On what was my first train trip in Germany I went to Güstrow, Rostock, and eventually ended up in Warnemünde at the end of my journey. Although some would say that the charming houses by the tourist zone or the Teepot by the sea are main attractions, I loved seeing the Baltic Sea. Having left behind the warm and familiar South China Sea, I traded it for the cold and strange streets of Karlshorst in the eastern end of Berlin. The crashing waves of the Baltic Sea, though unfamiliar, offered me much needed solace in a strange foreign land.
I felt the fine, soft sand give in under my shows like how my hear melts away when i steel the salty scent of the sea. Though it made my coffee taste awful, I used to put a pinch of salt in it just to get a bitter-salty taste of the sea. For me, the open sea represented freedom, familiarity, and a kind of freshness – almost like a reset button that washed all of my worries away with every retreating wave.
Perhaps Edvard Munch, the renowned Norwegian painter who created The Scream, found a similar feeling of comfort and inspiration there, too. He spent two years at the seaside town as one of the many places that he lived in during his lifetime.
With a modest naval base, a town centre small enough to cycle around in an hour, Warnemünde may not offer much in the way of tourist entertainment, but it does have a rich history. Perhaps my favorite building there was the Teepot. It resembles the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin in form and style, in fact, it was also built in the same period. Though the building in Berlin was built by the Americans and the Teepot was built by the East Germans, the similarity in the architecture of the two buildings shows a shared vision for the future regardless of how different their methods of getting there may be.
Teepot 
The lighthouses that populate the shoreline are a symbol of a bygone era when bright incandescent spotlights still had a place in maritime navigation. Now, radars and transponders and satellites take on the job of making sure that ships don’t run into bits of shallow rock by the shore – yet they still do.
Regardless of where I end up I suppose I’ll keep running into piles of rock by the shore, too – and enjoy doing so.
