Lübeck Altstadt

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Today we ventured out to Lübeck, which is about an hour northeast of Hamburg by train. Lübeck still has its medieval center, ringed by a canal and two of its four gates still standing and in use.

We made our way to Hamburg's Hauptbahnhof (main train station) via two buses and the S-bahn, which is akin to our light rail, although not so light and much more heavily used. After getting some cash from the Bankomat, we were able to purchase Fahrkarten for the train from the machines, which only took cash or something called a "Eurocard", which we did not have. I also had the privilege of paying 2 Euro to use the Pissoir, which is exactly what it looks like and actually what they call it. Luckily, we got word from Andrea that she would be able to take the rest of the day off of work and join us, so we waited a bit at the station, and we were on our way to Lübeck.

Once outside the Hamburg metro area, the train ride took us through largely rural countryside, which reminded me a lot of home-where-I-grew-up (unsurprising, as I would suspect that might be the reason German immigrants ended up settling where they did). Eventually, the sound of the train and warm sun lulled me into a twilight sleep and then the train ride was over and we had arrived at the Lübeck Hauptbahnhof. After disembarking and a little bit of walking we found ourselves at the Holstentor, one of the surviving gates to the city. The inscription above the gate reads "Concordia domi foris pax", which is Latin for (loosely) "Harmony within, peace without". I found the gate to be pretty impressive, as did Tiny Beethoven.

Beyond the gate is the Altstadt (old city), with numerous old buildings and narrow streets and mountains of "old world charm". We walked towards the historischer Markt Lübeck, and Joe and Ulf stopped at the T-Mobile store to deal with Joe's non-working SIM card for his phone, and then we had Wurst at the Markt. After a bunch of photographs, we went to Marienkirche, which we spent quite a bit of time exploring. St. Mary's is an old church and has been rebuilt and expanded many times over the years. In its current incarnation, largely rebuilt after the war, it looks mostly Gothic to me, right down to the flying buttresses. It occurred to Cheryl and me that the beauty of the church followed the engineering; that most of the interesting features of the church were primarily necessary building techniques. Lübeck was bombed in the war, and St. Mary's did not escape. Inside the church is a display of a broken bell, one of the bells which fell from the belltower through the roof. There is also a large astronomical clock, and a couple of plaques about Dieterich Buxtehude, an important musician from the baroque period, and one whom one Johann Sebastian Bach came to hear at St. Mary's in 1705, when he was about 20 years old.

Next, we went to Heiligen-Geist-Hospital, which looked to me like a cross between a church and an old folks home, which turns out to be pretty much exactly what it is. It's a very old building, originally founded in 1226, which I understand is a very long time ago.

We stopped for Eis (ice cream) at a charming shop where we had our desserts outside in their little courtyard. Laura had the ever-popular Spaghetti Eis, which actually does look like spaghetti (with a strawberry or raspberry sauce for the spaghetti sauce) and is very tasty. All four of the Seattle adults had the Eierlikör Becher, which is a giant sundae with egg liqueur (think eggnog, except a liqueur), also quite tasty. We lingered a bit (the Seattleites' feet were starting to be a bit sore by this time), and then headed to the Burgtor, the other surviving city gate.

The Burgtor was another impressive structure which also gave us a glimpse into what the city walls must have looked like. I expressed the belief that the wall must have been not a wall against war, but rather to "keep the rabble out", to which Ulf responded "Commerce", which made sense because you need a wall and gates to enforce entry fees and tariffs and such; merchants are unlikely to attack the city, but they'll certainly bypass the gates if there is an easy way to do so.

At some point in the tour, Ulf led us down a street where he was trying to find some entrances to something called Gangs, which he explained were hidden courtyards where the poorer people were secreted away so that the rich people traveling to the city didn't have to see them. Ironically, these houses and flats are now quite expensive. So, yay, gentrification!

We had one more "must-see", which was the Niederegger Marzipan shoppe. Now, I was expecting a big shop where one could purchase many kinds of marzipan, which ended up being the case. However, we had an additional surprise: they had many models displayed in their windows, all of which were made of marzipan. Sadly, my presence of mind was largely missing by this time, and I took no photographs (Cheryl did get some, though, so if you look at her blag or her Facebook, you'll find plenty, I'm sure). They had models of all of seven of the church spires, and the Holstentor in the main window. On the side of their building they had many other famous landmarks among which were Big Ben, the Eiffeltur, the (leaning) tower of Pisa (which did indeed lean).

After we made all of our purchases, we started to make our way back to the Hauptbahnhof to head back to Hamburg.

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Photos

Tiny Beethoven on the Train
Who doesn't enjoy a train ride? Tiny Beethoven, that's who.

Holstentor from Afar
A low angle view of Holsentor from afar.

Marienkirche Astronomical Clock
This clock was fascinating. It had a hand for which constellation the sun was in, and one for the moon, with the moon indicating the current phase of the moon. It was way cool.

The Toll of War
This is one of the bells which fell through the roof of Marienkirche during the bombing.

Comments

[J&J]

Fantastic gates!
Thanks for the details of your adventures. I looked up the words to get more history and learned a lot more about the beauty of the towns! Wished we had more like it here in the USA. Happy Independence Day!