A few weeks ago was "Hafensgeburtstag" (Harbor Birthday) in Hamburg. This meant tons of ships and sailors and a carnival-esque atmosphere around the shore:
So, unlike the States, Germany has every major Christian holiday off. We just had off for ascension and we have Monday off for pentecost. I won't complain for having days off, it's just weird to me that they're religious holidays.
They also made ascension be ''Cherry Blossom Festival'' day, whose main highlight every year is an extensive fireworks show, based on the larger chunk of the lake in the middle of town. There was also a ''Japanese Cultural Day'' in the large park near the university, which I managed to miss all of, since the schedule that was posted was vague and apparently inaccurate by an hour or two (oh well).
I took that Friday off (we had Thursday officially off), and went to
Lübeck, which was also a town of the Hanseatic League, and was also a free state for quite a while. Hamburg still is, inasmuch as it is both a city and a state (Stadt und Staat). Lübeck is about 45 minutes to an hour fom Hamburg (depending on where you start inside Hamburg).
There's a story in my ''Rough Guide to Germany'' book that a Jewish ex-Lübeck resident saved Lübeck from the worst of the last leg of bombing it was destined for during the war (it was actually one of the earliest cities hit by RAF bombing), by tipping off his Swedish cousin and I think a Red Cross camp or such was started there (I'd have to go dig up the book; the internet is not coughing up anything that remotely sounds like this story. Ah well).
Here's the Lübeck Hauptbahnhof:
Pro-tip: don't pay the 2 euros at the information booth for the map of Lübeck. Very incomplete, waste of money. Also, the fish shack a block away gives them out for free.
To walk to the old city, you cross the ''Puppet Bridge'', named for the statues along it.
The river spanned by this bridge is the Trave:
and you walk up to the iconic view of Lübeck, with its leaning gate (Holsten Tor) and (also leaning) church towers:
Holsten being Plattdeutsch for "Holstein", which is the town in the direction which the gate faces. I took the guided tour of the city advertised at the visitor's info center (7 euros, included the (4 euro) tour of the city hall). The gate leans so much in part because each tower is on its own foundation, and they shifted independently over time.
I still find this (S.P.Q. + letter for German town) pretentious, but maybe it's a symptom of this whole ''Holy Roman Empire'' business:
The two dates are when it was built and when it was repaired from being in near-ruins from neglect.
Just behind the gate is the (other) river; at some point, they dug around and connected the two rivers so that the altstadt became an island. I don't remember the name of this river:
Walking around, there's a puppet/figure museum & stage, with a cute dragon:
Incidentally, in German, the word for "Dragon" is the same as the word for "kite" (that thing that kids fly); die Drache.
Wandering around the old city of Lübeck. It felt kind of Copenhagenesque to me. Maybe its the Hanseaticness, or the age of the survived/repaired buildings:
and another picturesue street view:
On the tour, one thing we saw was this thing. During WWII the area behind/under this was turned into a bunker
and the arch was a causeway through to a pleasant courtyard-area:
So, at some point, Lübeck decided to tax people by the amount of square meters facing the street. The 'solution' was to not have any. That is, people tunneled through existing buildings to build in the courtyards. These tunnels had to be big enough to pass a coffin, and could actually be quite short (shorter than me, in one case). There were 80 made before the city outlawed this practice, as the firefighters were having a hell of a time.
Here are some more walkways and their interiors:
and a cool random thing above a door:
I do wonder if they have soft ground in Lübeck, because
everything leaned. All the church towers, in addition to the Holsten gate:
And another leaning church tower:
Here's part of a model of the old city, which is cool in part because it has braille explaining the monuments/buildings:
Lübeck's town hall is bizarre looking. It had three building phases, all very distinct. Here's phase I and II smushed together:
with a sundial
and extended at a 90ºangle (i.e. along the corner of the square, you had this sort of thing:
Room in the city hall containing allegorical paintings. The painter's daughter was the model for all the women, and some famous military guy in the city saw the paintings and decided he must marry her (and so he did).
Hanseatic art. They apparently enjoyed the tale of Solomon (this illustrates that):
Also, it was pointed out that the Hanseatic depiction of Justice was never blind. Something about needing a discerning eye to make good decisions or such:
Some stained glass in the roof of the stairwell:
Here's some fun wood art (along a sort of half-wall/desk thing) in the parliament chambers:
This might've been my favorite thing there. Cool wooden depiction of the old city, how it was circa 1471:
Then you open it!
Left panel:
Center panel (height of blocks seem to represent population):
Right panel:
This was reached by a cool hallway full of portraits of burgers (including Ehrenburgers):
After leaving the town hall, the tour was almost through, but had another half hour or so. Instead I found something to drink and wandered a bit. Found this, the 'Holy Ghost' hospital, one of the oldest ?
This is the gate on the other side of the city, which is where Napoleon got through:
Cool adjacent building, with black and red brick:
and across the street was a place a bit in disrepair,
with this sign:
and here's the view out the train on the way back (the yellow flower is what you get Rapeseed oil (Rapsöl) from):
