Taking Rostock Of the Situation

Now thoroughly in the last stretch of our journey, we headed up to Szczecin on the Baltic to work along a string of cities all the way up to the Danish border. Our first stops were Szczecin on Saturday, a chill day on Sunday, and Rostock on Monday.

Szczecin, the one Polish city on our journey, was littered with nice historical buildings, free museums, and a killer water park. What's not to like?

Taking one of our increasingly rare chiller days after the hectic-ness that was our travelling since Leipzig, we spent the day playing board games down by a lake just inside the German border.

On Monday, we arrived at the first of our chain of Hanseatic cities: the cities that formed a powerful north German trade alliance from the 13th century until its decline in the 17th. As a result much of the history in and around the city centred on its role as a port including this funky GDR naval flag.

A super cool feature of Rostock is the town halls many styles. The pointy façade you can see in the centre is the oldest part of the town hall which was developed later and had the pink baroque frontage added to it. Later still the extended brick building to its left was added on, and finally the glass extension on the far left was added. A person making something in 4 styles at once and not quite managing anyone of them... does that sound familiar?

The city of Rostock's former importance can be seen all around the city through its medieval walls and later ramparts that now make up this very nice looking park.

On our way out of the city we happened across the second botanical gardens of the trip which this time was in full blossom, win!

Finally we headed to Lubeck for the next of our Hanseatic cities on Tuesday.

Bonus question: Can you guess which of the two cities we preferred more: Szczecin or Rostock...?