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Published: April 25th 2006
We began our German trip by venturing into mountains into thick snow and mist (reminded us of the High Sierras last year) before dropping down into Baden Baden, about which Eugene Guinot said in 1845 “….In Europe there are two capitals, Paris for the winter and Baden Baden for the summer”. We could understand his sentiments and what a place to start our exploration of Germany. We stayed the night and spent the next morning wandering through the picturesque town before driving to Heidelberg.
As we entered Germany just above the Swiss border and were to meet our friend Torsten and his family in Leer near the Dutch border in northern Germany in two days it meant a lot of time on autobahns in the land of Formula 1 driving. The speed takes some getting used to as cars fly past at over 200 kph and you just better not be in their way! 130 km’s is normal in the slow lane. The police interrupt radio broadcasts to give updates (in German of course) about the traffic delays. This wasn’t much use to us when we got stuck south of Dortmund but then it didn’t seem to help any of
the Germans who were stuck alongside us.
We realized that towns beginning with “Bad” were spa towns and tended to be in picturesque, often in the mountains and away from the flat areas and in keeping with our theme, were on lovely streams. After a night in the mountains at Bad Berleburg near Siegen we continued north and at short notice got the car into a Citroen dealer at Oldenberg for its 1000km service, before meeting up with Torsten and his family. It was lovely to spend time with them and to see Leer, Emden, Oldenberg and Bremen. On leaving Torsten it was a relatively short drive to Ooersdorf just north of Hamburg to catch up with Deanna and Gerd and to stay with their friends Karin and Herbert.
After all that travel I called a lay day for our first full day in Ooersdorf. It is an attractive rural area close to a larger town. Spring is coming and each day there are more little green shoots in the gardens and fields nearby. We’ve seen deer, rabbits and lots of birdlife and have made friends with Santos, the largest dog imaginable belonging to Karin and Herbert’s daughter
Katrine. She also has a massive collection of those Kinder surprises that you still can buy at the supermarket I think. The most valuable one is a Smurf which is worth 1000 euro’s (about $1500)!
Wolf and Gisella’s house is close by Karin’s and it is a grand example of the local building style with an amazing thatched roof. There are not many thatched roofs remaining and we were lucky enough to see visit the home and to have a close look at the thatch and the garden. The trees are still bare and the patterns made by the different species are wonderful to look at. With our mainly evergreen trees this is something we rarely can see.
You can’t come to north Germany without being acutely aware of water. The impact of the sea, the rivers, the rainfall, the canals and the high water table are obvious. In Leer we saw peat bogs and a well with a tap to water the garden (at Torsten’s parents home). In Emden we drove alongside a massive canal where huge ships are built and launched and they said it when a ship is on the canal it looks as if
is floating through the landscape. Near Lubeck we saw a mini Gold Coast with strands and tourist towns that would be crowded all summer.
For water hungry Aussies these scenes are quite remarkable and we were not surprised to learn that Hamburg has more bridges than Venice. We walked through the Fischmarkts and along the quay on the morning of the Hamburg marathon and joined in with the crowds to cheer the runners on. Unfortunately the marathon meant the Rathaus (town hall) was closed and as Gerd assures us it is something unreal we will have to return sometime to see it. Hamburg is over 100 kms from the North Sea yet has massive docks, countless container gantries and continuous water traffic in one of the largest ports in the world. All this was topped off by the arrival of the Freedom of the Seas on its maiden voyage whilst we were there. It is the largest cruise ship in the world with capacity for 4370 passengers and 1360 crew. It has an ice rink and a surf pool on board and it dwarfed the city when it arrived and filled the basin when they turned it around.
The North Sea Canal is 100 km long and goes from Cuxhaven to the Baltic Sea at Kiel. This canal stops ships having to sail around Denmark to access major ports in the north. We crossed it by bridge near Kiel and at Rendsburg we took the car across it on a swinging platform (the Putney punt on wires!) below a rail bridge. When the Queen Mary came through this section it had to lower its funnels to get under the bridge and as each ship passes they pay the national anthem of the country of the ship’s origin.
The other water link in the north is the Wikingers (Vikings to us) who through their seafaring skills reached almost all points of the known world between AD800-1100. We went to Hedeby (Northern Europe’s largest town during the Viking period) to the museum, with its Viking boat and village restorations. To overcome long sea journeys the Vikings also used rivers, canals and manpower to move between the seas and the paths they chose foreshadowed many of the modern canals.
On an astronomical note we visited reproductions of the Globus House in Schleswig, a reconstruction of the first globe created
for Freidrich 3 in 1650 and an astronomic clock in St Mary’s in Lubeck that replicates one from 1561.
On Wednesday we leave our Northern German hosts and drive to Berlin where we will spend the next week.
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Ross and helen
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WOW!
We are enthralled with your vivid description of Germany. Being a Beckhouse from Weisbaden ( 175 years ago) I have a yen to see more of Germany. but Japan will do very nicely thank you. Happy travels Ross