Beautiful Schwerin in former East Germany (#41)

We arrived to our beautiful Hotel Niederländischer Hof on the lake in Schwerin. We decided to take a stroll once we arrived.

We found this perfect store for Ted!

On our walk we found Schwerin Castle.

One of the castles that you can't take a bad picture.

The next day we found our way to this square to go the the Tourist information office where we found out that there is one English Tour at 1:30pm at Schwerin Castle.

Laura took a panoramic picture of the square. We found out later in the day that the grand white building used to be the community bath until 1992.

The tourist information office had the wall filled with a Schwerin Map.

As we waiting for our afternoon tour, we decided to see the Schwerin Cathedral.

The town mascot of Schwerin is a very small man, possibly a dwarf, who is said to still live in the castle. The legend possibly is based on a dwarf that lived in the castle when it was built.

From wikipedia - Ghost of Petermännchen

The ghost Petermännchen ("little Peterman") is said to roam the halls of the Schweriner Schloss. This invisible little creature is said to be no more than a few feet high and is often depicted in clothes from the 17th century, something resembling a cavalier. Other legends describe him as a long-bearded blacksmith, night watchman, or prankster to those who would seek to harm or steal from the castle.

A fire destroyed about a third of the palace in December 1913. Only the exterior reconstruction had been completed when the revolution of 1918 resulted in the abdication of the Grand Duke. The castle later became a museum and, in 1948, the seat of the state parliament. The German Democratic Republic used the palace as a college for kindergarten teachers from 1952 to 1981. Then it was a museum again until 1993. The Orangerie had been a technical museum since 1961. From 1974 on, some renovated rooms were used as an art museum.

Since late 1990, it has once again been a seat of government as the seat of the Landtag (the state assembly of the State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern). Since then, there have been massive preservation and renovation efforts. Most of these were finished by 2019.

During the Cold War, under Soviet Control, the palace was used as a teacher for Kindegarten teachers. Our guide explained how the goverment would give 18 year olds their own apartment if they got married, and a room for every child. The newlyweds would be given 5,000 Marks loan, and every 1,000 was forgiven for each child. Her mother had 6 kids and after 3 month maternity leave, the babies were put in Kindegarten which is daycare up to when they start official school.

Throughout the castle there were featurs such as one of the figurines sticking out his tongue. Legend is that the workers were unhappy about not being paid enough, and the original architect Georg Adolph Demmler left the project after a disagreement with the Duke about paying the artisans.

We went on a boat cruise with all German tourists. We got out Google Translate to try to pick up some of the commentary.

We didn't see many boats out, or many unusual boats on the water. We did find a pontoon boat floating around that was closer to some of the unusual boats we would find along our Great loop.

The Little Peterman shows up in the "Go" walk light we found all in Germany. And Germans really obey these lights.

Our Castle Tour guide encouraged us to go see this working mill that was used to cut and polish granite for the castle. We were able to see it in use and were told there was a larger one on the property that worked the same. The mill has been run by volunteers since the mid-1970s when the parts were found to rebuilt it.

The tour was entirely in German and we had Google Translate working hard to understand what our guide was saying.

The arch was in the back gardens of the castle.

Schewerin was a city that seemed like way more tourists should be there. We learned later from another local that Shwerin is not known to be very international friendly.. We were the only Americans there, and the other English speakers on our very small tour of the Castle were from Denmark and the Netherlands. Everyone was very nice to us. On the streets heads would turn when they heard our American accents. The young people could all speak English, but the older people (educated before 1990) were all taught Russian and forbid to learn English. Our tour guide also wanted to know why we were there and explained that she sees very few independent American tourists.

She also confided that locals believe Americans are very ignorant of the world. She gives tours on the cruise ships and has to give a very high level otherwise there are too many questions she has to explain.

Schwerin became a world Heritage Site in 2024 after working to achieve the designation for 20 years.

We loved it so much, we stayed an extra day!

Famous Hotel: https://niederlaendischer-hof.de

Schwerin

Pros:Spectacularly beautiful city, fascinating history, great English tourguide, wonderful breakfast, helpful staff

Cons: Little English translation

Five star plus!