Sign on the Brauhaus
Brauhaus
Town Center
Thursday, June 30, 2011 Warnemunde, Germany

Well, today was not a beautiful "postcard weather" day. We woke to a damp drizzly day. But on a trip like this, you make the best of what you are given, and this was our day in Germany and we were determined to enjoy ourselves, and we did! We boarded our tour bus at 2:30 pm and went for about an hour long ride out into the country to the town of Wismar, a beautiful medieval town. This town had several ancient buildings which dated back to the thirteenth century. One of the buildings we visited was the Rathauskeller(cellar of the Town Hall). This cellar was all that remains of the second town hall in this town. It burned down in 1350, and since then, it has been used for many different things, including use as a wine cellar , a cloth hall by the guild of tailors who stored their materials in there and used it as a place to do their cutting and sell their wares. We discovered some fabulous ancient paintings on the walls and ceilings of this cellar.

When we were through touring the town, we were taken to a Brauhaus for beer and a pretzel. This pub(?) makes their own beer, and pretzels, of course.

We were told that this place has been brewing their own beer since way before Christopher Columbus discovered America. That is a long time to have remained in business! It is very interesting that they don't sell it any where else. They just make it to sell to their own customers. It was a fascinating day, in spite of the rain, which sort of faded away as the day moved along, so it wasn't really more than a bit of a nuisance. We had a lovely relaxing day at sea today, for some of the passengers to recover from their sight seeing. The family we are travelling with went to Berlin yesterday, and had to leave the ship at 7am yesterday and didn't return until 9:30pm last night. We had an easy day compared to them.