{"id":3625,"date":"2019-06-23T20:00:59","date_gmt":"2019-06-23T20:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/?p=3625"},"modified":"2019-06-24T13:54:18","modified_gmt":"2019-06-24T13:54:18","slug":"day-28-sunday-june-23-2019-the-schleswig-holstein-lake-district","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/2019\/06\/23\/day-28-sunday-june-23-2019-the-schleswig-holstein-lake-district\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 28, Sunday, June 23, 2019: The Schleswig-Holstein Lake District"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The boat that took us on our 2-hour tour of the Grosse Pl\u00f6ner See.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The town and castle of Pl\u00f6n from the lake.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A 500-year old oak on the grounds of the former Benedictine convent at Preetz. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The convent’s church at Preetz.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After our day at the seaside yesterday, this day was our Lake District day. Even thought the state we are in (Schleswig-Holstein) has plenty of ocean water surrounding it (the Atlantic on the West, the Baltic on the East, with only a hundred or so miles of land in between), it is also full of lakes. The district we are in right now alone has 60, of which 5 of them fairly large (although the largest, the Grosse Pl\u00f6nsee with its 30 square kilometers (under 12 square miles) is not exactly one of the Great Lakes. But the landscape, shaped by the ice age, is gorgeous and the lakes are all very pretty, with little towns and villages and boat docks all along, and bird sanctuaries in between. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, after breakfast and a somewhat slow-moving legal conversation we needed to get through, we went on our tour of the lakes and their district. First, we drove to Pl\u00f6n, a town right at the water front about 20 minutes from J & M\u2018s house, and walked around the town with its beautiful former palace\/seat of the regents of the area (now a school for opticians run by Germany\u2018s largest manufacturer of glasses), the Schloss, its old red-brick church and its beautiful little houses and shops. We had a cup of coffee and tasted some cake Judith and Michael thought was especially good, and then wandered to the lakeside and bought tickets for a 2-hour boat ride. It was getting warm but it was still cool enough for us to sit on the top deck in the bright sunshine and watch the coastline as the boat maneuvered through various little islands (Michael calls them mole hills, but their are green, either with shrubs or actually little wooded areas with mature trees). We went past the so-called Island of the Princes, a peninsula famous for the fact that the sons of Germany\u2018s next-to-last emperor were educated there, from 1896 to 1910, after military high school, to learn about agriculture and water management. (This is the kind of information that came from the tape that the captain of the tour boat played at the appropriate moments). Just past this island, we briefly saw a sea eagle on one of the trees\u2014too far away to photograph, sadly\u2014and then also quite a large colony of white swans, more than I have ever seen in one spot.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond that, the lake tour was mostly just little stops at various small villages and a beautiful, slo-mo view of the beautiful landscape surrounding us. After about 2 hours, we got off at a stop near Pl\u00f6n and then walked the rest of the way back to town along the lakeside, in the shade of the trees that line most of it. Very nice. By now it was after 3:00 pm, and I was getting hungry (or at least had a sugar low). We drove to another nearby town J & M knew well, and went to a jack-of-all-trades \u201einternational cuisine\u201c restaurant, since Judith and Michael knew that they had thick-crust pizza that was actually very good. So I had a lovely calzone (as did Michael) and Mark a pizza (as did Judith), with Imke sampling a tomato salad, everything very fresh and yummy, and then we strolled across a flea market on the main square that was slowly nearing its end. We didn\u2018t end up buying anything, but it\u2018s always fun to see what people are selling! We left after checking out a very lavish former Benedictine convent with the usual imposing brick church and 20+ outbuildings that varied in style from \u201ecountry house\u201c to neoclassical temple, and a beautiful old oak that Michael estimated to be at least 500 years old, given its size. We then returned to J & M\u2018s apartment for a little while to rest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then the two drove us to our train station, Neum\u00fcnster, where we all had gelato for dinner (since lunch was at 4 pm, that seemed appropriate), and by 7:30 we were on our train back to Osnabr\u00fcck, with a short stop-over in Hamburg. Unfortunately, we had a huge delay in Hamburg (70 minutes for an ICE is a lot!) and so we were not really on our way until way after 9:30, and finally in Osnabr\u00fcck at midnight, just at the right time to catch the last bus to Imke\u2018s house! We were good and tired. Nonetheless: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What a great weekend, and such wonderful times with both my sister and my mother. I can\u2018t believe how great the weather was\u2014it was supposed to be significantly colder, but a) it was perfect for our excursions, and b) the lack of clouds made it seem much warmer than it was. So we were all actually grateful for the lower temperatures, especially since it is gearing up to be very hot again in Germany\u2014beyond the extent of what is usual in Germany. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After our day at the seaside yesterday, this day was our Lake District day. Even thought the state we are in (Schleswig-Holstein) has plenty of ocean water surrounding it (the Atlantic on the West, the Baltic on the East, with only a hundred or so miles of land in between), it is also full of … Continue reading “Day 28, Sunday, June 23, 2019: The Schleswig-Holstein Lake District”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2019italy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3625"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3627,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3625\/revisions\/3627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zjunk.net\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}