Lübeck, Hansestadt

We had breakfast at the hotel at around 8:45am. The original idea was to save time, but it was also very good. Perhaps the best yet, apart from not quite having the personal touch of the people in Bamberg, and having a table of noisy, probably Chinese women. It was a large room, but ignoring them was easier said than done.

Having seen some of the centre of town yesterday, we walked anti-clockwise around the town, starting in the greenery along the river, then we criss-crossed the town just being impressed by the buildings. One large church – St Giles (in English) – was not touched in WW2, so it still looked as it had in the early 1800s, and largely as it was in the 1600s, and parts might have been similar to the 1400s or even when it was built in brick in the 1200s. At some time in the distant past the inside was whitewashed, and in patches the old wall paintings are visible, but they have left that for future generations. It was one of the lesser churches - but this was in Luebeck, a city powerful enough for its army to defeat the armies of Denmark in a battle in around 1227.

Then the Cathedral, which was bright and huge. It was started at the same time as Notre Dame in Paris, and is still an engineering challenge. The 115m high towers are not straight. The right tower leans to the right (2m!) and the left to the left (1.8m), and both a bit forward (2m). When one looks at the other towers in the photos, none of them are straight, and it is not an optical illusion. There is no stone in the ground here, so the foundations must sit on clay. It also means they build with bricks and mortar, and the mortar weakens and cracks over time (as do some bricks). There were engineering displays in the Cathedral showing the age of the different area of brick, as well as the angles and cracks. They were almost as grand as the old altars and the 500 yo tombstones underfoot, and the bells at midday. Curiously, the cathedral's towers are not the city's highest, even though it was always the most important building for the pious. One of the other churches has a tower that is slightly higher after some age-old local political power struggle.

Lunch in a park by the river, then we walked around the other side of the town, saw Germany’s oldest station of the cross (12th C), and at 5:45 we met Wiebke.
Anne’s (and my) niece, Fiona, has a German partner, Philipp, who grew up in the middle of Germany. On the train yesterday Anne messaged Fiona and mentioned we were heading to Luebeck, as decided 12 hours earlier. It turns out that Philipp’s younger sister, Wiebke, lives in Lubeck, but is going away tomorrow. Many messages later, the arrangements worked and we met in a café at 5:45. It is a small world, as they say. Wiebke is lovely. She speaks wonderful English, having lived in NZ for a year, and being a teacher of English in primary school. It was nice to hear about her family, and all the dirt on her brother Philipp.

Dinner afterwards in a small Italian restaurant she recommended, and an early night.

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