Rostock

This is a picture of dune grass in Warnemunde just near the beach. The photo itself was taken by my father-in-law when we were all on a family outing to Warnemunde, which is that part of Rostock directly on the Baltic coast.

Rostock is where we are all living and working right now. The city itself is quite small and beautiful and is built around where the river Warnow runs into the Baltic. The shape of Warnow makes for a magnificant port, and hence the city is very old, having been used by the vikings, the Hanseatic trading league and no doubt many other travellers over the millenia.

Rostock was one of, if the not the prime, port for the old GDR, or East Germany. During the communist time, there was a large ship building industry here as well, although it rapidly fell apart in the early 1990s once the GDR collapsed.

I've had a few conversations with folks who were here in Rostock when all those changes took place. Perhaps not surprisingly, a great many people still reminisce about the Communist times, about the greater economic securty and, oddly enough, the meaning that the Communist system provided. Out of interest, I've pushed a few folks on whether there were any issues during those times, and I have yet to have anyone acknowledge anything really, other than simple limitations on overseas travel.

One young student who helped us move into our current apartment was, so far, the sole exception. I don't think he was old enough to have really experienced the Communist system, but he did tell me that his grandfather was shot and killed trying to escape. He just stated this calmly and fairly matter of factly. He didn't seem particularly bitter, and may have just accepted this as a fact as a part of family history.

It is really hard to grasp all the history surrounding us here in Rostock. The Allies destroyed this town during World War II with bombing raids, the Russian army moved through and occupied it and Communism was installed and collapsed. And this is only in the last half of the Twentieth Century. When I am in some of the gorgeous old churches here I sometimes wish that I could sit down with a column or a painting and have a conversation about all the things that it had witnessed and talk of things past.