Blogs from Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, Europe - page 2

The day started off badly. The hotel cleaning crew in Berlin had taken away E..'s survival gear that had been left in a plastic bag beside the garbage bin. A few frantic phone calls to reception followed by some discussions with the supervisor of the cleaning crew ensued. We were told that a new staff member was being trained, and received lots of apologies and the cleaning person remembered taking the bag. He went searching in the hotel basement and voila! found the bag. Whew! Instead of chocolates, they served nuts on the train. None of this no nuts stuff that planes now use to shovel cheap pretzels your way. A quick change of trains at Hamburg and onto Kiel. Our friend G.. and his daughter were at the station to greet us. She had even ... read more

Photos from the previous blog are now up too! Well I've now arrived in Lubeck, a beautiful city indeed (thanks lonely planet) on a warm and sunny and yes windy day! The wind if anything is getting stronger, and today I had a gentle (?!) 30 miler in the morning to get here. Actually most of the way was a very nice ride following the route of an old railway line through gently undulating countryside (note even gently undulating is tough on a fully loaded tourer) with deer and rabbits frolicking in the grass either side and huge wheat fields everywhere, and almost as huge farmhouses at all the villages on the way. Well it may sound like everything has gone completely smoothly since yesterday, but not quite! Firstly having left Gluckstadt with the ambition to ... read more

The day II in Hamburg & Lübeck. Today's target: Hamburg! We took an U-bahn (Metro train) from Ahrensburg to Hamburg because it was the most convenient way of travelling to downtown Hamburg. It took about 40 minutes to get to downtown Hamburg. The city of Hamburg lies at the junction of the River Elbe with the Rivers Alster and Bille. The city center lies around two lakes, the Binnenalster ("Inner Alster") and the Aussenalster ("Outer Alster"). We started out by visiting....Lego store! Surprise! It was a nice big store with all sorts of Lego toys and things. Daniela-the-Lego-fan bought a blue Lego man T-shirt. We others just shopped with our eyes. Our official first visiting place was Hamburg Rathaus. What a building! We heard later that it holds one room more than the Buckingham Palace...and not ... read more

I am so lucky to be able to travel off the beaten path. Today, though the usual mix of a little bit of sun, lots of heavy clouds and intermittent downpours my hosts, Horst and Waltraud Junglaus from Hamburg offered to drive us( my friend Val and I) to Travemunde and Lübeck. First, we stopped to see some of the ships ( mostly ferries) from Sweden and Finland unload their cargo of trucks. It was like watching Lucy and Ethel by the conveyor belt except these weren't chocolates rolling steadily downhill but truck after truck after truck. These trucks brings good into Germany and then they are transported all over Europe. It was fascinating to watch. We continued on the seaside resort town of Travemunde. There are great walking and biking trails that go on for ... read more