Happy New 2013 (same procedure as last year)

The same procedure as every year...
...hence just a little bit of history repeating
click here to read on

During the days around the recently passed New Year's Eve, Elisabet and me have been staying in and around Mölln, the town where I grew up and the place of my parent's home. As usual, their house was our base camp from where we did some trips to Lübeck, Hamburg and Schönberg.

Obviously, we took photos during our excursions of which I'm going to show some in this blog. Instead of showing them in the same cronological order as they were shot, however, I'm going to present them in accordance to the places where we snapped them. This way, I don't have to mention the confusing pattern of when and how many times we visited each place (by the way, something I've learned from Charles Darwin's book "Voyage Of The Beagle").

Mölln:
Although Mölln's old town is certainly worth a visit, this time we focussed on walks in the surrounding forests for which the area is widely famous. Around Mölln, as is the case with large parts of Schleswig Holstein (the most northern state of Germany), an important number of lakes, often located deep inside a forest, offer beautyful and relaxing walks in an appearingly natural environment. Those waterbodies occupy depressions which during the last ice age, thousands of years ago, where carved out by immense glaciers. It not that Mölln's lakes are especially big or otherwise exciting, rather the opposite is the case, but they are numerous and each of them owns a unique flair. 

At Lütauer See

At Lütauer See

A must-go-area of Mölln is the local game reserve, a kind of zoological garden where indigenous animals are at display. Inside the reserve, animals such as deers can move around without restrictions and often be seen in large groups. Nowadays, there are signs asking the visitors not to leave the marked paths, but when I was young it was the most normal thing to slowly approach these animals and give them something to eat out of one's hand (or to fake this, in order to get close to them). A shop at one of the main entrances even sold special deer food, corn it was if I remember it well. Anyway, I don't think that these days people would make all to big a fuss if a kid approached one of those deers, offering it some crop, despite of the signs, I mean.

Don't you dare pulling my leg

I should mention, that when I was a kid, a mouflon, or similar, once "punished" me when it realized I did not have any corns in my hand. The story ended with me falling to the ground and my head growing a nasty swelling. I therefore strongly advise to wear a helmet when pulling a stunt like this.

In the deer reserve

Wild boars are the park's other main attraction. A numerous group of them live in a roomy enclosure and they can decide on their own whether they want, or not, to have contact with human visitors. Most of the times I've been there, the boars stayed close to the fence and my impression is, that with the years they've become steadily tamer. Nowadays, although probably forbidden, you can rasp those beasts. The sow whose back I scrubbed, after a while laid down making it therefore impossible for me to reach it from my side of the fence. After a suited stick was found, however, the massage continued for several minutes.

Busy wild boars

Other animals at display are different species of owls and other birds of prey, goats, rabbits, rackoons and a ferret (I've never seen). Jacob, a common raven, is another sympathic park dweller. It interacts with its visitors, likes playing with sticks and even whishes one goodbye (tschüss), if asked to.

Lübeck:

Much can be said about the city of Lübeck, too much actually, because it played an important role in European medieval history. Any interested reader should therfore consult the wikipedia, paying special attention to the Hanseatic League.
I often consider Lübeck to be my hometown, which strictly speaking is not right, but since it's the city where I went to university and for the first time in my life rented a room in a shared flat, I feel kind of an emotional tie towards it. When I talk about Lübeck, though, I have to mention that I refer to the inner part of the city only, the old town, which is located on an island and forms part of the UNESCO world heritages. The better part of Lübeck's rest I barely know. The first thing that impresses a visitor of the old town, I guess, will be the churches. Five of them can be found there, stating a total of 7 bell towers. One special feature of these churches is, that they are made out of bricks - brick gothic, the style is called.

One of them, the Petri Church, is especially interesting for visitors, because it has a platform accessible in exchange for little money. During the winter months, however, its opening hours are quite restrictive, reason why this year we couldn't include it into our post-christmas-tour.

Petri Church

Jocobi Church

Although I really like the Petri church, it's not my favourite among Lübeck's different temples. The St. Mary Church it is. According to the beforementioned online encyclopedia, St. Mary features the world highest brick vault and this year Elisabet and me had a closer look from an unfamiliar perspective at it - from above.

Above the brick vault

On the roof

The guided tower-and-vault-tour is something I always wanted to do since I first heard about it some 11 years ago. During almost 3 hours we were shown some most interesting hidden stairs and corridors inside the up to 5 meter thick walls and every now and then could enjoy extraordinary views over Lübeck while our guide, a former pastor, informed us about architectural aspects as well as the historical context during the years of construction and reconstruction. Obviously, I neither can nor want to repeat everything we were told during the tour, but I do want to mention one detail: For the construction of St. Mary's some 8 Million bricks were used. Since the other churches, as well as other important buildings of Lübeck were also made of bricks, my conservative conclusion is, that at least a vast number of bricks was needed to build them all. Bricks are made from clay and their production process includes burning them in a kiln. The kilns used burnt firewod. This, as well as the fact that at the same time Lübeck's Hanseatic mercantile and war fleets were built, gave way to an important act of deforestation in Schleswig Holstein.

God's basement

Holstentor at night

As was the case during the last 5 or so years, for New Years Eve, Elisabet and me met with Vitter in order to have dinner in a famous restaurant called Kartoffelkeller. As a matter of fact, it's the very same restaurant where the 2011 cucumber crisis started (or at least where it gained momentum in the media), by which it's fame grew even bigger. I don't know who and what finally was made out as the true responsible for mentioned crisis, but the Kartoffelkeller it wasn't. It surely was nothing more than one of very many victims. Anyway, it's a great restaurant in an even greater environment: it's located in a cellar of an building that dates back to the 13th century. Strangely, to have dinner there for New Years Eve is not even expensive. For 25 Euros you can fill and top yourself up to a more than reasonable level. This year, we were joined by Christian, a friend of Vitter's, already known to us from previous visits, and I'm sure that once more, all of us enjoyed the traditional gathering.

Out of focus

Then we went to Vitter's place where we readied for midnight. The rest of the night was spent at a new bar called Domfink - fun it was.

Schönberg:

Next day we left for Schönberg where we paid a visit to Simon, Claudia and their two sons. They truely live in an amazing place, an old house with a thatched roof which is located right behind a levee that prevents the Baltic Sea from entering into their living room. Maybe it's because I've only been there in the winter time, but I cannot help to like it very much. Simon and Claudia like it better during the summer months though, but that's because of the fact that they actually like beaches, watersports and the like. 

 

Partying hard

An awesome tree

Last summer the two of them had nearly lost their house due to a fire. According to the firefighters it was a really close call and only a minute later the roof would have burst into flames, too. Luckily, no-one was injured and the insurance agencies cooperated reasonably well. 

During the drive to Schönberg we had crossed a specially beautyful area of Schleswig Holstein, which is called  Holstein Switzerland. You cannot expect to find any 4000m mountains there, but there actually are some summits higher than the rubbish hills of most dumpsites. The highest, called Bungsberg, even features a ski lift. (I've never seen it, but was told so in primary school) Besides, the area is known for its lakes and rivers and there must be beautyful forests as well, for one village's name -Schönwalde's to be more specific - says so.

 Hamburg:

My brother at the river Elbe

Another visit was paid to my brother Stefan and his family. His wife had to work, but together with him and my neice we were strolling for several hours through some interesting and fastly changing parts of the city. First of all, we took the new Underground line U4 to Überseequartier. From here we walked our way through the developing quarter called Hafencity, which is being constructed in the place of Hamburg's old Hanseatic port. The architectural mixture one gets to see spans from old warehouses to highly modern steel and glass buildings. It's also the place where the Elbe Philarmonic Hall is being built. Together with Stuttgart's new train station and Berlin's new airport it's one of Germany's most famous construction sites nowadays, but that's mainly for non-technical reasons...

City Hall

Philarmonic Hall

Hamburg offers an intersting way to do sightseeing: paying a normal public-transport-trip you can take a ferry that criss-crosses the Elbe river. Even if you don't have any business to do on the far side, it's still an intersting place to go to. We enjoyed a trip to Finkenwerder (where the A380 are being furbished for sale) and back to Landungsbrücken.

Back at brother's home we played a game of Catan (which my neice won) and had to go to sleep earlier than we would have liked to. 

Back in the air:

A Boeing 737 I think

At 4:30 the alarm clock rang and at 5:05 we already sat in a bus to the airport. Our flight back to Barcelona was operated by Lufthansa and interrupted by a brief transfer in Munich. It wasn't fun to go up that early, but at least we were at home at 11 o'clock.

Barcelona from the South...

...and from the North

It took us two attempts to land in Barcelona, so that we flew an extra-round. This provided us with the opportunity to observe the city from all sites.

Happy New 2013 and looking forward for more of it