It was about a 25 minute bus ride from the airport to the Berlin train station and we arrived well before our 10:24 a.m. train departure time. We stopped at two different bakeries for something for breakfast and then waited on our train to arrive. We headed down to the platform and happened to notice that the train status sign had some warning on it, mostly in German with just a little bit of English indicating that our train had moved over one platform across the rail tracks. In order to get there, we had to go back upstairs, over the tracks, and then back down to the newly assigned platform. We were just glad that we had noticed the notification before it was too late to catch. Had we waited to move over to the new platform, which would have taken longer than the train would have stopped inside the station, we would have probably missed our train.
Berlin Train Station
The train arrived on time and we got on board and found a couple of seats where we could put our luggage on the floor in between forward and rear facing seats. Unfortunately in the time frame it took us to try to figure out where to store our luggage some other passengers had gotten into the seats that we wanted to use, which were side by side and facing forward in the direction the train traveled. We took seats on the aisle across from each other, but Stephanie was not able to face forward in the direction of travel that she likes. Not facing in the direction of travel does not bother me. Eventually, were able to move our seats as people got off the train, but only for about the last hour and a half of the trip were we both facing forward and sitting side by side.
Arrival in Rostock, Germany
It was about a three hour train ride to Rostock, and other than the little bit of a hassle we initially had with our seats, it was a pleasant journey. We arrived at the central train station in Rostock at about 1:30 PM, and then had to try to figure out both where the tram boarding platform was and how to purchase tram tickets for the ride over to our hotel. The hotel was too far away to walk to from the train station.
We purchased two “all day” tram tickets from a ticket machine, but it would not accept our credit card for payment, so we used cash. We were disappointed in being denied using our newest PIN priority credit card, and were not sure why it was not accepted. Unfortunately, although the ticket selection part of the process allows you to select English as the language, the separate credit card payment screen of the machine is only in German, so we could not understand the reason it was giving for rejecting the card.
Steigenberger Hotel Sonne in Rostock
We boarded the tram and rode the several stops to our hotel which was near the Neuer Markt stop. The Steigenberger Hotel Sonne was just a short walk from the tram stop, and we were at the desk to check in by about 2:00 PM. At first, they could not find our pre-paid reservation, it had somehow been put in the name of Bond Charles instead of Charles Bond, probably a mistake I made with name entry during the online reservation process, they probably asked for my last name first, then first name when entering the information, and I had likely missed that when booking at the hotel’s online site. It was just slightly nerve wracking for a minute or two until they figured it out.
Our room would not be ready for an hour, so we decided to wait in the lobby after letting them store our luggage. We were wondering if we had used the correct PIN for our credit card at the train station ticket machine, and I was not sure I even had the correct PIN in my password storage app on my phone. The rejection of the card, and being tired made me doubt that I had the correct information. We used their free hotel Wi-Fi to text my mom on the cell phone and then used our Alexa app to make a video call to see if mom could go over to our house and look up the PIN in my credit card information records in the file. Long story short is that the PIN I had was verified as being correct, so that was not the problem, and we could use that credit card again during the trip without worry.
By this time, the room was ready and we went upstairs on the elevator to the second floor where our room was located. It was a nice size room, but the view was not that great, but we also had not purchased an upgraded room with a view when we booked the hotel.
We freshened up and did some unpacking of our valuables to put them into the room safe, but found that the safe would not lock when we entered our code. We called the front desk, and they said someone would come up to the room to check it out. We waited about 30 minutes, and no one showed up, so Stephanie called the front desk again and told them we were waiting for this to get fixed before we could go out. We were planning to go to the nearby town of Warnemunde for the afternoon. We insisted that we did not want to leave before the safe issue was taken care of, we were reluctant to leave all of our cash and valuables in the room without the safe being operational. Having a room safe was one of the reasons we had changed reservations to this hotel in the first place, others we had initially reserved did not have safes in the rooms.
Our Hotel Room
After about 45 minutes total, and some impatience on our parts, mostly from being tired, they showed up to fix the safe. As I had expected, the safe’s batteries were run down, and that was why it would not lock. The batteries were changed, which did fix the problem, and with our valuables secured, we headed out to the tram stop near the hotel to ride back to the main train station to catch the S-Bahn train to Warnemunde, about a 25 minute ride away.
Warnemunde, Germany
We arrived in Warnemunde at about 5:15 PM, and the train station was very close to the main waterfront area, which is full of shops and restaurants. There were two cruise ships in port, and it was pretty crowded in the small scenic coastal town. We walked along the harbor, and out to the beach area. There is an old lighthouse near the beach which was open for touring, but we were too tired to climb the stairs to the top. We did stroll out to the beach via a boardwalk. There were quite a few people walking on the large beachfront, but it was late in the normal summer tourist season, and we were sure it was nowhere near as crowded as it had been during the peak of the season. The temperature was about 80 degrees, but there was a cool breeze blowing off of the ocean. There were a lot of sailboats going in and out of the harbor, it was a great afternoon for sailing, with the good steady breeze.
Dinner in Warnemunde
We were getting hungry, so we picked out a nice harbor view restaurant with outside tables and sat down to have dinner. We had some local draft beers, brewed in Rostock, and Stephanie had a shrimp pasta and I had a pulled beef “hamburger” with fries for dinner. Both were really good, my burger was pulled beef that was then sort of grilled like a hamburger patty, served on a nice bun with coleslaw. The fries were different, wider and thinner than normal. There was a bottle of what I thought to be salt on the table, it had a pop off lid, and as I was about to put some on my fries, the couple next to us spoke some German and then motioned me to stop before I tried to pour/shake some out onto my fries. Apparently it was sugar, not salt in the shaker, but who knew. We all had a good laugh about it, and we asked our waiter for some salt, which was in a normal shaker when it arrived. Apparently, a lot of sugar is used here for coffee, so it is on every table in a small bottle with a wire type pop off lid. That surely made sense now, especially since there was no pepper on the table with the sugar “salt”. At least our credit card, with PIN verified, worked at the restaurant for payment.
Cruise Ships Leaving Warnemunde
After dinner, which we thoroughly enjoyed, we strolled back toward the train station, and heard one of the ships in port using their ship’s horn to signal they were leaving port. We headed over to the pier, and watched one of the two ships leave. It was an older reconditioned Royal Caribbean ship, now sailing under a different European company that was leaving port.
After that, we went back to the train station and boarded the S-Bahn train for the ride home. We made one stop along the way for a station where we thought a Lidl grocery store was located, but it was not the correct station, oops! The trains come through about every 15 minutes, so it was not long before we were on our way again, and back in Rostock, where we caught a tram to the stop near the hotel.
Warnemunde, Germany
We got to the room and it was about 8:15 PM. We still wanted to get a few grocery items, and we used Google Maps to locate a Netto grocery store, which was just about 5 minutes away by walking, at least according the instructions Google gave us for the streets to follow to get there. We headed out, but could not locate a couple of the street names, and ended up going in the wrong direction, but found another different grocery store anyway. We purchased some wine, bottled water and some items for breakfast tomorrow, knowing we needed to get an early start in the morning and eat breakfast in the room before we headed out to save time.
It ended up being a good “being lost’ situation to find the grocery store. We found several restaurants and a large area of shops in this area, not far from the hotel, as well as a bank with nice secure inside ATM machines. We stopped at the bank ATM for some additional cash since we were not sure if we would be able to purchase any of our train tickets for tomorrow via the credit card. I was a little shocked when I initially could not find my wallet at the ATM, and I knew we had just used the credit card at the grocery store, only a few minutes ago. Being tired, I had not noticed I dropped it into our grocery bag with the sales receipt when we had checked out. After a terrible scare, we found it in the bag, and got our cash. Sleep deprivation really was hitting us by this time, so we headed back to the hotel.
Back in the room at about 9:30 PM, we were finally able to get showers from the long travel day, still wearing the clothes from when we had left home, which seemed like days ago. We put our white wine in the room’s mini refrigerator to chill while we got cleaned up. All in all, we were extremely tired, having been up for about 31 hours, including no more than 2 hours of limited, restless sleep on the plane. We relaxed after our showers with a glass of white wine, and got ready for tomorrow’s adventure, finally turning in about 11:00 pm.
Good narration, but a little nerve wrecking!!!!!