Short German trips, Tue, 28 Dec 2021 | written by Simon
Jemma and Simon at a City, Museum, Temple, UNESCO site in Europe, Germany

We woke up really early today to make the most of our day in Lübeck. We were in town so early that we had to walk around a bit waiting for the churches we wanted to see to open!

We went in through the beautiful Holstentor gate by the salt warehouses and into St Peter’s tower – great view of the city. And here first disappointment. We thought that Lübeck city centre, being based on a small peninsula, might have escaped too much crap building development, but that is very much not the case. In fact, it seems to be the queen of cities where fantastic gothic architecture is juxtaposed with really shitty generic modern crap. Our next location – the city halls and the nearby Marienkirche, are the best example. Real pearls literally joined with real crap. What were they thinking?!

Funnily enough, the crappy buildings don’t feature on Lübeck skyline postcards – it’s the seven church towers and the main gate that do. One of the towers we climbed, two are from the Marienkirche, one is St Jacob’s, two from the cathedral – these we saw. We skipped the last tower, because we were a bit churched out.

The highlight was the tour of the Rathaus – a still functioning city hall with some great decorations in the various council rooms inside.

We walked back and forth around town enjoying the streets and the fact that it’s not as ridiculously cold as yesterday. Well, a couple Gluhwein’s might have helped. Our last attraction was the Hansa Museum – we left it for last to make use of the dayilght and spend the hours of darkness indoors. The museum was really interesting, interactive, and well-organised. Half way through our time in we realised that we’ve only seen about a fifth, though. Typical. We stayed until closing time.

We strolled around a bit more, bought a couple things and headed for the Baron to drive off a bit North and park by some nice beach. Tomorrow is a chill day!