Cruising into Kiel

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Kiel has been one of the traditional homes of the German Navy's Baltic fleet, and continues to be a major high-tech shipbuilding centre. Kiel is an important sea transport hub, thanks to its location on the Kiel Fjord (Kieler Förde) and the busiest artificial waterway in the world, Kiel Canal (Nord-Ostsee-Kanal). A number of passenger ferries to Sweden, Norway, Lithuania and other countries operate from here. Moreover, today Kiel Harbour is an important port of call for cruise ships touring the Baltic Sea. The afternoon train from Bremen was therefore packed with cruise ship passengers heading off for the start of their cruise to Russia. Unfortunately we were not heading off on that cruise however we were doing the overnight ferry to Gothenburg which of course is where we were wanting to be. Finding our hotel with relative ease, our next port of call was a cool music cafe, the Blue Angel, which is alongside the harbour, and we were entertained by good music and local dancers. Several wines and beers later, the temperature had cooled and the conversational topics had narrowed (?) to global economics with 3 recently graduated students. There are such interesting conversations to be held when traveling and meeting random people. The shopping centre was also close by and we did spend some time checking out the local foods with a little bit of retail therapy on the side for good measure. After spending some quality ‘down time’ here we were ready to set sail to Gothenburg on the Stena overnight ferry; and to meet the newest addition to our Swedish family at last.

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