Northern Germany - July 2003

Trip to Northern Germany

July 2003

Since Rita had surgery planned in August and I would be tied to the office because of staffing gaps in my section over the summer, we decided rather last minute to get away while the opportunity allowed.  I looked at my various maps and decided on northern Germany because our Michelin Green Guide has several two and three star sights in that area that we haven’t visited and because my great-great-grandfather, Ernst August Franke, had left Travemunde for Russia in about 1830.  I write this over a month later so my recall of events may be affected by poor memory.  I keep a diary so that will be my source of this write up.



On Friday, July 18, I took off work a couple of hours early and we headed out before the road traffic became too crowded.  We headed north to Antwerp and then east to Eindhoven into Germany.  Rita, as my naviguesser, maneuvered us around the industrial areas of Duisberg and Moers.  There isn’t much scenery to speak of in this area.  We finally left autobahns and were on a back road when we were overcome by hunger.  We stopped at the Hotel Humbert in the small village of Dorstin in Westphalia.  The hotel has been around since 1823 and had a nice outdoor garden where we sat and started with a local Veltin beer.  I wasn’t very impressed with the beer but dinner was better.  We ordered a Westphalia schnitzel, a tender pork cutlet covered in scrambled eggs with a side dish of home fried potatoes with ham chunks.  It looked more like breakfast but tasted good but not low fat by any means.  We did have a side salad, too.



We then continued on to Munster and checked into our Movenpick Hotel situated near a city park on a nice lake.  We walked to the lake and had a very pleasant evening watching the people and their dogs around the lake.  It was very warm and the hotel, as most European hotels, was not air conditioned so we did not sleep all that well.



Saturday was clear, sunny, and increasingly warm.  We checked out of our hotel and drove into central Munster, parked the car and walked to the city center and the Dom or cathedral.  There was a huge Saturday market in the Dom Platz surrounding the cathedral with some great produce, meats and cheeses.  We walked into the cathedral but there was a service going on so we did not wander around inside.  We walked to what is called the Prinzipalmarkt, which is a semicircle street around the Dom with nice shops, the beautiful Rathaus, historical Renaissance houses and the Lambert church with iron steeple.  It was in the Lambertkirche that the bodies of the three Anabaptist leaders (chiefs of a sect advocating baptism for adults only) were exhibited after the movement was crushed in 1536.  Then we walked back to the car and headed on the main autobahn towards Breman, Hamburg, and our destination, Lubeck. 



We arrived in Lubeck in the afternoon and checked into another Movenpick hotel.  We were soon on foot and our first stop was the Holstentor, a 15^th century gate into the old town.  The 14^th century saw Lubeck at its summit as head of the Hanseatic League, the Dutch and northern German cities that monopolized trade with Scandinavia and Russia.  It was a wealthy town and many of the old buildings still stand today after several wars.  We walked to the Rathaus and the main cathedral, Marienkirche.  Inside there is a section where the huge bells remain as they fell from the bell tower in an Allied air raid in 1942.  We walked to Jakobkirche and looked in – we couldn’t go in as there was an organ concert in progress and we were too late to buy tickets.  Across the street we saw the Haus der Schiffergesellschaft or House of the Seamen’s Guild.  It is a pretty, old building which is a nice restaurant now.  We went inside and looked at the old ceilings with models of old ships hanging from the rafters.  We walked around the corner and saw the 13^th century Heilingen Geist (Holy Ghost) Hospital and sat at an outdoor café to drink a local Jerves beer in the shade.  We could hear the organ concert from Jakobkirche.  We walked back to our hotel, changed clothes and drove to Travemunde, just a short distance away.



Travemunde is a port city at the western end of the Baltic Sea and has a lot of ferryboat traffic, especially from Finland.  Today, Travemunde is a seaside resort town and, because it was hot, it was filled with German tourists seeking sun and sand.  It was considerably cooler with a nice sea breeze.  We parked at the biggest hotel in town, the Maritim Hotel, where I had called earlier for reservations at their restaurant.  We sat on a terrace with a great view of the Baltic Sea full of small sailboats and the occasional Finnish ferryboat.  We had a very nice dinner of fresh flounder (called plaice in England and scholle in German – who says travel isn’t educational?) and finished with ice cream sundaes.  We waited until sun set, which is very late this far north, and then walked down to the boardwalk, or promenade as they call it, but it was too crowded with the younger set covered in tattoos and body piercing.  It wasn’t our style.  We drove back to our hotel with a slightly cooler room than the night before in Munster.



Sunday morning Rita said she had dreamed (perhaps?) that a bird or bat had tried to enter our window in the night and she got up to close it.  Nevertheless we slept better anyway and after a big breakfast brunch we checked out and were away mid morning.  We changed plans and decided to skip Hamburg this time around and instead visit some smaller towns recommended by our guidebook.  Hamburg will have to wait for another time.



We drove south on pretty back roads to Ratzeburg, which sits on an island in the middle of a lake.   We drove into the city and back alleys of this pretty town with a 12^th century cathedral overlooking the lake.  Next we drove through the pretty town of Lauenburg on the Elbe River to Luneburg, our first stop.  Luneburg was built on a salt deposit and was a very prosperous town from the 10^th century onwards.  In the Middle Ages it was the principal supplier of salt to many places, notably Scandinavia.  The salt road went from Luneburg through Lauenburg, Ratzeburg, and on to Lubeck.  The traditional architecture of Luneburg is “distinguished by stepped and scrolled gables, cornices with rounded or tiercepoint blind arcades, and the ‘Tausteine’ – a local twisted brick feature producing an effect like a cable switch.”  I couldn’t describe it better.  Look at our photos on our website to get a better idea.



It was hot but we walked through a good part of Luneburg and saw the pretty Rathaus, Old Town with a pharmacy that dates from 1598, St. Johanniskirche with a steeple deliberately inclined to counter the strong winds from the west, and the old port quarter with a 14^th century crane on the river bank.  Along the riverfront were several outdoor cafes and we stopped for a drink where I had a dark Duckstein beer, which tasted good in the heat.  We were happy to get back into the air-conditioned car and head south through what is called the Luneburger Heide or Heath.  This is sparsely populated area with forests and heaths that are designated nature reserves by the government.  We drove through Amelinghausen to Celle where we parked the car again and went on foot.



Celle is a pretty town with colorful crow-stepped house fronts dating back to the 1500s.  Most of the houses had the names of the husband and wife painted on the front and the year they married or at least built their house.  It was sort of a genealogical record.  Our timing was good as there was a major, regional festival starting today in town.  It was a shooting festival (schutzenfest) with gun clubs from all the neighboring villages converging for a parade to kick off the festival.  Men and women were in traditional German costumes and while they didn’t carry any weapons, they were bedecked with dozens of medals hanging from their coats.  Some of the shooters looked as if they could have participated in World War II.  After the parade we walked around town some and bought an ice cream cone to battle the heat.  Then we returned to the car and the road.



We didn’t have any hotel reservations so we planned to just drive through Hanover to Hameln but while stuck in a traffic jam outside of Hanover we looked at our books and found a Marriott Courtyard hotel in Hanover with air conditioning.  I called them on my cell phone and confirmed the air conditioning before making reservations for the night.  We navigated to their hotel on a large city lake in a park.  We checked in then walked to a nearby beer garden on the lake and had large steins of beer in the shade of the trees.  Clouds gathered and we expected rain, maybe a storm, but nothing materialized.  It stayed hot and we had a so-so meal in the hotel restaurant.  The air conditioning felt good and we slept very well.



Monday was the Belgian National Day so our Embassy was closed in Brussels and we enjoyed a three-day weekend.  We had another good, large breakfast buffet and then headed to Hameln, the town of the famous pied piper story.  The town has capitalized on this and there is a walk though the town with rats painted on the cobblestone streets.  Rats dominate the shop windows of toy stores, souvenir shops and all kinds of stores.  There are some pretty houses and squares in town but a short walk and Rita’s back was giving her pain so we were ready to leave.



We headed south on scenic back roads through the upper Weser River valley, which is heavily wooded and somehow skipped by major industrialization.  We drove through Corvey and Hoxter to Furstenberg where we stopped to view the porcelain factory.  Unfortunately it was closed on Mondays.  We did see some shops open across the street but Rita didn’t find anything she had to have.  We stopped for lunch in the pretty town of Bad Karlshafen, which had mostly white buildings with a pretty swan-filled pond in the middle of town.  We had bratwurst, frites and beer for lunch.  Rita had a good Berliner Weiss.  We continued on to the town of Hannoversch Munden and the city of Kassel.  We didn’t stop in Kassel as we were running behind time.  I wanted to at least see the town, as this is where the brothers Grimm, Jakob and Wilhelm, lived from 1805 to 1830, the same time my great-great-grandfather mentions he traveled through town.  You’ll remember the brothers Grimm from the Grimm’s Fairy Tales book.



We re-entered the autobahns once more and headed west through Dortmund, Koln, Achen, Liege and finally made it to Brussels late in the day.  We were hot, sweaty and tired but thoroughly enjoyed our visit to northern Germany.