the starrs: June 2012

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Tallinn, Estonia

I'm going to be real honest - I didn't know Estonia was a country until we signed up for our cruise, and therefore we didn't really know what to expect on our visit to Tallinn. Our guide book was (again) very helpful and informed us about Tallinn's history with Russia as well as providing us with another self-guided walking tour. The city itself was nice and compact, which was great because we got to see so much by just walking around.

We started off in front of the broken black arch, which is a memorial to over 800 people who died on a passenger ferry in 1994 while it was making the trip from Tallinn to Stockholm. Apparently there are conspiracy theorists who believe that Sweden sank it since the boat sank quickly, Sweden never allowed any divers to explore the site, and now there's talk of entombing the ship in concrete leading the conspiracy theorists to believe it was a nuclear-material related incident. I thought that was fascinating since it was a relatively recent event, but with all the technology available then (and today) it seems like it should be possible to excavate and research what actually happened. I guess we'll never know. ;)

Next we saw Fat Margaret Tower, which guarded the entry gate to the town in medieval times, and this leads to Pikk Street which was the merchant's main street during that time period as well. Now it is lined with cool buildings and St Olav's Church. We climbed to the top of the church spire (232 steps very windy and narrow steps!) and got some great views of the city, and the wall that surrounds the city even today. When Tallinn was under Soviet rule, the KGB used the church tower to block the television signals fro Finland - interesting! We kept going down Pikk Street and arrived at the Town Hall Square. It was filled with restaurants, lots of tourists, and supposedly one of the oldest pharmacy's in Europe (I took some pictures for you dad!) dating from 1422. Next we found the Wheel Well which in the 15th and 16th centuries was considered to be "high-tech" and helpful for obtaining water more efficiently.

Next we saw the Russian Cathedral, which was built in 1900. Apparently Estonians don't care for the church because they thought it was an attempt by Russia to flex their "cultural muscles", especially since it faces Tallinn's Parliament building. We walked around to the pink palace across the street from the cathedral, which is the Parliament building, and then on to a viewpoint to take in the city from higher up. Finally we headed back down towards the "Sweater Wall", which really did have tons of (mostly) handmade sweaters and other trinkets. We walked up on top of the city wall and went into two of the twenty-six watchtowers that still exist from medieval times, and then we headed back to the cruise ship!

We thought that Tallinn was an interesting city, especially with it's Russian ties and history, and it was very pretty. It seemed pretty tourist oriented, which makes sense with all of the cruise groups coming through there, but other than the huge crowds we ran into at some of the sites (there were lots of people on actual guided walking tours), it was a very enjoyable day. :)

Thomas in front of the Brocken Arch

Fat Margaret Tower

Gate to Pikk Street

Pikk Street

View from the spire of the church

Thomas and I on top of the church spire - it was awfully tall, and awfully windy!

#18 Pikk Street - very Art Nouveau

Town Hall Square

Painted candies in sweets shop

One of the oldest pharmacies in Europe!

Me and my Estonian friend :)

Wheel Well

Pink Palace - Estonian Parliament building

Russian Orthodox Cathedral

Inside the Russian Orthodox Church

On top of the "Sweater Wall"

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Berlin, Germany

Berlin was almost a no-go for us, but I'm so glad we ended up making it to this beautiful city! On our cruise itinerary the port was listed as Warnemünde (Berlin), Germany, so we figured we would definitely be getting to explore Berlin. Well, we know I'm not so great at geography, and Thomas did try to warn me, but Berlin was a lot further from the port than I anticipated. It also wasn't part of my Scandinavia tour book (which makes sense since it's not in Scandinavia ha), which should've been another clue that this was going to be a little adventure. When we got off the cruise ship we found the train station nearby (yay!), but the ticket machines didn't take our credit cards and we didn't quite have enough Euros to get the tickets to Berlin (nor did we realize at that point how long of a train ride it was going to be). We bought cheap tickets to the closest bigger town (Rostock) hoping to find an ATM and more information there. We made it and then discovered that it was going to be a three hour train ride each way to Berlin. Yikes. It was 10:30am at this point, and we had to be back at the boat at 9:00pm...I was a little wary of spending so much on train tickets when we might have only 5 hours at best in the city, but we had been looking forward to Berlin for so long, so we decided to go for it. I'm SO glad we did - Berlin was amazing. We didn't get to see/do nearly everything we wanted there, but it was a good starting point, and now we know that we could easily spend a weekend there if we decide do go back.

We came out of the central train station in Berlin, which was surprisingly pretty for a train station, and happened to be right next to the Reichstag (which houses Germany's Parliament). We then made our way to the Brandenburg gate, which was one of the places we most wanted to see in Berlin. This was one of the gates along the wall that formerly divided East and West Berlin, and where President Reagan called to tear down the Berlin Wall in 1987. It was very cool to be standing in front of a huge piece of history, and to imagine how life was at that location not too long ago.

Next we stopped for brats (delicious) and wandered down the Unter den Linden, which was beautifully lined with linden trees. We came to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which is a 4.7 acre area covered with 2,711 different sized cement blocks. I'm not sure what (if any) the symbolism is of the cement blocks, but it was a nice memorial site nonetheless. We kept on walking down Unter den Linden, we love to just walk and take in the atmosphere. Thomas found a stein to take home, and we finally got a map so we could find our next destination - Museum Island. This little island was located in the Spree River (I believe it's a world UNESO site) and contains five significant museums along with the Berlin Cathedral. We don't normally explore too many museums, unless they are history oriented, but we did want to go into Pergamon Museum. Unfortunately the line was very long and we were getting a little anxious about catching our train back to the port, so we decided to save it for when we come back to Berlin another time (hopefully!). We did jump over to Checkpoint Charlie before we headed out of the city, which was the best known crossing point from East to West Berlin during the Cold War. Good ol' Wikipedia states that Checkpoint Charlie "...was the only crossing between West Berlin and East Berlin that could be used by Americans and other foreigners, and by members of the Allied forces. The other six checkpoints were for residents of West Berlin or West Germany." It had a nicely done little museum, as well as a piece of the Berlin Wall.

After our last stop we hightailed it back to the train station and caught the earlier train back to Warnemünde. There was a train that left about an hour and a half later than the one we took, but we were a little paranoid about something going wrong and not making it back to the boat on time...we figured it wouldn't be a very nice end to the day if we missed the boat, so we played it safe and made it back with plenty of time to spare. :)

Day 3 was an "At Sea" day, which was a relaxing break from being tourists. We enjoyed all the free food (and unlimited ice cream!), played a lot of basketball ping-pong, and even a little shuffleboard. The weather was decent, but it wasn't quite warm enough to lounge by the pools, so we also spent quite a bit of time reading and watching movies. On to Estonia tomorrow!

Waiting for our train to Berlin!

Berlin's Central Train Station

Reichstag

Cool architecture

Super nice tube station

Thomas in front of the Brandenburg Gate

Delicious brats for lunch :)

Unter den Linden

Wavy buildings

Holocaust Memorial

Berlin Cathedral

Museum Island

Underground entrance...in the middle of the road :)

Checkpoint Charlie

Checkpoint Charlie...and McDonalds

Outside the Checkpoint Charlie Museum

Day at sea!

We played a lot of basketball while we were at sea

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Copenhagen, Denmark

Since we missed spending the holidays/birthdays/anniversary together this year while Thomas was deployed, we put money into our travel fund rather than buying presents for each other...and our reward was a Baltic cruise! We flew into Malmö, Sweden and took the bus across the bridge to start our trip in Copenhagen, Denmark. We got to the city in the late afternoon so we quickly found our hotel, dropped our bags, fueled up with some McDonalds (Thomas likes checking out the McDonald's in different countries) and started a self-guided walking tour from Rick Steves' Scandinavia book. We would've been lost without this book, it was amazing! Thankfully it is light outside so late here now, so we still had plenty of time to explore before the sun went down at 11pm.

We saw Tivoli Gardens (Europe's first public amusement park), City Hall, walked through the Strøget (lots of shopping!), saw the Cathedral of our Lady, and made it to Copenhagen University. Once we got to this part of the city we noticed there were a lot more people in the streets, lots of drinking, and loud bursts of techno music. When we popped into a shop selling all kinds of American sports hats the salesperson told us the street festival "Distortion" was taking place for the next five days. Our walking tour took us right through the heart of this festival, and it was awesome! There was just tons of music, drinking, and although there were so many people it was still a nice atmosphere - everyone was very friendly and not a lot of pushing/shoving. We grabbed a couple of beers and enjoyed the scene!

We kept going on our walking tour and made it to my favorite part of the city, Nyhavn. This is the canal area with all of the colorful houses/shops on either side, and old boats moored all around. Hans Christian Andersen's old house was on one side of the canal also. We kept going out to the harbor, saw the Royal Danish Theatre's Playhouse, and the beautiful Opera House across the way, as well as Amaliehaven Park which led to Amalieborg Palace where Queen Margaret II lives. It was all so picturesque, we were having so much fun just wandering around! We walked through Kastellet Park, where we saw a cute little church and the Gefion Statue. It took us a while (and a stop to ask for directions), but we finally found the Little Mermaid Statue. Our guide book warned that the statue was the "overrated, overfondled, and over photographed symbol of Copenhagen". We saw it, we photographed it (we didn't fondle it though!), and started to head back in the direction of the hotel, with a stop for ice cream along the way. We got quite lost on the way back to the hotel and somehow ended up in the suburbs of Copenhagen, but we eventually made our way back, phew! We were very impressed with Copenhagen, it was beautiful and every single person we encountered was so friendly and helpful, especially when we had to ask for directions. We definitely enjoyed our time in Copenhagen!