Lüneburg-Lübeck-Flensburg

Joan and I planned our holiday this year in three small German cities that she had never visited. The first was Lüneburg, where I had stayed one night on my way somewhere (I no longer remember where) in the early 1970s. The town is on the river Ilmenau with sailing boats and open-air restaurants along the embankment. Our hotel was in the older part of the city near the Rathaus, a tourist attraction that was mostly closed for repairs. We walked through a park that (we think) was part of the old fortifications and visited a church that had a complete second nave and altar in the basement. In talking with one of the staff, we also learned that a “Vikar” in the Evangelische Kirche is not a substitute Rector, but a person who has completed theology training at the university and needs a period of practical training before becoming a Pastor. In the US Episcopal church the equivalent would be a transitional deacon.

On the second day we rented bicycles and rode out to the Rote Schleusen, where we ate at a restaurant that came from an older world. The menu was offered verbally -- full dinners only. After some negotiation, the waitress allowed us to eat only soup and salad (cost 9€ per person). Every new guest greeted other diners, us included.. Below is a photo of Joan along the bike path.

The train to Lübeck was unexpectedly crowded. Some people ended up standing after the final stops. Our hotel was in an old mansion that had been completely renovated. The ground floor had an Argentine restaurant. from which the smell of steak wafted into the upper floor every evening -- attractive for meat eaters, less so for us. Happily the smell did not penetrate our room. The hotel (photo below) also had a pleasant outdoor bar on the city mill pond. A city beach and swimming area for children was on the other side of the water.

Lübeck has two art museums, one in the old St. Annen Cloister, which mainly had medieval works, and the other in the Dräger and Behnhaus museum (the two houses have been joined), which had 19^th and early 20^th century works, including Lovis Corinth portraits of his wife and of his 15 year old daughter and wood-block prints by Edvard Munch (Dr. Linde, an eye-doctor who lived in Lübeck, was one of Munch's patrons). Below is a photo of the Grönaur Altar (Flandern about 1430) from St. Annen Cloister.

On Sunday evening we heard an organ concert by a young Japanese performer, who played a set of older works on an historic portable organ, and then a 19^th century piece on a very new looking organ with shiny silver (or steel) pipes, a group of which projected toward the listeners like a choir of angels.

The restaurant options in Lübeck were broad. Our favorite was an Italian restaurant near the Cathedral, where on our last night I delighted in a Spaghetti Aglio e Olio with flecks of hot pepper. We had drinks several times at a “jazz” cafe, which had particularly good wine (less good food), and at a Viennese Cafe, whose Austrian wine selection was perhaps genuine but not much to my taste. We ate our breakfasts and most of our lunches at a bakery called Stadtbäckerei Junge, which not only had excellent Brötchen (including Danish Brötchen that were flaky like croissants -- not something I had ever seen in Denmark) and sandwiches with pesto, arugula, and hard cheese.

Flensburg was our last stop. Our hotel was convenient, pleasant, and modern, but located at the entrance to a large parking garage that made it less than picturesque. We intended to cycle along the coast, but could not find a bike that Joan could easily get on and off of without major athletic endeavors (I find the stretch to get on a standard man's bike increasingly hard too), so we decided to have a walking tour instead. This was probably a good idea, since the area is fairly hilly. Our plan originally was to walk up to the little sailing ship harbor at the point where the inlet turns east, but a security guard would not let us take the path marked as public on our map, so we turned back just short of our goal.  Below is a photo of Joan with the city and harbor in the background.

Maps of Flensburg show a pedestrian-only street and it is long, but about a third of what is marked seems open to cars. That part was also significantly less prosperous than the walking area. Perhaps the map shows what is planned, not what is.

We could not get seats on the ICE (Inter City Express train) back from Flensburg to Berlin, so we took the IC instead, which was only a little slower, but less comfortable. We had the good luck that we had a compartment to ourselves most of the time and could spread out. Otherwise the space was cramped. The train car looked as if it must have been in service during my student days and smelled of decades of strong cleaning fluid. The train did arrive on time, which is not always the case in Germany today.