A Baltic boating adventure TRIP REPORT COMPLETED 11/19 - Page 98 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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Wednesday 15 June – part two: is his name really Stroppy?
We headed back to the room, and saw the safety drill they were doing…
Now this is where I think it was badly organised. I heard a tannoy announcement, only because we had the door to the balcony open and it floated up from deck five, otherwise I wouldn’t have had a clue they were about to do this. They set off the emergency warning system that they’d told us on embarkation day if we heard again, it was a real emergency. There was no tannoy announcement in the rooms, and if you were sleeping in, you’d have been very rudely awakened. The tannoy also doesn’t seem to work in public places, like the Oceanview Café or the Solarium, or even up on deck 14, so I wonder how many people were freaked out by this.
The weather was beautiful, and when the sun came out, it was really hot outside. The forecast had said around 60 degrees, but it was definitely hotter than that. We settled down on the balcony to enjoy the sun, and to watch the activity out in the harbour. They certainly have a lot going on here.
Meanwhile, outside the drama was continuing. The poor crew were standing there in their life jackets and had been for some time…
Then we saw a military helicopter coming into land at a nearby based, and I was able to get some great photos of it.
Then a navy frigate sailed past us…
We ended up heading inside for a while, as the weather, while now more cloudy, was definitely still humid. We watched another episode of Banshee, then we headed up to the Oceanview Café to get some lunch. I decided to go for the “make your own” pasta with creamy basil and pesto sauce, and got some Mediterranean vegetables to put on top of it.
Mark stuck with his usual of meat and vegetables, which is why there’s no picture, as really his doesn’t vary much from day to day. After some dessert, we headed back down to the room to get ready for our excursion.
We headed out about 1:30pm, as we were due to meet 15 minutes after that. We did have a momentary panic with everyone showing their passports, and we only had our driving licences, but I knew I’d read that national photo ID was fine, and so it was. I didn’t want to take the passport off the ship again if I could avoid it, as I found that really stressful in Russia.
There were already a lot of people on the bus, although quite a few came after us. They counted us up, and told us we were waiting for one person, then it went up to two people. The final couple got quite a cheer, but there were also some mean comments along the lines of “we’ve been waiting” which I thought were a bit nasty and uncalled for.
Our driver was Stroppy – and I am not joking, that was seriously his name! Our guide was Klaus, an older guy, who was nice enough, although he did have some interesting pronunciations of some words. I probably shouldn’t say this, as I know I couldn’t do his job and narrate in a foreign language, but my favourites were “wilderness” pronounced as “wild” and then “erness” and “storages” instead of “stories”. It was just so unusual to hear, given the rest of his English was pretty good.
We headed out of the port…
… and on the road towards Rostock, although this excursion wouldn’t take us in there.
We learnt that these tower blocks were all built when this was East Germany, or to give it its correct name the German Democratic Republic, although as Klaus said, there was nothing democratic or republic about it, although it was very German.
As you can see, the skies were pretty dark, and we knew rain was coming. It was just a matter of when…
We passed IKEA and I can’t remember the German, but basically they have a saying that IKEA stands for the German for English idiots buy everything.
Not long after this, the rain started, and my goodness, it really threw it down. It was absolutely torrential, as you can hopefully gather from these photos…
Every time our bus braked, a load more rain would cascade off the roof and go all over the front windscreen and the bonnet (as we know it) or trunk to you guys… It was truly appalling weather and I think all of us were dreading our first stop.
At one point, Klaus did lead us in a sing along of Singing in the Rain!
I can imagine the emergency exercise could have worried a few people! Especially since the ship was just sitting in port!
Nice start to the day.... but warmth and humidity equals rain, I guess. Wow, it really came down!
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Wow! That was a lot of rain!!
It was a little strange when we were there to realize it was formerly East Germany. We were also told Waremunde was going to be a Nazi beach resort in some of the plans.
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Of course, emergency drills are necessary for the crew, but still, there should have been a better warning for those guests still on board. My, that rain was awful, but I love the thought of singing along with it. I hope it let up some by the time you made a stop.
Of course, emergency drills are necessary for the crew, but still, there should have been a better warning for those guests still on board. My, that rain was awful, but I love the thought of singing along with it. I hope it let up some by the time you made a stop.
You'll see as we go on, but I think it's fair to say that the weather was a bit on/off, but that downpour was thankfully the worse of it...
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There was no tannoy announcement in the rooms, and if you were sleeping in, you’d have been very rudely awakened. The tannoy also doesn’t seem to work in public places, like the Oceanview Café or the Solarium, or even up on deck 14, so I wonder how many people were freaked out by this. 
I am not joking, that was seriously his name! Our guide was Klaus, an older guy, who was nice enough, although he did have some interesting pronunciations of some words. I probably shouldn’t say this, as I know I couldn’t do his job and narrate in a foreign language, but my favourites were “wilderness” pronounced as “wild” and then “erness” and “storages” instead of “stories”. It was just so unusual to hear, given the rest of his English was pretty good. 
It was truly appalling weather and I think all of us were dreading our first stop. 
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