Lübeck

Lübeck, a UNESCO World Heritage site for its brick gothic architecture, is a beautiful city in Northern Germany, on the Trave River which goes out to the Baltic. It was the leading city of the Hanseatic League, a trade organization in the middle ages. The old city is really well preserved and restored. It is enclosed by the Trave river, and very small and dense with lots of narrow windy streets.
The Speicher buildings in the background, which used to store salt.

Below: the Marienkirche, the church on the main square (Germany's third largest church, built 1250-1350).

The church was partially destroyed in the bombing of Lübeck in 1942 and the bell fell from the bell tower onto the ground, sinking in. They left it as a memorial to the war and you can still see it today. This morphed, broken bell is something that has stuck in my memory since I first saw it years ago. Beautiful wood and brickwork on the Rathaus, city hall building.

die große Wattwanderung - the big mudflat hike

Below is a picture I found on the web of the island Amrum at low tide. If you look closely, you can see what looks like rivers, those are the deep currents where the outgoing tide water pull the water into the sea. And you can see where the sand at the north of the island almost touches the next island to the east, the island of Föhr. At low tide you can take a guided hike across the mudflats, which is what we did.
"Die große Wattwanderung"...as our guide called it, "the big mudflat hike," 8 kilometers between the island of Föhr to the island of Amrum.

Our guide was from Amrum, so he kept talking about how we were walking towards "the more beautiful island" (von Föhr nach Amrum, der schöneren Insel entgegen). He was pretty funny, had a lot of "Sprüche," little sayings he repeated over and over, "die große Wattwanderung über den Meeresboden", "Augen auf beim Wattenlauf!" (keep your eyes open on the mudflat hike, rhymes in German) There were two classes of schoolkids along, so a lot of his things were safety reminders. If you don't watch where you are going you can cut your feet on shells or step into deep holes or something.

You are never supposed to do these hikes without a guide, because although the islands look really close at low tide, there are deep areas and unsafe streams of water with strong currents. Crossing a Priel, a deeper area where the outgoing water is pulled out by the tide.
Below: the remains of a shipwreck.
Below: a crab. We saw a bunch of crabs, many birds, little minnows, Wattwürmer, big thick worms that live deep under the sand.
The guide dug a hole and pulled out a Wattwurm for us to see.



Sand as far as you can see!

The little piles of sand everywhere are left from the Wattwürmer, the mudflat worms.

Amrum

North Sea island of Amrum, 20.46 km² small...and such beauty. Surrounding the island are white sand beaches, exansive stretches of beach, especially at low tide. And then dunes, mountain-like partially covered with grasses, and then a forest in the middle. The island is about 10 km long, with four little villages. We lived right in the middle, rented bikes, and biked everywhere. It was so gorgeous everywhere you went, totally idyllic with the old brick houses many with Reetdächer (dark straw/thatched roofs).

The water was definitely a bit warmer than Lake Superior, but refreshingly cool.

Here in the background the typical style of North Frisian roof (this area is called Nordfriesenland, part of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany today).
Amrum has one of Europe's largest sand beaches. It is dotted with the typical Strandkörber, beach baskets you sit in to soak in the sun and be protected from the winds, which can be very strong here on the north sea.
Dune landscape.


Amrum lighthouse in the background
Strandkörber

Nordsee - the North Sea

From Hamburg we went north to the small harbor city of Husum, and then to the island of Amrum. Both are on the North Sea, a really unique landscape/habitat. The shoreline consists of sandy beaches and mudflats, very shallow areas that change drastically with the tides. The area also floods very easily, so the people have constructed a system of dikes which protect them from the sea.
Here I put two pictures together of the same set of stairs, at high and low tide. At high tide it was just deep enough for me to swim in(below) and at low tide you could walk out into the mudflats, a sticky kind of mud.
Below: the mudflats at low tide. In German called the Watt, this kind of habitat is called the Wattenmeer.

Amrum, different from Husum, has sandy beaches all around the island. Below is a picture I found on the web with an aerial view. The sandy beaches are expansive, unbelievably wide. At the widest it is 2.5 km. To the east of Amrum is the island Föhr, which is where we started our hike at low tide between the two islands. Behind the two you can see a third island, Sylt, the most famous of these islands (today you can drive and take a train to Sylt, which makes it much easier to access, we had to take a ferry to Amrum). I think the accessibility makes it more well-known, Amrum is definitely unbeatably gorgeous. :)
Below: North Sea at Amrum, Michael swimming at high tide.
Below: low tide during our hike between Föhr and Amrum, see post "Wattwanderung"

Kathryn die Zuckerschnute (Torte, Torte, Torte)

In high German there is no translation for "sweet tooth," but in the north German dialect they say Zuckerschnute (literally: sugar mouth). I had so much fun trying all the different tortes and specialties of the north!

In reverse order chronologically, but starting with the crème de la crème:

Lübeck, Café Niederegger, Herrentorte Display case in Café Niederegger

Below: the famous Marzipan-Nußtorte from Café Niederegger, Lübeck

Below: Café Claussen, Nebel auf Amrum, Preiselbeersahne-Torte with a Pharisäer, coffee with rum
Below: Norddorf auf Amrum, Café Schult, Friesentorte

Below: Hamburg, some amazing pastry with marzipan, raisins
Below: Hamburg, Waffel with Eierlikör (egg liquor) and whipped cream

Literary Travels

two German students traveling...we definitely made a lot of literary stops. Below, a sampling:

Husum
Husum is famous for being the "Theodor Storm city", the author's birthplace and the setting of many of his works. His last novella, Der Schimmelreiter, takes place on the coast of the north sea, with the threatening water and the art of building dikes playing a central role.

The house where Theodor Storm lived in Husum:

The desk where he wrote Der Schimmelreiter:Lübeck is the birthplace of Nobel Prize winners Günter Grass and Thomas Mann. Thomas Mann grew up here as a boy and the city is the setting for his most successful novel, Buddenbrooks. It is the story of a German bourgeois family and its downfall. This house below is called the "Buddenbrooks-Haus" and is the setting of the novel. Today a museum of the Mann family. Although Thomas Mann is the most famous, his brother Heinrich also was a successful author and many of the Mann children. During the war they both lived in California and Thomas Mann delivered regular radio addresses on BBC radio in German to the German people, telling them to stop supporting Hitler's war.

Although Günter Grass is most well known for his writings, he is also a graphic artist and sculptor. The musuem dedicated to him has many sculptures, drawings, prints as well as information about his poetry and novels and novellas. Below is a sculpture of a flounder, a motif that comes up regularly in his works.

Hamburg

Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany, biggest sea port...This city is totally beautiful and maybe because it's on the water it always feels a bit more like home than some other German cities. The harbor is a big part of the culture...evidenced in the historical Speicherstadt, where all the brick store buildings date from early sea trade...also in the Fischmarkt every Sunday morning, where from 4 am to 9:30 you can get fish, as well as other market goods like fruits and vegetables. The fish-sellers are the coolest though, they yell at you as you walk by, trying to get you to buy their fish. Really unique experience.
Above: Rathaus, city hall building
Above: one of the reasons I love Germany, the street cafés where you can sit outside on neighborhood streets, watch the people going by. This neighborhood (Sternschanze) is filled with cafés and people eating and drinking outside late into the night. Strikes me as something very typically European, something I miss in the US but our cities just aren't built densely enough to have this kind of life.

Above: in the canals of the Speicherstadt.

Above: my friend Klara took us on a little canoe trip through the canals. Rich, expensive villas in this area of the city, lots of ducks and other birds,

Other highlights of the city:

eating Fischbrötchen, fish sandwiches with herring, or north-sea-shrimp, or matjes

running the half marathon, through the famous Reeperbahn, the red-light district, and along the harbor

going on a party boat, the Tante Hedi, drinking a beer, dancing, listening to music as we ride through the harbor and look at the city from the water

walking along the Elbe River towards the expensive Altona Blankenese area, looking at the beautiful old houses, through parks and gardens

reading, playing chess, picknicking in the gorgeous botanical gardens

having a huge German-style breakfast (fresh bread with jams, meats, cheeses, quark with fruit) at an outdoor café in the sun