Short German trips, Mon, 27 Dec 2021 | written by Simon
Jemma and Simon at a City, Temple, UNESCO site in Europe, Germany

The next surprise location is Wismar. It’s one of the Hanzeatic ports between Lubeck and Rostock that kept changing hands between different rulers and was part of Sweden for some time. We read up on the history on the way – turns out much of the city was destroyed in ’45 British bomb raids and hasn’t been rebuilt until after the reunification.

We’ve seen a few examples of this – St George’s church is still in (re)construction and we could only get a quick sneak peek in. There is nothing inside yet, an empty Gothic basilica, which makes this a pretty unique sight.

Next was the remaining tower of Marienkirche, with only an outline of the church in low brick behind it. The church was badly damaged in the bombings and ended up being completely demolished in the 60’s, with no plans to rebuild it. In one of the niches traced in low brick, there’s a bust of Gottlob Frege himself! Turns out he was born in Wismar. This really sent me back to my MLitt year – I can’t say I miss it, but it’s definitely great to brush against such greatness.

We barely started the day, but we were properly freezing already! We started walking towards a cafe Jemma picked for us, seeing the market square on the way, with some pretty amazing buidings around (the Old Sweede restaurant!) it and the Wasserkunst – a richly decorated roofed well.

The cafe turned out to be quite OK, and I ended up eating way too much cake. I didn’t expect the portions will be that huge when ordering! And Jemma gave up on her, but it couldn’t go to waste… And hot chocolate… So yes, I had quite some sugar high after.

St Nicholas church was next – second tallest brick Gothic church, and it wasn’t actually damaged in the war! It was nice and not very Baroquen, but not really that breathtaking either.

Next, the harbour. We had a longer stroll around, unable to believe that it is really only -5 at this point, because it sure felt way colder. On such a clear day, there were quite a lot of people around, too.

Still, the cold got us and we were up for a proper meal, so we went to another venue Jemma found – the Old Brewery. It had pretty sweet decor and pretty great fish, though I couldn’t manage a whole portion after all the cake.

On the way back we saw the Heiligen Geist Kirche – an interesting hall church with a flat richly decorated wooden ceiling and an oddly diagonal wall in place of an apse. By the time we got back to the Baron, we were an hour late! We only bought four hours of parking and ended up spending five, but got lucky and didn’t get a fine.

We drove off towards our next destination: Lubeck! But we’re not getting there today yet – we stop at a viewing spot on the nearby beach. It turned out to not be much of a view, because it’s getting dark and it’s quite hazy and cloudy. But we still had a great stroll on the beach, looking at frozen saltwater pools and streams. It’s getting noticeably warmer – tomorrow it’s meant to go into positive temperatures!