Black Dot Day

 

Exploring days are called "Black Dot Days" here at the aquahaus.   They're days where we go see something new and then, when we get home, we put our black sticker dots on the giant map of Germany in the living room.  It's pretty much the most exciting thing we do.

So, for our anniversary yesterday, Paul planned a coastal train ride on this 125 year old original steam engine. I saw them shoveling the coal!  COAL!  They really used it!  And the train actually made that Ch-ch-ch-ch-Woooo-Wooo sound!  

My favorite part was when we went through a little street in a village and everyone on the sidewalks were taking pictures and waving.  You just can't help but smile and wave back--maybe like the Queen of England, even.

We rode it out to hike around Heiligendamm, the first German bath resort (founded in 1785).  With everything painted a bright white, right on the beach, and isolated in a forest, I could understand how this started that craze for German baths we read about in all those regency novels (So-and-so is ill and has gone to Germany to take the water, etc. etc.).

Riding the train home, we stopped in Bad Doberan to see the best preserved example of brick Gothic architecture.  Luckily, Bad Doberan was never bombed in the wars and the monastery lands around the minster were kept intact so the church stood in beautiful fields and parkland at the base of a tree-covered hill.

The inside made this the winner of all the churches we've seen in northern Germany, especially since so much of the decorations and so many of the windows were original from 1300.

And if that wasn't enough, we saw some 14th century tombs for the queen of Denmark, the king and queen of Sweden, and this insaaaaane baroque tomb of the Duke of Mecklenburg with life-sized mannequin-like statues of them standing on their rebuilt palace porch.

Yeup.

It was like a giant "BOO-YA" from the past.

I mean, right?

Schlossing in Mecklenburg

There are three major palaces (or Schloesser) in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and we've had a goal for a year now to go to see them all.

First, there was the fairy-tale palace of Schwerin in October last year...

With its lakeside orangerie...

and Rapunzel tower...

Then, in May, we went to see Gustrow's "Manly" Schloss...

With its banqueting hall decked out with fake-deer/real-antlers...

...And Italian-style arcades.

And finally, last week, we checked off the third Mecklenburg schloss, about a two-hour bus ride away in Ludwigslust.

It definitely had a much more...British?...look about it (reminded me of Churchill's Blenheim Palace).  

Where Schwerin won for fairy-tale prettiness and Gustrow for manly-antler-decor, Ludwigslust definitely won for its gardens.  

Acres and acres of what used to be the Duke of Mecklenburg's hunting park...

But eventually, over centuries, made into a beautiful example of English gardening, with trick fountains...

...and long walks through carefully manicured "wilderness."

Around lunchtime, we wandered through the forests, exploring grottoes and chapels and hiking paths and various mausoleums (daughter of the Tsar?  Didn't expect that one.), and we found a small restaurant in what used to be the Duchess' country-style, thatched-roof getaway cottage.  

Sitting with this view, across a wide meadow, with a bowl of Mecklenburger Potato-Plum soup might have made Ludwigslust's schloss my favorite of the three.

But, then again, looking through these pictures...I'm not quite sure which one I love the most anymore.

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.  

*****

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.  

****

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!

****

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.