short stop stralsund

On our car way to and home from Berlin we visited Stralsund - where the infamous vegetarian potato soup with ham incident took place. I will not write a short essay on the city and its Swedish connections - for that you can pop by and read here for example- but I will say as much as that old Hansa town didn't do much for me.

Personally I found it rather charmless - despite some winding cobblestone streets and fancy old architecture in parts. It reminded me of Lübeck, which doesn't appeal to me either - and lacking of personality, or well, cityality. On the other hand I love Hamburg and Gdansk, old Hansa cities too. So, win some lose some.

Hotel rooms without air condition in the heat of summer kind of puts me off too. Not to mention sloppy hotel portiers who can't work the check-in system thus come into your room 2.30 at night to see if it's unoccupied. Without prior knocking on door. Yup, really and creepily happened.

Anyhow. Glimpses of Stralsund it will be. First out one of the best pizzas I've ever had. It sort of made up for that darn nasty soup. No not sort of, in hindsight it really did.

A slightly thicker, crispy crust, instead of tomato sauce it had fresh spinach at bottom, on top of that a whole lot of fresh veggies such as broccoli, paprika, onion, mushroom, carrots. Well-seasoned and with the perfect amount of cheese (not too much-not too little) it made for a really lovely dinner in hotel-bed-experience. Those unpretentious dinners I kind of heart.

So by the time we had dutifully walked some selected streets of Stralsund, returned to the hotel, packed the car, where on our way, crossing the bridge to Rügen - Germany's largest island which also happens to have been a part of Sweden once upon a time - I felt pleased. Thus, next snaps stop Rügen.