We arrived in Travemunde a few hours late at 10:30pm on Wednesday night (March 2nd). It was quite foggy and we got lost on the way to our intended parking spot so it was already 2am when we arrived. After a quiet night we woke up to the call of the black woodpecker.
Our first target was the old town of Schwerin in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It is the capital of the state and has a great cathedral and castle. The old town looks beautiful and on a warm sunny day would be a great place to spend some more time. Today it was a bit windy and chilly, so we visited the cathedral and walked a few blocks through the old town to see the castle.
For the night we drove to Crivitz where there was a quiet parking spot by the lake.
The nights are still cold and there was frost on the ground in the morning.
On Friday we drove up to Rostock for some shopping. Rostock is a big port city on the Baltic and also an old Hansa-town. However we didn’t go into the city but continued towards Zingst, which is in a National Park on the Baltic Sea. Again it was a bit chilly and windy and we didn’t get to enjoy the beaches but clearly it is a popular holiday spot in the summer. We spent the night in a camping ground in Zingst.
The next morning we drove towards Gross Mohrdorf NABU-Kranichzentrum or the Crane Center. NABU is the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union of Germany. Tens of thousands of cranes gather in the nearby fields in the autumn. Today we saw only three cranes but thousands of geese preparing to fly north. The geese were mostly barnacle geese (Branta leucopsis) with some greylag geese (Anser anser) and greater white-fronted geese (Anser albifrons) also present.
For the night we drove to Greifswald, which is an old Hanseatic City. We intend to walk around the old town tomorrow.
The next day was a Sunday and the Hanseatic City of Greifswald was very quiet as you can see from the below pictures. Again, this would certainly be a great place to visit a bit later in the year. A relief of Sweden’s king Gustav II Adolf (1594-1632) can be found on the cathedral wall.
