It had rained overnight and looked a bit too gray for a day-long hike through a dark, forested area (which had been our original plan for the day), so we decided on the spur of the moment to take a day trip out of town to nearby Lübeck (45 minutes by train, on the same route that took us to the Baltic about two weeks ago). I had the somewhat fuzzy assumption that I’d been there before with Mark and seen at least some of the city, but it turned out we either did not go or I neither remembered nor recorded this–everything was brand new and quite beautiful. It is not surprising that this city–one of the earliest cities in the Hanse trade “collective” that connected the major trade cities of the Baltic and some on the Atlantic as well–is such a tourist attraction, although it was surprising how quiet it was compared, say, to Brügge in Belgium three weeks ago, on a beautiful Sunday. It has as many Unesco World Heritage sites and is quite as beautiful as Brügge (another city on the Hanse trade routes, at its very Western and Southern edge), so it may have just been a fluke. We were certainly happy to have explored it together!
First thing, Andrea went into a tourist info office to gather a route map and ordered me to guide us along the suggested path through the tourist part of town, which sits on an island in the Trave, the river which connected the town to the Baltic, and which, redirected, serves as the moat around the entire historic city center. We followed this red route, with a few little detours, starting at # 1, and had a great time:
Holstentor, one of the old city gates on the other side of the moat from the old town (from the outside); with historic salt silos to the rightHolstentor as seen from the cityThe 16th-century Salzspeicher, the old storage silos used for salt (and then other goods; now they house a clothing store and offices). Famously, they make an appearance in the German silent movie Nosferatu, which was otherwise filmed in a different medieval town further East that we have also visited (Wismar)Many old homes (with all kinds of façades) had passageways to inner courtyards. If you look closely, someone’s having breakfast in front of their apartment or vacation rental door)This little dragon with his baby was the store sign for a puppet storePeter’s last name is Petersen, so we loved this particular alley. “Petersens Gang” does not mean Petersen’s GANG but Petersen’s WalkwayOn the stairs up to Lübeck CathedralThe towers of Lübeck Cathedral (at the North end of the Old Town), a medieval church with many historical layers, but much of it reconstructed after it was destroyed during a bombing in 1942.In the cathedral, an organist was practicing for a concert later that day, and the church was filled with the sounds of this enormous (modern) organ. (The very famous Schnitger organ that was historically here was destroyed in 1942.)The lions under the sarcophagus were clearly unhappy with their load. I especially liked the claws. The origin story of claw-footed bathtubs is a coffin? A view of the interior of the Heiligen-Geist-Hospital, a combined church and poor house dating back to medieval times. Two rows of beds for men and women divided by a wall were replaced in the 19th century by individual cells for indigent people who needed medical care. Interior of an individual cell at Heiligen-Geist-HospitalBurgtor, at the North end of the island that forms the historic downtown.View from the bridge leading out of town by the Burgtor onto the Trave and the harbor Classic street view. Andrea and I decided that as Nothern Germans, we are hard-wired to love brick façades (as opposed to plaster) The towers of St. Mary’s Church, the medieval Gothic brick (“Backsteingotik”) cathedral that served as the model for many others in Northern Germany. View up the sides of St. Mary’sWe only took a brief peek into St. Mary’s, because they charged an entrance fee. You can see that the central area (the nave) has even higher vaults than the sides–the highest of any Gothic brick cathedral, at 60+ meters (180 feet). Between the brick houses are also some baroque plastered ones. This one is the most famous: the Buddenbrook house, where the family of the novelist Thomas Mann (1875-1955) lived when he was a child, and which served as his model for the family home described in his 1901 novel Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family. It is currently closed because it is being renovated.The view of the City Hall from the market square, with all its different layers. The wall with the three towers in back left (with the round holes) is the oldest part, remnant of a previous town hall from the early 15th century, but the towers are from the 1490s, and the wedding-cakey façades in front of it are a Renaissance addition. Most of the rest was originally also late-medieval but has been restored many times over. Another Renaissance bit attached to the medieval Rathaus in the 1580sProof that we visited Lübeck–at Café Junge with our “coffee to go”
On the town square by the Rathaus, we had coffee (we had an insignificant but restful and picturesque lunch break earlier) and then, just before we left, we got ourselves some ice cream right by the Holstentor before heading back home to Hamburg. That worked without a hitch, and we were home around 7:30, had a small rolls-and-cheese meal for a late dinner, and spent a bit more time poring over the photos Andrea and Mark had taken today. That was a lovely way to wrap up our excursion day!
