Schwerin

I bought a ticket the day before so we could all travel to Hamburg to watch the new Indiana Jones movie in English; T really wants to see it. However, V found out later the same day that the theater had stopped playing it two days before. Since we already had the ticket, and could
also travel with it in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Pomerania) we hopped the train heading for former East Germany. We went through Luebeck to a station in Bad Kleinen. This made a new eastern record for V and the kids, 11 degrees 28'3" E. On the former communist side the landscape was flatter with a seemingly constant wind, larger fields and sparser towns, the buildings looked more run down and neglected in general and one feature that really stood
out to us both was the old guard towers at the train stations we passed. From Bad Kleinen it is a short connection to the state capital, Schwerin, which has a famous castle I had heard about and wanted to see. We hopped on the next train and someone came to check our tickets. It turned out our ticket couldn't be used for the train we were on (IC rather than regional). In retrospect it was a very nice clean train and the people were very quiet, so something was amiss. But the purser let us get off at the next stop, which happened to be our destination. We ate lunch at the station then headed out. Schwerin has a nice altstadt (old town), dotted around town were painted rhinos(?), and the castle is striking when you first come around a corner and see it.
It is very large, has gilt gold statues and towers and is on its own small island. Some of the smaller towers have the Slavic style "onion" shape that reminds you of the Russian Kremlin.
It happened that there was a festival going on just in front of the castle island, they played music and the kids got to run around at look at the booths that were set up. They had a spring cable high jump trampoline set up for the kids and M and T went straight for it. They got to bounce 20 feet up in the air for a while and enjoyed it. Then we went to the castle which is a working state administration building, and they just happened to be having an open house that day. We walked right in with the crowd. They handed out bags and posters and pins to us and a stringed quartet was playing music. We went inside the castle and wandered from room to room for a while, then we all were winding down and started back. We made a quick photo op with a herd of painted rhinos in front of a museum and I picked up a business card of a man selling fossils that T liked. We made it back to the train station and grabbed some supper, then got on the correct train back to Bad Kleinen for our connection. This was a crowded regional train rather then the IC train. About half way the train pulled off onto a side track and stopped. From time to time the engine made strange noises and/or they made announcements in German over the intercom, which we could guess at the meaning of by the groaning it set off in the other passengers. We were there for hours as other trains passed us back and fourth on the main track. Finally just as the sun was setting it started back up and we made it to the station. Then our connecting train was delayed. After it came, it was supposed to go all the way past Ploen to Kiel, but they made an announcement that it would divert to Hamburg instead. We got off in Luebeck and had to wait an hour for the last train to Kiel for the night. We caught it after midnight and finally made it to Ploen around 1 am. Thanks goodness we made the last train and didn't have to spend the night at the station in Luebeck.

In retrospect I think we have defined the approximate limit we can travel for day trips and be able to reliably return on the train system. To explore further we should plan for overnight stays.