Thursday, July 12, 2012

Luebeck

This past Thursday was our longest stretch of free time so far, from 2 pm (thurs.) until the Friday night opening of Nabucco the next day. So a few of us took the opportunity and traveled to a nearby town called Luebeck to explore some place other than Eutin while in Germany. Luebeck isn't considered a large city in Germany, but it is very old and has plenty of tourist attractions. The most famous thing about Luebeck, is St. Mary's cathedral, the oldest gothic church that inspired the "gothic" design of churches all over Europe. It was built between 1250-1350, and is very very tall. The story behind it is that the devil helped the human workers who were building the church, which is why it grew so tall so quickly, because he thought it was going to become a wine bar. Once he realized that it was being built to become a cathedral, he turned against the project and was going to start tearing it down. The workers stopped him and told him that the wine bar was going to be built right next to the church, and he seemed cool with that because lots of people whom had frequently visited such a place (the winebar) had come to see him.

It was almost eery being in the church, I'm not sure why but it was almost as if I could feel the hundreds of years of people who have passed through the church. The church is also famous because in 1942, during a church service, the bells at the back of the church came crashing down due to an English air bomb raid in World War II. The bell still lays where is landed as a remembrance of that time in history.

When walking into the city, there is one building that can not be missed. It is the city gate that has protected thousands of people throughout history. It also is a Museum in which you can walk up inside the gate and find out all kinds of interesting information, well if you can read German text that is. It was still interesting, some of it was in English, to have been inside this building that was so old and important to the city. There just aren't things like this in America because our country is so young and it has been very refreshing and educating about other histories of the world.

Then we visited my FAVORITE attraction.................the Marzipan store! Ok I'm not sure if it was my favorite, but it was the most delicious. They have marzipan potatoes (big, medium, and small sized) and other assorted vegetables. They have several types of fish and other sea food. They have the city gate, and the giant church.....basically every shape that you could ever want marzipan in, they have it! And we were so lucky, we walked in and about 7 minutes later they shut the doors to close the store. I might have cried if we didn't get to buy marzipan........I have been drooling for it since I got off the plane :)

Also while in Luebeck, we went on a wild goose chase. Calvin had read about a micro brewery in Leubeck that he was excited to visit, and it just so happened that our friends like to drink beer too so we decided to look for it. We decided that while trying to find the brewery we would also stops at things that looked interesting and shops that people may have wanted to enter (some people were looking to buy shoes......and not just me). So we have our map and we are casually walking around stopping to look here and there and taking photos................I found my European home

We can't find this brewery, we have walked all around the block that we were certain it was on...but it wasn't there. We eventually asked for some help from a German couple walking and the man answered gruffly and pointed us in a direction, but still no brewery! We finally give up and end up at a very cute little restaurant, where I had bratwurst and kartoffeln salat (shocking) and others had schnitzel and pommes.....it was very tasty! The next day we went, determined, to find this brewery and when we did we were unable to go inside because it did not open until 5 pm and there was an opening night performance to get back to Eutin for! Darn! I think we'll have to try again before the trip is over.

It was a very good trip and nice to get out of Eutin for a little bit....miss everyone terribly!

 

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