Advertisement
Today we made a day trip to a city I'd been wanting for years to see,
Hansestadt Lübeck, northeast of Hamburg on the Baltic Sea. Whereas Hamburg's medieval center was thoroughly destroyed—though Hamburg
was firebombed in some of the worst destruction to be dealt by the Allies in WWII, its medieval center had been lost a decade before, to a
great city fire in 1842—Lübeck's was damaged but preserved and restored. This makes Lübeck also fairly touristy, the result being medieval brick façades oddly interspersed with shopping mall boulevards.
The train ride to Lübeck was interesting, passing through scenic farmland that it's hard to imagine can exist in a country so densely populated, but it does. Some of Greg's ancestors were farmers from this region (specifically, Holstein), and he said it reminded him of Missouri, where he grew up, which happens to be where they settled.
In Lübeck, Ulf told us there are seven churches, of which we saw at least a few, plus the two surviving city gates
Holstentor (1478) and
Burgtor (1444), plus the amazing
Heiligen-Geist-Hospital (Holy Ghost Hospital) built in 1286. 1286! Over the centuries it was converted from a dormitory-style residence for the poor and the sick (cared for by
Memorial bells
Left exactly where they fell in the bombing of 1942. To the left is a "nail cross" sent by the citizens of Coventry, UK. monks) to a warren of tiny, semi-private cubicles for elderly nursing/retirement home patients. The entryway is an ornate church, intended for use by the residents.
Finally, no visit to Lübeck can be considered complete without paying respects at the
marzipan shrine. Lübeckers didn't invent marzipan—that honor goes to Persia, Turkey, and/or Al-Andalus in Spain—but once they
Columbused it they set about perfecting it.
Niederegger is the definitive marzipan shop, where we wallowed in and were befuddled by all the choices, until everyone came away with the desserts they wanted.
This was a delightful, but also frustrating, day for me and Greg. We're both in pretty seriously awful physical shape, and our long-term plans/hopes/dreams to fix the situation don't help us at the moment. There was never any question about postponing the vacation, though, so before we left we had numerous heart-to-heart talks about how much all the walking, stair-climbing, and worst of all
strolling was going to suck for both of us and how we'd do our best to support each other and try to draw some motivation from it. Indeed, strolling and looking at beautiful and fascinating things is about the worst thing we can do in
Creepy!
I took several photos of this damaged skull icon and this one turned out red for no reason. terms of foot-, knee-, hip-, back-, and psyche-pain. I hadn't really reckoned on how additionally much I was going to hate slowing down everyone else in the family. That was awful, so in some ways we're going to be relieved to be venturing off on our own at our own pace, a sad one but far better than not traveling to Europe at all!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.161s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 13; qc: 58; dbt: 0.0893s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
J&J
non-member comment
Marzipan
It has a heavy taste of almond paste, from what I remembered. It is wonderful to craft into shapes for cake decorations. What kind of cake did you get? They all look scrumptious!