of a deal of it like we do with July 4, but were taking it easy and planning a big dinner.

posted by Wes and Laura @ 10/03/2006 08:30:00 AM