Wanderlusting and Eis-eating in Rügen

The second I stepped on the train, I knew this would be an amazing weekend. I somehow managed to magically get 1st class tickets, which meant that my overnight train accomodations included a bed, a comforter, 2 pillows, free drinks, my own bathroom, and a shower! After arriving in Berlin, I had a bit of time to kill before my train to Stralsund, so I walked around, grabbed a döner, and started missing all the CDS folks that I was with last time I was there :(

Three hours later, I was in Stralsund! Caitlin wasn't due to arrive for another 9 hours, so I locked my bags at the train station, and wandered. Eventually I found the tourist office, where I got a map, but I managed to run into a festival, 2 churches, a Hundertwasser exhibit (just one of my favourite artists ever, nbd) and City Hall before that. I was really impressed - I guess I wasn't expecting much, since at first glance, Stralsund appears to be in the middle of nowhere. However, it is an adorable little place loaded with awesome brick architecture from its Hanseatic days, awesome sea life museums, and Eiscafes. I went to the Meeresmuseum, which I initially thought was a bad choice...until I got to the very top - GIANT sea turtles! And I'm talking massive...maybe a metre across? The picture below shows one of them beside a little kid, and it's pretty close to scale. They were BIG! And turtles are kinda my thing, as lots of you know!


After that, I headed over to the harbour to visit the Ozeaneum, which was voted Europe's Best Museum for 2010! The museum itself to me looks like a combination of the Sydney Opera House, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA. It was pretty impressive, especially the whale exhibit, which included full size models of many types of whales, including the overwhelming blue whale! But the best part was near the end of the tour, when we were given the opportunity to go out onto the roof. The view of the city was fabulous, and we were not alone...a Humbolt penguin habitat was out there too! Oh jeez, they were cute.


As I mentioned, I visited a number of churches - four, to be exact. They were all lovely, at least in some way (all four were at least partially under construction, and one was downright beat up), but I'll talk briefly about St. Nicholas' Church, since it is the oldest in Stralsund, and attached to the Rathaus (which was also gorgeous!). Its construction began in 1234 (that's a pretty cool year!), and it was completed in 1350. Before the Reformation, the church actually had 56 altars, but most have been removed now. The most impressive parts of the church for me were the organ and the astronomical clock. The organ was simple (much more intricate was the organ at the Church of St. Mary), and the clock was very much like the famous clock in Prague.


So now I'll skip forward to when Caitlin arrived! We met up at the train station, and were then supposed to call our couch surfing host, Sandra, to come and pick us up. Turns out that was not as simple as we thought - Caitlin's phone was out of money, and mine didn't work...?! Call failed. Call failed. Call failed. Stupid phone. Anyway, we managed to look up the phone number using the internet on my phone (which was working, go figure), and then we called on a pay phone. Shortly after, we were in Sandra's lovely little apartment, decorated with ornaments from all over the world, with an emphasis on Africa. I loved it! Sandra showed us our room with a big couch and a sleeping mat, handed us a key to the apartment, and said good night. WHAT! That was my reaction anyway. Handing a stranger a key to your apartment? Absolutely amazing. That Couch Surfing organization is a wonderful thing!

Saturday morning we took off fairly early with the maps that Sandra provided, and jumped on the first train to Rügen, which happened to go to Sassnitz - home of the largest harbour on the island, and directly south along the coast from the famous chalk cliffs that were the main reason for our visit. Perfect! Sandra had told us that we could take a little footpath up to the cliffs from Sassnitz, so we went looking for it. And we found it! Or so we thought...

After walking steeply uphill for a while, we found ourselves in the middle of what we took to be the National Park. However, the next thing that we ran into was a clearing containing huge piles of recently chopped logs. Lumberjacks in the National Park? Hmmm. At the next crossroad, we took the path going in the direction of the water; however, we ran out of path quickly, and ended up being those people wandering down the side of the highway. Haha. It was great! We were totally lost, and totally thrilled - this is my kind of trip, and Caitlin's too apparently!


Our little adventure continued when, after finding a REAL path, we stumbled first on an abandoned village, and then a cute B&B with ice cream! JUST what we were craving. Unfortunately, Caitlin's ice cream had a little accident...


We continued walking, and BAM! Suddenly we found what we were looking for: the chalk cliffs! The view was magical, and the further we walked, the better it got. Add a rainbow, some background music, and some swans (oh wait, there were swans!) and you might as well have been standing in a fairy tale. But we couldn't stay there forever; there were other things on the island we wanted to see, and we only had one day. We did, however, decide to get to the base of the cliffs and walk back along the beach. But we couldn't figure out how! Sliding looked like a very tempting possibility, but we saw an elderly couple at the base, and try as I might, I just could not picture them sliding down the side of a cliff on their bumbums. So we kept walking...and found stairs. Surprise!






The view from the bottom was gorgeous too, but the beach was a bit rough - since it was entirely made of broken up rocks, the long walk back was pretty strenuous on our poor footsies. However, the pain quickly went away when we stopped at an Eiscafe on our return to Sassnitz. We were hoping to finally try Spaghettieis, but their machine was broken so we had to settle for chocolate and caramel.


From Sassnitz, we caught a bus to Binz, a beach town further south along the coast. We walked through the town, headed towards a smaller train station where we planned to catch the Rasender Roland to Jagdschloss, which was recommended to us. However, by the time we got on the train, it was nearly 6:30, and we were both feeling a bit antsy, since we had planned to get to the castle at 4:30 or 5 to ensure that it would still be open. But we figured that if they let us buy tickets to the Jagdschloss stop, and they let us get off at the Jagdschloss stop, then the Jagdschloss must be open. We get off. It closed at 6. GAH!

At this point, the train was gone, and it wasn't coming back for an hour, so we decided to walk up to the castle and at least take pictures of the outside. We meandered our way up slowly, killing time by playing with various functions on our cameras. Then we got to the top. And discovered Schlossfest. Naturally, the day that we visited was one of the two days of Binzer Schlossfest, a little medieval festival at the castle involving singing, costumes, delicious food, drinking mead, and fire shows. I'll be honest and say that I never would have actually planned to go to this. But HOLY! We ended up spending almost 3 hours there....it was SO MUCH FUN! Not to mention that I could possibly be in love with one of the musicians. Andd it meant that Jagdschloss was open til 10pm, so we climbed the tower at sunset, and had a stunning view of a massive portion of Rügen. Fabulous.




It seemed like everything was going our way, and the day could not possibly get any better. The festival started shutting down for the night (to begin at 10am the next day! We seriously considered going back...), so we headed back down the hill to catch the last trip of Rasender Roland. We got off, and walked back to the main train station to head back to Stralsund. We arrived....and the train station was locked with all the lights off. What? I've never actually seen a closed train station here. Neither of us had! But of course, small town Germany (on a little island in the Baltic Sea) does not have trains passing through at all hours of the night. Duh...

So we were stuck. We considered walking, but we were a good 40+ kilometres away from Stralsund. We thought we might get luckier with buses, but there was only a bus to Bergen. Bergen is the biggest city on the island, and approximately halfway between Binz and Stralsund, so if nothing else, it would cut our trip in half. We arrived in Bergen...and the train station was closed too. Next train: 4:30am. Current time: around midnight. Scheisse.

We wandered. We had wandered all day, so we figured we might as well keep it up to kill time and keep warm. We were chatting about various things, about what we thought kids did here for fun, what we thought.....OMG A TAXI! Caitlin pointed, and the driver saw, slowed down, and pointed back. Haha. He gave us a bit of a deal because it was the middle of the night, and we were going a long way anyway. A warm car, cookies from the vending machine at Bergen's train station, and a bit of music...next thing you know, we're in Stralsund, circa 1am! So what did we do? We played with our cameras again, trying to take pictures of the churches all lit up at night. My camera sucks.


We did, at some point, decide to head back to Sandra's and hit the pillow. Since we both had trains in the afternoon, we opted to sleep in and then go find some Spaghettieis before heading home. It was lovely...and then it was goodbye time. :( Good thing Caitlin and I go to the same school, and we get to see each other in a month-ish anyway :)


And alas, my adventure was still not over! I had 3 connections on the way back: Stralsund-Hamburg-Mannheim-Saarbrücken. My Stralsund train was late, and I missed my connection in Hamburg. New tickets put me on a train to Frankfurt instead of Mannheim, and this train was so late that by the time my train from Frankfurt to Saarbrücken was supposed to leave, I was still in Hamburg. So I got new tickets again, this time to Mannheim again. And I was not surprised at all to discover that this train was late too. Now it's 12:30am, and I'm stuck in Mannheim with about 12 people trying to get to the Saarbrücken area, and no more trains. As it was Deutsche Bahn's fault, they paid for taxis to take us to Saarbrücken Hauptbahnhof - over an hour's drive! But I made it back. 13 minutes after the last S-Bahn. AHHHHH!!! At this point, I didn't really want to take another taxi, so I just walked, and I got in around 1:30...not too shabby!

The best part of this whole....debacle....was that my 1st class tickets also gave me access to the DB Lounge, which contained comfy couches, TVs, drinks, and free ice cream! And because of this, I honestly found the whole delayed train situation completely hilarious. The DB people probably thought I was bonkers, but I don't mind.

What a wonderful weekend.


RANDOM GERMAN FACT: I find it quite funny that Germans curse in English, while I curse in German. I guess it's not as bad when it's in a foreign language!