My summer home - Germany and in particular Rostock

As I spent a period of 2 months in a German town Rostock, that is located in the Nortnern Germany in the state (Bundesland) of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern I decided to give a brief overview about this place :)

First of all some general facts about Germany:
Population: 82 million inhabitants.
Geographic size: 357 000 sqm.
Exists in the current form and size since: 3. October 1990

So to give a little comparisons between my real home and my this-summer-home:
Germany is 63 times bigger than Estonia in population
Germany is 8 times bigger than Estonia in the geographic size.
Both Estonia and Germany exist in it's current form since the perestroika times, so it gives little common background and it should be possible to compare the systems based on this. However as the economy models have been different before perestoika (especially in Western Germany) - the realities of course are very different.

What describes in my opinion quite well my more specific destination Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is the fact that it is the least densely populated area in Germany with about 72 inhabitants per square km. In Germany generally the density is 230 inhabitants per square km (in Estonia 75inhabitants per square km). Also, it is the least industrial state with the highest unemployment rate of 13,8% (in the rest of Germany ranging between 6,2%-13%).

As Mecklenburg-Vorpommern used to be part of German Democratic Republic, a socialist state that existed between 1949 and 1990 I really felt more closer to people there who as it seemed were despite of the much stronger social system brought up in a world more similar to mine - my generation of people here grew up in kind of similar post-sowiet reality where quite high speed of changes in the society pushes forward flexibility and ability to adapt to changes.

Still the German mentality is for sure a german mentality - the structure in action, never be late ideology and strictly official approach to everything in the business world is what I obviously encountered. And in fact I cannot say did or did I not like it more/less than in my country - it was just different and I did not feel anticipated by it as I expected to. But for sure this was sometimes silly for me in details - for example when two colleagues both in their 40-ies who share the same office room for over 5 years still use while talking to each other the respective "Sie" instead of more personal "du". For me also it was in the beginning pretty funny to be called Frau Vilop all the time, and in fact even some of my colleagues admitted people could maybe start using "du" (you or sina) instead of "Sie" (You or Teie) faster as it is sometimes simply overpolite and unneeded. Yet all in all there are still lots of things seriously enjoyable about the general restpectful Ordnung that has as it seems become an unwritten law in German society.

To say more about Rostock - it is city with the population of 200 000 people located 20 km from the Baltic sea. The nearest beach is Warnemünde, a town that used to be part of Rostock but is now considered a separate town with a population of 8400 people. As it takes 20 minutes by car or 30 minutes by train to Warnemünde many Rostockers can be found on the beach (which unfortunately I did not visit too often as this summer has not really shined with awesome beach weather).

By looks Rostock is a typical hanseatic city, also it is remarkable that as the whole area around Rostock is surrounded with many wind energy generators. Main industries and sources for economic profit in Rostock (and also in Mecklenburg Vorpommern) are are maritime industries as the harbour, the shipyards and shipbuilding and also cruises and tourism, but besides of this also production of wind energy generators and engines and a big construstion consulting branch.

So, this was briefly my summerhome :)
About what exactly happened there - I will try my best to update you soon about this as well :)
PS! Thank you for your help with facts dear Wikipedia. :)