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Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Rostock, New Years

After Christmas, I flew from Stutgart to Zurich to Hamburg and Alex and Sabine picked me up on their way to Rostock for New Years. We stayed at Marek and Katharine's fantastic apartment there and hit up a few clubs, toured the city and port, drove some REALLY fast go-karts, and visited the nearby rocket museum at Peenemünde.


At the port in Rostock. The fisherman bring back their catch and you can buy fresh fish sandwiches directly from the boat. Delicious!







Traditional fishing houses in Rostock.























The museum is in an old power station that was built just to power the rocket development and production plants in the 1930's, and is quite a facilitz in itself. From Peenemünde, the Germans developed most of the modern rocket technology and where they fired the first U2 ballistic missle to London in 1942. The museum goes into great lengths to show the dichotomy of the technological achievements of making the rockets versus the human element of those on the receiving end of the rocket. It was too large to really see everything in one day, but we spent about 4 hours there and it was very fascinating. In all, more people died creating and building the rockets there then all the casulties of its use, which shows the emphasis that was placed on its development- especially pschologically.

Alex and I at a replica of the U2 rocket.





The fireworks in Germany are crazy! Anybody can buy the large ones and it is a continuous barrage of fireworks. Marek's apartment is on the top floor of his building, and is the tallest around. At midnight, there was a 360 degree firework show- a continuous ring of fireworks from all over the city. It is indescribable and none of my pictures do it justice! Marek and Katharine threw a great party with about 30 people and we all all rang in the new year on the roof overlooking the city. This is Katharine, Marek, Alex, Christopher and I celebrating the new year!

2 comments:

Marek said...

nice party, some more pictures here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/84675398@N00/sets/72157603641336841/

Marek said...

Flickr NY Party