Down by the sea

Our agenda for today? Eat lunch at a cafe by the Baltic Sea. Mission: Accomplished.

We had a day left on our Eurail pass and a day in Berlin with nothing planned, so we decided to head north to see the Ostsee (Baltic Sea) today. We didn't really know where to go, so we picked out a couple of seaports on a map and looked them up online and managed to find Stralsund, a little port town whose Old City is an UNESCO World Heritage site, so we decided to go there. It was about a 3 hour train ride away, so we set out around 9:30 and got there just in time for lunch. We had no map of the town (this seems to be our M.O.), so we headed in the direction of the big church steeples we'd seen as we came in to town. The Old City is situated on a bit of land surrounded by lakes and an inlet of the Baltic Sea. We found a pedestrian/bike path and bridge out to the old city which led us directly to one of the two remaining gates in the 14th century wall. We walked straight through the center of old town to find the sea and got lunch at a little cafe. I had the daily special which turned out to be fillets of three different kinds of fish (neither I or the waiter could interpret what kinds of fish :)! I didn't realize they were all different, so I filled up on the first kind, which was really good, and I wasn't too sad I didn't have room for the others because they weren't my favorite. The waterfront was undergoing lots of construction for a new events center, so it wasn't exactly peaceful, but mission accomplished :).

After lunch, we had no agenda, only a list of trains returning to Berlin in the evening, so we set out along the waterfront for a while and got away from construction. It turned out to be a really cool old town. It has lots of nordic connections with trade, etc. so it looks quite different from other towns we've seen on this trip. And there aren't too many German port towns, so we were glad to see one :). We found the other remaining town gate and entered through there, finding the Rathaus, St. Nikolai's church, Johanneskloster (an old Franciscan monastery destroyed by the war), a cool shopping district (when the sun came out in the early afternoon, the pedestrian traffic increased dramatically!) and the Marienkirche. Is it just us or does every town in Germany have a Marienkirche? This Marienkirche is just beginning a restoration project, so it was interesting for us to see what these old churches look like before they pour a ton of money into restoring them. It was a huge church. It also had a strange monument just outside the church that we couldn't figure out...there was no plaque left on the monument...at the top was the communist hammer and sicle and below was a relief of a "comrade" shaking hands with a "working man" we think...leftover from the days of East Germany? There were also lots of memorial stones around the church yard with apparently Russian names, all of whom had died in 1945.

As we left the church, we checked our watches and saw that we had about 18 minutes before the next train left for Berlin, so we power-walked to the train station (first hurrying we'd done all day) and made it in plenty of time to by some beverages and snacks, catch the 3:39 train and be back in Berlin for dinner with John and Kristen. Perfect day! The scenery between Berlin and Stralsund was mostly farmland, (including lots of "wind farms" for power) and it could have been scenery from the Midwest except for the very German-looking towns (if you could ignore their "Golden Arches") and the poppies growing wild along the fields. We were wondering if they harvest the poppies along with crops...opium for the cows?

So going back to yesterday...sorry that we're out of order here but I thought I'd start with what was fresh.

Yesterday we slept in a bit, had breakfast all together, and then Kristen took Abbey and I around Berlin a bit to find some souvenirs. We started out at the Kurfursterdamm shopping area, which was mostly worth seeing for the Keiser Wilhelm Memorial Church there. The church was bombed out in 1943 and the congregation elected to leave the ruins of the bell tower. It's now open to the public as a testament to the destruction of war, as well as to the call of Christ to forgive those who have sinned against us. It's a powerful testament indeed.

In the evening, we went to pick up John's sister, Stephanie, at the airport (the one we met in Erfurt). She was returning from a trip to the states. After we'd dropped her off to get some sleep, we all headed to John and Kristen's Tuesday night student gathering. It was so much fun to meet some of their students, share a meal with them, worship with them and visit with them afterwards. Most of them speak excellent English, but they made Kristen translate for them so that she could practice :). Abbey and I were so excited to be able to see this part of John and Kristen's ministry here...what a wonderful community for these Christian students in Berlin!

So we fly to London tomorrow evening. Thus begins our travel home! Hard to believe our time here is almost over. The biggest challenge remaining may be repacking our bags and keeping them under the weight limit. We're not too excited about hefting those again, but it's the home stretch. Literally. I had to laugh today...on the train ride back from Stralsund, it smelled like something was burning and Abbey's response was "Well, if the train's on fire, at least I don't have to heft my bag!"