Saturday, May 26, 2001
Big plans for today……
Dorothee Gossel invited me to join her group for the walking tour of Lübeck,
a visit to the medieval festival and an afternoon of shopping.
I was looking forward to this day. John
had other plans for today.
John and I had a typical German breakfast served by our
hostess, Anne, in the private dining room that she provides for her houseguests.
This consists of a soft-boiled egg, a variety of hearty, natural breads
and rolls, fresh jellies, and a selection of 2 kinds of sliced meats and one
kind of sliced cheese. Each day she
changes the breads, meats & cheeses. Hot
Tea completes our typical breakfast, but coffee is the usual morning beverage.
By 8 o’clock, we are on our way to find the Am Wind Hotel
in Großenbrode to meet with Dorothee’s tour group, as I will be joining this
group for the tour of Lübeck today. Dorothee
calls her tours “Y 2 Germany”… excursions to Germany with the prospective
of a native. She can be contacted
thru e-mail at Gossfarm@winco.net
if anyone is interested in one of her future tours.
She has the unique advantage of being born on the island, many family
members still living on the island who contribute and help with her tours and
the knowledge and personal contacts to make your trip very interesting and
enjoyable.
Following Dorothee’s directions of yesterday, “first
right turn after the 2 gas stations, follow the road around to the left, onto
the bridge over the road, straight to the Volks Bank, make a left turn, etc.”
We were not sure we could find this hotel, but lo and behold…. We found
it and with time to spare before the 9 a.m. departure time for their bus.
Am-Wind Hotel in Großenbrode
We found everyone gathered together in the dining area
finishing his or her breakfast. It
was the same breakfast we had just had at Anne’s house! Everyone was in good spirits and excited about the day’s
tour of the city of Lübeck. I was
going off with the group for the day’s activities and John was going to take
more photos at the local cemeteries and to try and locate some people that he
needed to meet with.
After saying good-bye to brother, John, we all boarded the
bus and were off to the old and historic city of Lübeck.
When approaching the city in our bus, you notice the seven towers and the
medieval Holstenor Gateway to the city. The
Holstentor is one of Germany’s most well known buildings and it is the symbol
of Lübeck. Adolf II, the Count of Schauenburg, founded the city in 1143.
Lübeck is a major port city and was well known for it’s brisk trade in
salt, known as the “white gold” of the middle ages.
Later, it was known for it’s red wine, brought in from France and
stored in the city.
In the 20th century, Lübeck developed into a
modern industrial center. About
210,000 people populate this city, now one of Germany’s largest Baltic ports.
It’s impressive skyline, showing the medieval buildings, churches and
historic townhouses is truly a unique sight in northern Europe.
Entering the City of Lübeck
We drove around the city for a short time, with our guide,
Mr. Manfred Koluseim. explaining the local sights to us. Our bus entered the
inter city thru the Burgtor, an archway built in the 13th Century
that provides a northern access to the city center.
His tour and narration of the history and sights of Lübeck was extremely
knowledgeable and full of interesting and amusing facts.
We stopped at the House of Seaman’s Guild Hall,
constructed in the Renaissance style in the year of 1535. Today it houses a
historic restaurant, with it’s interior still in the same style of years long
past. We walked past the
market square, where the local medieval festival was being held.
We would get a chance to see this later, after the rest of our walking
tour. Our next stop was the
Marienkirche (St. Mary’s Church), constructed in the Gothic style during the
1300’s. Outside this church, sits
the devil on the devil’s stone. Several
of us sat for pictures with this unique statue.
Judy sitting with the Devil at St. Mary’s Church
Inside this rather larger and historic Church, much
renovation was still going on. Many
other tour groups were also inside, and we all enjoyed a traveling group that
was singing hymns in the church. Several
other old and historical buildings were pointed out to us, before we ended this
very informative tour of the city of Lübeck.
St. Mary’s Church in Lübeck
We were brought back to the market square by noontime, and
Dorothee gave instructions to meet at 4:30 p.m., after our afternoon of
shopping. The stores close promptly
at 4 pm, so we were to meet at the famous Niederegger’s Candy shop, known for
its specialties in Marzipan candy. It
was explained to us that marzipan, is a candy made of almond paste, which was
used as a medicine in medieval times…as an aphrodisiac! This was one of the larger shops in the area, with a café in
the back of it, and it was extremely busy.
Street Scene of the Shopping Area
My old friend, Tressie Hughes and I decided to become
shopping partners and were off to see the festival in the market square with its
many booths of assorted wares. We
really enjoyed the sites, the local performers and the food.
We also did some major shopping at Niederegger’s where we purchased
many candy gift items for our friends back home.
Several hours later, after shopping in many stores and
walking for what seemed like miles, we ended up at the pre-arranged meeting area
- back at Niederegger’s!! We were
exhausted, along with most everyone else in the group.
We all walked about 8 more blocks to where the bus was parked and then
boarded our chariot back to the Am Wind Hotel in Großenbrode.
What a wonderful day!
Dorothee Gossel’s Y2 Germany Tour group is excellent.
From spending one day with her group, I can see she has done a wonderful
job in planning out each day’s events. She’s
extremely knowledgeable about the area and can answer any question we asked her.
Her group this year has plans to take a one-day tour of Copenhagen, a
visit to the Neustadt Archives for some genealogical research with John, a visit
to Petersdorf for the Rapsblüten Festival and she has even arranged for all of
us to be in the parade as Fehmarn descendants from the US of A. They also plan
to have a day tour of Hamburg, before going home.
They have had tours of all the major churches of Fehmarn, a tour of the
Rathaus (City Hall) in Burg auf Fehmarn, all conducted by local historians.
This group of 13 has concentrated their attentions on Fehmarn, with a
particular interest in researching their family history.
Dorothee tells me she plans to bring more tour groups to Fehmarn, as this
is a unique way to come home to visit her family. Last years tour, was a more
general tour of Germany and she has plans in the future for more of these tours
also.
Dorothee Gossel the tour guide
After returning back to the Am Wind Hotel, I joined the
group for a light dinner, as is the custom on Fehmarn, in the hotel’s small
breakfast dining area. Dorothee had
arranged this meal to be brought in special for her group.
By 7 pm, John came to pick me up and joined the group for some food and
conversation.
John told me all about his busy day of work…. Poor
John!!! After dropping me off, he
went to solve one of our problems from the day before. This year John and I both have digital cameras with the
ability to take hundreds of photos. We
wanted no limitations this year. But
on Friday, after taking about 400 pictures, and trying to download them into
John’s laptop computer… we had a problem.
The batteries died in the floppy disk we use to transfer the files from
the camera disk to the laptop. These
were the only batteries we had not thought to bring extras for. Luckily, John
found these batteries at a local camera store.
I also found the batteries and another smart disk for the camera (just in
case it wasn’t a battery problem) in a store in Lübeck.
We were really prepared now!
John went back to the room, replaced the batteries, and
began downloading the photos into his computer. This cleared the disks for more cemetery shots in the days to
come. We didn’t want any
limitations in our ability to get all the photos of the headstones from ALL
the cemeteries.
Now with free space in the camera, he went back to the
Landkirchen Church to finish taking the pictures of the gravesites.
There is another cemetery located on a side street a few blocks from the
church. John also went there and
took photos of those gravesites.
After eating lunch out of necessity, he went back to the
room to download the pictures again. And
then guess what brother John did?????….. That’s right, he went to another
cemetery. This time it was the Burg
cemetery. He completed about 85 %
of this one. He noticed that a lot
of the headstones that were there last year had been removed.
After 25 years, the headstones are taken away, and the site is reused for
future burials. Johns photos that he posts on his cemetery section of this
website could help preserve this family history, and I can understand why he
wants to accomplish this important task.
John went back to the room for some more downloading of
photos and a little time for working on data entry for some of the information
he has already collected for his website. Lucky
for me, this obsessed brother of mine noticed that it was getting close to the
time to pick up his sister at Großenbrode.
He was only 15 minutes late!!!
By 9 pm, we were back in our room, and I was doing some
more writing on the computer for my daily journal.
I must do this each night, or I’ll get too far behind and start
forgetting which day is which. Out
of sheer exhaustion…. I went to bed.
J
Tomorrow’s plan: The Rapsblütenfest in Petersdorf
Click here to continue on to Sunday
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