Mecklenburg/Pomeranian Summer

First, I'm just going to get it out there since you may be wondering from that title.  Yes, we live in the place where these dogs were first bred.  Yes.  Trot that fact out at your next cocktail party to impress people.

And now for a break from our snail's-pace recap of Italy (which happened, I know, five months ago).  Believe it or not, we've actually been doing other things this summer-- more specifically in our particular German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.

For example, we went to the beach a few weeks ago.

We laid on our towels and read cheap paperback novels we checked out from the three shelves of English books at the library.  We ate a picnic lunch.  We got in the Baltic Sea up to our chins and paddled around a bit through schools of tiny fish and quite a few moon jellies.  Poked a few of those, just to see if Paul was telling the truth about them not being able to sting people (he was right).  Got a little sunburned (what?  miracle.)  And saw naked people.

So, all in all, a successful visit to a European beach, I'd say.  

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Way back in May, we took a twenty-minute train to the nearby city of Gustrow--honestly, just for kicks and the sake of exploration.  

And, as you may remember, this trip and, more specifically, our visit to the Gustrow Cathedral (above)  resulted in our media fame.  By the by, this cathedral may be one of my favorites we've seen in Germany.  It was darker inside since most of the stained glass was still intact (Gustrow wasn't really a WWII target, thank goodness).  When we were there it was decked out with huge, leafy and flowering tree branches decorating the walls and altar which just made all the greens and maroons and navy blues and golds look gorgeous.  

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On another whim, we went to a small coastal city, nearer to Poland, named Greifswald, taking a post-it note suggestion from our giant map of Germany.  The northeast coast is the only place we've seen church steeples with this awesome dome-ish top.  It reminds me of the Christmas tree star we had when I was growing up.  They're probably related, what with Germany's monopoly on all things Tannenbaum. 

The church also had these hilarious paintings of bodies that connected to wood-sculpted heads on column capitals.  Way to be creative, medieval people!  

And, though the marketplace had...questionable...Italian food, it was typically adorable.  

What we really wanted to find, though, were the ruins of the 11th century monastery which founded Greifswald (which means "Griffin Forest").  Story goes that there were a bunch of monks looking for a place to build and then a Griffin jumped out at them, probably growled a bit (I like to think in a friendly, mythical way--not unlike a larger, more terrifying Lassie), and led them to this place.

It was really cool.  No griffins...

...but totally had a windmill!

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Finally, we used the last sunny day of the year (out of...5) to go up our most-beloved neighborhood Petrikirche's tower and get a view over our old-city and beyond.

 Pretty Rostock...man, we're going to be sad to move away...

We went on another summer adventure yesterday in a slightly further afield part of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, but it was so cool that it will get it's own post later.  As a teaser though, it involved marshmallow fluff.