Around the World

Berlin, Germany

We decided to do a tour in Germany as we were coming into Warnumude port which was about 2.5 hours by train from Berlin. We booked a tour that took us to a former concentration camp and then on a tour of Berlin. We had to get an early start with our train leaving at 7:30am. The ship had so many people going into Berlin that they ended up booking two private trains to book us there and back. Our first stop was Sachsenhasen Concentration Camp which is in Oranienburg, Germany and was used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to 1945. This camp was not a death camp like Auschwitz but many people did still die here and there were executions. As Jews were on the bottom of the hierarchy list a lot of them were transferred to Auschwitz. The camp did have a small gas chamber that was used to kill more people at once in its later years rather than executing them by shooting. Most of the camp is reconstructed as a lot of the locals used the original wood and steel for their homes after the war. It was really interesting to see and the reconstruction was able to give you an idea somewhat of what the camp looked like.

Our next stop was the city of Berlin which was about an hour’s drive from Oranienburg. We stopped at the Brandenburg gate which is the only remaining gate that you would go through to enter Berlin. We also went to the Jewish Holocaust Memorial which is a huge space filled with concrete slabs all of various heights and sizes. Across the street from the memorial was where Hitler had his office and is where the bunker was that he killed himself.

After the memorial we had a traditional German lunch and then we went to see Checkpoint Charlie. Where the Berlin wall once stood is now a double row of cobblestones marking its spot. The guard house is a replica as the original had been torn down and is now a big tourist attraction with two men in American Military uniforms standing at the front of it. After Checkpoint Charlie we went to see a remaining part of the Berlin Wall. We didn’t have much time there as we had to get back to the train station to get the train back to the ship.

Sachsenhasen

They found this bottle and letter in this spot a few years ago. The widow of the man who wrote it was still alive when it was found

Layout of the camp

Main entrance

This motto was above all concentration camps including Auschwitz..."Work makes one free"

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Prisoners would have to test out new shoes for the military on these rocks. They were forced to carry heavy backpacks and walk for days to see if the shoes would hold up.

Execution area

Gas chamber

Ashes have been found around the camp and small plaques are put up to mark the spots

Brandenburg Gate

Jewish Memorial

Where Hitler's offices were

The square were the book burning was held

Random store front that had hundreds of photos hung on the walls

Checkpoint Charlie

Where the Berlin wall once stood

Berlin Wall

Sand art in the cruise port

Tallinn, Estonia

The day after St. Petersburg we stopped in Tallinn, Estonia. We decided not to book a tour and were not expecting to see much in the city but we were presently surprised. Tallinn is a medieval town with winding cobblestone streets and beautiful architecture. We went into a few shops that with most of them focusing on knitwear and wool and we also went to ‘Knitter’s Lane’ which is a side street that has stalls of hand knit hats, sweaters and scarves mostly knit by the people selling them.

A fuel barge hit our life boats and damaged them

Knitter's Lane

St. Petersburg, Russia

Day 1

We decided to do a two day tour in St. Petersburg to make the most of our time there. The first day we had to meet our group at 6:30am as we had to go through customs beforehand. Once on the bus our first stop was a boat tour of the canals in the city. The tour lasted about an hour and we passed some of the most famous buildings in the city such as the Peter and Paul Fortress which we would later visit. Our next stop was the Hermitage which was once the Winter Palace and is one of the largest and oldest museums in the world. The walls and ceilings in the palace were very ornate and most rooms had gold leaf used in some way. We spent about 2 hours walking around the museum which houses many famous artists. We also visited the dining room where the Ministers of the Provisional Government were arrested on October 26, 1917 at 2:10am. The hands on the clock that sits on the mantel in the room are stopped at 2:10am.

After the Hermitage we went to a restaurant and had a traditional Russian lunch with dancing, caviar and lots of vodka. Then we went to our next stop which was the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood. The church was very ornate with very colourful domes on the outside and the inside had 7500 mosaics of different religious scenes covering the walls. The church was built on the site were Tsar Alexander II was assassinated and there is a memorial that is over the spot where his blood is thought to have been.

Our next stop was St. Isaac’s Cathedral whose pure gold dome dominates the St. Petersburg skyline. The interior of this Cathedral is also made of mosaics and large columns made of lapis lazuli and malachite.

Day 2

We had to be on the bus at 7am on day two and our first stop was Peterhof Palace which is often known as the Russian Versailles. The building and gardens were commissioned by Peter the Great and contains many portraits of great wars and of different members of the royal family. The palace like most other buildings we had seen in St. Petersburg was very ornate and had a lot of gold leaf and colourful ceilings. The outside grounds had beautiful fountains and gardens with gold statues everywhere. We started our tour of the gardens just as it started to rain really hard so we had to make our way back to the bus. Our next stop was the Peter and Paul fortress that was founded by Peter the Great in 1703. The cathedral is the burial place of all Russian Tsars from Peter I to Alexander III except for Peter II.

After the fortress we went to a restaurant called the Last Palace for lunch. The restaurant was the Last Palace that was built before the revolution and thus given its name. We sat with 3 other couples who were from Canada (Chelsea, QC), South Africa and USA. They were all very friendly and we would end up taking to them for the remainder of the cruise when we saw them.

After lunch we had two more stops. The first stop was the Moika Palace where Rasputin was murdered. We went through the palace and were able to see a lot of the original art that was hidden in secret rooms around the palace before the revolution in hopes of coming back to get it. It took a long time to find all the secret rooms but now everything is on display including a room in the basement that has two mannequins one of one of the men part of killing him and one of Rasputin. He has been given red wine laced with cyanide and shot him numerous times but he still struggled to stay alive. They threw his body into the Neva River where he drowned but the body was found three days later and it was confirmed that he died from drowning. Our last stop after this was a visit to a large souvenir shop after this we went back to the bus.