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In Which, Gentle Reader, I See A Waxdick
November 24, 2006 by Mike
Stralsund
Got my contact lenses.
Wandered round old Hanseatic Stralsund: lots has been rebuilt and/ or renovated. The old market places are full of stalls: a proper German Weihnachtsmarkt, Remy and Helen, just like the one you won't be going to this Christmas. And no, I didn't feel a shred of sympathy as you'll be on the beaches of Adelaide instead. There's even a funfair. Happy Christmas.
There's also a marine museum that incorporates the largest aquarium in Germany. In which I learned that while the European Seabass looks like a fish should look, cod actually look monstrously prehistoric. Who the hell first dared put one of them in his mouth?
I also learned that the German name for the Russian Sturgeon is the Waxdick.
In the marine and fishing section of the museum, I saw the model of an East German fishing boat called the MJ Kalinin. That's Kaliningrad's Kalinin, of course, and a reminder that the old DDR was every bit as beholden to the USSR as anywhere else in the Soviet Empire. More so, perhaps, as it also served as the buffer to the West.
One other thing: some of the museum's exhibits have English information next to them. Believe me, after so many Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian and Polish museums with nothing I could understand, it was a *mighty* pleasure to read next to one exhibit:
"Shrimps and prawns - economically important crustaceans"
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A Stralsunder
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I saw a flat in the Old Town advertised for sale at €475,000. That's real money. (It looks like a lovely flat.) A whole city block around one of the old churches has been converted into very cute housing. I wandered through a cloister that is now the courtyard of 20 or so flats and maisonettes. A fantastic place to live, always assuming you enjoy yr neighbours' taste in music, like the smell of their cooking and all agree to flush the loo at the same time. They were right on top of each other.
But I walked away from the Old Town too, into the same old poverty. Here people live right on top of each other too, but without the fancy fittings, filter coffee and sea views. These big blocks date from the East German years, from the Nazi years, from the first years of the 20th century. They were *not* designed and built to make their inhabitants happy. Or comfortable. They have *not* been rebuilt and/ or renovated. They haven't even been painted. They are not cute. They are not loved. They are dark and hollow and angry places.
Stralsund seems to me a prosperous and confident place -- as long as I hang around the Old Town. When I step over the bridge -- literally -- into the hinterland, it becomes an altogether less comfortable place to be. The Old Town is where tourists gravitate of course, and where professionals live and work. It's where the main shopping district is. Across the bridge I recognise suddenly that I'm in a country with up to 40% unemployment. Reunification of East and West happened 15 years ago. Except it hasn't happened yet, for many of the people who live out here. The old Communist regime was a woeful and and malicious failure of the body politic, but the old Communist Party -- renamed, rebranded -- is the largest political party here.
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Stralsund is famous in Germany for two things: as the place where Shill died. He was "Germany's Robin Hood", a hero of the Napoleonic Wars, when Stralsund was actually part of Sweden. Yes! Having stopped in many cities around the coast that used to be German -- all the way back to Klaipeda -- I find myself in a German city that used to be Swedish.
The other claim to fame is the Bismark herring. It's pickled, I think. And no, I haven't tried it. Sorry.
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This may have been Swedish (1620-something to 1815) but it's certainly German now. In the main bookshop in town, a central display showcases books with titles such as 'Letzte Tage in Ostpreussen' and 'Bilder aus dem Sudetenland'. Memories of what was Germany but is no longer. Ostpreussen is just round the corner but the Sudetenland is miles away in the present-day Czech Republic. But it's still clearly very close to people here.
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Tomorrow's entry will be a bit special. I recommend giving it a read.
But it hasn't been written yet.....
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Weihnachtsmarkt
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