Travel (II) - Europe 3 - Lubeck, Germany

Click here to view some pictures in Lubeck 



Day two in Germany.  For the first time we had a drizzling day.  We jumped onto a train to Lubeck at 10 am.  The suburban areas look very much like Chinese suburb, except for a block or two of traditional European style buildings.  Most of the 2-storied houses and apartment complexes are quite plain.  Looking at the arrangement of the buildings, it does not seem to be well planned.  The surrounding environment is not as pleasant as typical American suburban neighborhood.  Some areas look industrialized, some look agriculture focused.

Well, Lubeck is full of architectural gems and it turned out to be a completely pleasant trip despite it was super windy (no rain in Lubek, luckily).  I am not sure how well known it is, but I remember reading a while ago about its beautiful Gothic architecture from 12-16th century, so this time I was determined to pay a visit after I decided to come to Hamburg.

It's a very small island town.  If not lingering much in any spot, one can walk around it within 90-120 minutes.  The majority buildings have the unique brick-built style that is characteristic of Lubeck. 

The Holsten Gate, Lubeck's famous landmark, welcomes everybody coming into the town.  It was built in 15th century, and in fact has been equipped with 30 cannons but none has fired a single shot.  Both the gate and the town hall are solid looking castle-like.  The dark bricks of the town hall makes a striking contrast to the traditional red-brick construction of the surrounding buildings.  The magnificent facade with colorful decorative round panes, decorative balcony, and towers, look splendid against the blue sky.

There are a handful of churches in such a small space.  We spent quite some time in St. Mary's Church, the major one in town.  The main hall is of high Gothic style of enormous dimensions: the twin spires are 125 meters high, and the vault spans the impressive nave at a height of 38.5 meters.  By such scale, as well as the beautiful architecture and decoration inside, I was quite stunned and amazed.  Sitting on one of the hundreds long benches,  I felt serene and peaceful.  It was built in 13th century, and had been expanded over years after.  This "mother of Gothic brick churches" set the pattern for about seventy churches in the Baltic region.  In the night preceding Palm Sunday 1942, St. Mary's church was heavily damaged in the British air raid on Lubeck.  That night, the bells crashed to the ground.  To this day they are still lying in the chapel beneath the southern spire.  There is a small exhibition about the music in St. Mary's and history of the building.  To my surprise, the organist, whose name I forgot unfortunately, was in fact so great that both Handel and Bach came to study from him for months in early 1700s.  I was also impressed by the Astronomic Clock, but I did not have time to study it.  The display of 14 broken crosses was a bit scary though.  After that, we visited another church, St. Peter's, whose hall is all in white, which is different from St. Mary's more colorful interior.  There is a viewing tower in St. Peter's, from where we had a panoramic view of the beautiful town.

After that, we marched around the town.  Beautiful buildings are literally everywhere.  Thankfully we have digital cameras nowadays so that I do not feel stingy taking huge amount of pictures.  Both Athena and I did not want to leave, although P did not care too much about "old buildings".  The train from Hamburg to Amsterdam would not wait for us, so we had to head back to Hamburg after a lovely 4 hour excursion in Lubeck.