Kiel is the northernmost large city in Germany. It’s located at the end of a 17km fjord and holds the key to ship travel between the Baltic and North Seas.
A lot of people on board took this opportunity to go to Hamburg which is about 90 minutes away or Lubeck, a medieval city that’s supposed to be home to the best Marzipan cake in the world (or so they say). We weren’t interested in either of those destinations.
We decided to take a tour that included a visit to the Kiel Canal and the Naval Memorial in nearby Laboe. We were glad we did it was a very interesting day.
The Kiel Canal was built in the 1890’s and connects the North and Baltic Seas. If ships don’t go through the canal they have to go all around the Denmark peninsula to travel between the seas. Of course, this was much more important when ships were under sail and traveled much slower then today.
Kiel has more in common with the Suez Canal then the one in Panama. The Suez Canal is basically a ditch between the Red and Mediterranean Seas while the Panama connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through several elevation changes. The Kiel Canal has one lock. The Baltic Sea, being mostly inland does not have the tides that you would find in other bodies of water but they do have strong winds that can raise or lower the water level. The one lock adjusts for this level change and allows ships to sail onto the North Sea. We saw a cargo ship entering the lock today. It moved very slowly.
After the Canal we took a little tour of the town itself before moving out to the surrounding farmlands and Laboe. Kiel was the most bombed city during WWII after Coventry England. Our guide told us his mother lived in the city then and would always have a bag packed and ready to go to the bomb shelter. We went by one of the few remaining shelters left, it has been converted to a museum.
Most of the tour guides we’ve had at various German locations have been younger and they refer to the people in charge during WWII as the Nazi’s, as in, the Nazi’s were the party in power, or the Nazi’s did this or that, not Germans. This guide today, whose mother and older siblings remember the war used ‘Germans’ whenever referring to who was in charge. It was an interesting difference.
Our next stop was the Naval Monument in Laboe. The monument was conceived after the first world war to honor all sailors lost at sea. It was dedicated in 1934. Of course, after that, WWII started and at the end of the war this area came under British occupation. The British were destroying all monuments to the Nazi’s but decided this one, dedicated to sailors could stay. It changed its focus to honor all sailors at sea regardless of their nationality.
It was very well done, from the tower to the underground passage to the museum and the grounds. In one of the tower rooms there is a depiction of all ships lost by Germany in WWI, the other side (pictured below) is dedicated to all ships lost in WWII. I couldn’t get the whole wall in because it wraps around the room.
They also have a German U-Boat on the grounds that can be toured. I toured a WWII submarine once, never again! It is so tight in there I don’t know how the men stood it for weeks at a time.
All and all one of the better tours we’ve had with a guide who was very engaged and interesting to talk to.
The weather was pretty brisk today. We had to wear our down jackets. It’s amazing how many people came on this cruise with just tee shirts and shorts. I can only imagine they’re from Florida and think, hey it’s summer, it has to be warm everywhere.
Tomorrow we’re in Copenhagen. We’ve been there before and took a pretty exhaustive tour of the city, this time we’re going to a Viking Museum that kind of ties into our trip last year to Iceland and Greenland.
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