Road Trip - Germany, Part One - Lubeck

Classic Lubeck Architecture

Why Germany and why Lubeck? Well one thing I've come to accept and appreciate as I've got older is that not everything has to be rationalised and explained to the nth degree, if it feels good and nobody is getting hurt in the process don't think about it too deeply.

Lubeck has fascinated me since I saw a documentary by Jonathan Meades a few years ago which featured the town, this stirred the interest in Germany that had been started by a paternal Grandfather who had been in both Leipzig (of which more later) and Dresden during and after the war. One of the two physical items that were left to me when he died were a boxed collection of classical music and a hardback book called simply Germany, which was part of the Sunday Times World Library series. The book, published in 1962, shows the past not only to be another country but almost another planet. It's strange reading it some fifty years after it was written to see that the German stereotypes of hard work and seriousness were prevalent back then.

The attraction of Lubeck was twofold, firstly the buildings but secondly the historical interest, the Hanseatic League of which Lubeck was the centre. The Hanseatic League, of which London was also a key member, is an important part of European history and something that can be seen in many ways as the template for the Common Market before it grew into the hideously grotesque, self aggrandising behemoth that is the EU. Incidentally the word Sterling, which is used today to identify our collective currency, arises from the era of the Hansa towns English traders identified those merchants from what is now Poland and the Baltic States as being 'easterlings'.

I stayed in a hotel close to the railway and bus stations and about two hundred yards from the bridge that connects modern Lubeck with the old historical Altstadt. Lubeck is the only town I have ever visited where there was a building of architectural interest around every corner, in fact the only other place I have visited that comes close is Paris. The town has five of the best architecturally designed churches in Germany including the Marienkirche (St.Mary's) which is probably the most impressive Gothic catherdral in Northern Europe outside of France. The classic Lubeck buildings have at least one of the following: staccato turrets, windholes, leaning sides and of course the famed Renaissance gables which usually serve only one purpose which is the equivalent of a building puffing out its chest and saying look at me. The gables are almost excluively false and offer no structural support to the buildings to which they are attached.

As always with a trip abroad I was determined to try and speak the local language and I had some, albeit limited, success with my attempts at revising my Grade A 'O' Level German. The receptionist at the hotel on hearing my stuttering attempts said, "Ah good, you speak German, we will talk in German then," and we did. The first waitress I spoke to in the restaurant I chose on the first night thought I was Dutch and then apologised before speaking to me in English. There was so much to see in my three days, including a visit to the Baltic coast at Boltenhagen and a museum of the inner German border at Schlagsdorf, that the initial sense was one of being overwhelmed. The great thing about Lubeck is that you don't need a car to enjoy it all, the Altstadt is on an island and can be walked around easily enough.

The one thing I hadn't planned for in Germany at Easter was the fact that unlike at home in Blighty the shops would be closed. On Good Friday all the shops remained closed all day, the only places open before noon were two Turkish cafes and two bakeries, once 1 p.m had passed restaurants and cafes opened, although even then most remained closed.

My first (and it must be said last) impressions of Germany were of a clean, well organised, law abiding country. The country which gave the world the Motor Car now sees the pedestrian as king. Just as in the States jaywalking is illegal, this has two immediate consequences. Firstly if you walk anywhere near a pedestrian crossing any motor vehicle within about ten yards of you will stop and let you cross, the same rules are supposed to apply in France but in my experience if you tried stepping off the pavement in France before a car had stopped to allow you safe passage your next thought would be, "where did I leave the travel insurance policy?" The second thing was that at pelican crossings you must never cross if the man isn't 'green.' People will wait even though you can see about half a mile down a straight road which doesn't have a car on it rather than stepping off the pavement, this is because apparently in Germany jaywalking is not only an offence punishable by law if caught it is also socially acceptable, the one time I did see somebody cross under a red it got the evils from everybody who saw him.

Left to right: Marienkirche, The Holstentor and Petrikirche

The Holstentor in the photograph above really does lean in on itself, this is a result of it having been built using wooden piles on a very dodgy subsoil. The two main parts of the building, those with the turrets on, were used to store salt that was traded between the Hanseatic towns. The Marienkirche (St.Mary's Church) on the left as you look is the third biggest church in Germany, it was the first church outside of France to be built on Gothic lines and as such became the blueprint for several similar designed churches in Northern Germany. The building was all but destroyed by the RAF in 1942 and miraculously, I use that word as I can still remember bomb damaged parts of London well into the 1970's, it's rebuilding was completed by 1959.

View of Lubeck skyline from middle of river

On Good Friday afternoon I took an hour long river cruise which took us down the river and then around the town. The commentary was in German (naturally) and I could only grasp bits of it, the cereal factory used to make breakfast cereals, the brewery, the Swedish church. The boat turned and stopped in the middle of the river so that we could see the skyline and the five churches that dominate it. The commentary at this point was interesting because it was explained that the bombing of Lubeck, Hamburg and Dresden by the RAF was in retaliation to the bombing of Coventry, London and other English towns, I don't know why but this struck me as being refreshingly honest.

I was grateful for having taken my Chris Brasher walking boots because once I get started I just can't stop and the best way to see any town or city is on foot and boy did I make my feet suffer on this trip. On the Saturday I went north-east to the seaside resort of Boltenhagen, which was in East Germany from 1945-1989, for the morning. I got the distinct impression that the residents of Boltenhagen hadn't seen a car with a British registration before as I was the subject of many glances and pointing of fingers, it was an experience that would get more surreal as the holiday went on, particularly when I arrived it Leipzig the following afternoon, but more of that later.