Day 42: Trip to Rostock

This weekend I took a little trip to Rostock, in northern Germany, by the Baltic Sea. Sara, a friend of Juan, told me she was going with her boyfriend, Fabian, and two other friends, Mary and Llanos, and that they had one seat left in the car. And since I was feeling a bit saturated with my practice lately, I went for it.

The car journey took about 6 hours, during which we listened to Fabian's tapes all the time, all of them Schlager music. Schlager in German means to hit and is something like the English word hit, which could be translated into Spanish as "éxito". This type of music is from the 60s, 70s and 80s and is similar to our music represented by (for example) Georgie Dann, El Dúo Dinámico or La Onda Vaselina... To give you an idea, here are a couple of examples. This group is Dschinghis Khan with their song Moskau:

And this is Guido Rex with a subtitled version of his "Fiesta mexicana":

After all that time listening to this music, we arrived in Rostock and looked for the hostel. Fabian had organized everything very well and booked a very cheap hostel, near the center and very nice. We left our backpacks and went for a walk around the city, like a good German, Fabian reminded us how in Germany people don't cross the street if the traffic light is red, even if there are no cars.

Rostock was (and is?) a Hanseatic city, and all its architecture was marked by this commercial federation.

with customs gates

and its port

After the visit, we had a kebab for dinner (I'll tell you all about kebabs later) and went to a bar for a local beer (each city in Germany has its own beer, in this case the Rostocker)

The bar was a bit dodgy, full of Harley Davidson riders and run by two ex-army pilots. The whole place was decorated with parachutes, photos of planes, navigation charts and with memories of the owners. The truth is that they were very nice and we had a great time. Before we left we took a photo:

The next day we went to the beach of a nearby town, it was very windy and a bit cold, but we had a great time walking along the sand.

Here's a stolen photo of a guy who was swimming naked in the sea (I remember it was cold)

Finally, before getting back in Fabian's car to listen to another 6 hours of Schlager to return to Dresden, we went to eat the typical fish of the area. I had a kind of pickled anchovies (a bit bigger) that were rolled up in a pickle. They were very acidic and kept coming back to me for two days. If I had known, I would have eaten a hamburger!

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