Onion River Exploration Project: Warnemunde, Germany

Inside the Light Tower

Day 18 (8/18/2010) Day 11 Baltic Sea Adventure

For the first time of our adventure, it is raining when we pulled into port at Warnemunde, Germany. Most of the people on the ship are boarding a train to go to Berlin. We just weren’t ready for a three hour train trip. Now with the rain it looks like maybe we made the right decision. Warnemunde is a charming little seaside port. I say little in comparison to most of the other ports that we have gone into. I think we made the right decision by not going to Berlin. Granted, Warnemunde may not have had the historic significance of Berlin but it was a fun town to explore. In spite of a persistent drizzle in the morning we set out to explore the town. On our journey we came across a light tower that you could climb for a nominal fee. From there we were able to kind of plan our morning. It turns out Warnemunde is a favored area for Europeans to take “Holiday” and has a substantial beach area. I am not any expert on beach life but they had something there I had never seen before, little shaded chair huts that fold up into themselves. The beach was covered with them. I couldn’t tell if they were private or public. Warnemunde also had a quaint little harbor area filled with interesting boats and shops. In the afternoon the rain stopped and the character of the town changed. What had been a quaint lazy little berg in the rain of the morning became a bustling tourist town when the sun came out in the afternoon. It was still fun, just different. We went out and did some more exploring then stopped by a local bier garden for the mandatory German Beer. While we were out walking we stopped at a tourist information center and the girl told us that the city was going to have fireworks for our sendoff that evening. So after supper we put on our swimming suits and went up to the hot tub on the top deck and waited for fireworks to start. Although the wait was a little longer than we thought, it was great when they started. We had the best seat in the house.