today we arrive at our first port, warnemunde, germany. it's a cute little touristy town, selling the obligatory keychains and postcards and what not. well, at least it looked like it was. we never made it past the atm machine and the train station to buy tickets to get out of town.

this picture of gavitron and pv reminds me of the time we were in spain buying bus tickets and the ticket agent pulled the shade down (cerrado!) right as we got to the ticket window to comprar our billetes. rejected!


while the rest of the fam (including jano) took the 3 hour train ride to berlin, we waited for the train for the 15 minute train ride to rostock. it was probably one of the hottest days for us on vacation, and there was no air conditioning on the train for us, nor the other part of the fam that went to berlin. perhaps this contributed to the "let me give you some advice" (finger pointing) shellacking that took place on the train-ride back from berlin. i won't go into the details now, but if you really want to know, i'll tell you about it. let me just say that now i know where my anatomy of a breakdown madness comes from.



we took the train and then a bus/tram to neuer markt in rostock. you can't really see the bottom of this sign, but it says, "nazis? no danke."










rostock was a medieval town, and parts of the city wall are still standing. it's quite cool to see things in the city that have been here for hundreds of years.








we were trying to find our way to an old monastery that was converted into a brewery. while wandering through town unsuccessful (we found a brewery, but tours were not available that day), we came across this ad, literally just on the sidewalk. looks refreshing, no?










rostocker bier is the brewery we tried to get a tour of, though, it didn't look like a monastery (at least from the outside). it tastes like other german beers i've had (warsteiner immediately comes to mind).







we walked down Kröpeliner Straße, and ducked into a little courtyard (the name escapes me) for some rostocker.









everytime i've been in germany, the easiest thing to get to eat is the döner kebab. after drinking our share of bier, we headed back out on the main street for some street food. we settled on the doner kebab and some körri braat-wurscht. yum.






chief bro found a wine shop with $5 (USD) bottles of wine. what a deal! we decided to buy the cheap wine and bring it on the dream so that we could drink it in the room and not have to rack up our credit card bill. not until we got back on the boat did we realize our mistake with purchasing wine: when you buy wine outside of the boat, you MUST check it in, and are charged a mandatory $15 (USD) corkage fee for each bottle you bring onboard. so we essentially paid $20 for each of the three bottles we brought back onboard. we were totally hosed and so we came up with an alternate solution on how to drink on board without having to pay the dream's exorbitant prices...stay tuned for more on this.




after many hours of gallavanting around rostock and berlin, we all met up at 9pm to celebrate tony's bday at le bistro, the reservations-only, french restaurant, that costs $15 per head (the only pay restaurant onboard). it was one of the better nights of food for us on the dream. the staff were really great, and when it was time to bring the cake out for tony, the waiter pretended he was going to shove the cake into tony's face. here's a picture of just that, while tony is covering up with the napkin.

Labels: random, travel, wine