Lübeck

I hopped the train down to Lübeck today and walked around the old-city island. At the train station in Plön I bumped into someone, C, I had met briefly at work and who was visiting to interview for a job here. They were from India and this was their first trip out of India. He was also going to Lübeck so we rode together on the train and chatted about our impressions of Germany. At one point I asked him what I should see/do if I ever went to India. He said that something he has always wanted to do was rent a houseboat and travel along a river. I remembered a professor of mine years ago saying that he did this in Western or Northwestern India and loved it. C said they were available all over India now. C also said to travel to NE India to see something different. One of the reasons he was traveling to Lübeck was to check his train connection to Hamburg on Monday, along this same route, and to buy some Marzipan. Lübeck was a very powerful member of the Hanseatic League. In fact it can be argued that the league originated and spread from Lübeck from the 13th to 17th centuries. Fortunately, Lübeck also was spared extensive bombing during world war II so the old center of the city has remained intact. Because the this, the medieval center has also been designated a UNESCO world heritage site. The train station is a short walk to the center of the city and the historic market square, which when V and I visited last December had stalls set up for a Christmas Market.



Just beyond this is Niederegger's famous marzipan (almond and sugar paste).



There is a restaurant in the back and the front is lined with different forms of Marzipan. You can buy it shaped as animals, fruit, buildings or just bars of the stuff.







From there we walked through the old town.







At the river on the far side, we saw a rowing team being chased under a bridge by a motor boat; that's one way to get them to speed up.



Then it was time to grab a doener for lunch, and just before we went back to the train station we passed, in this medieval Baltic city, a guy dressed up in a stereotypical Plains (American) Indian costume, complete with face paint and playing a gigantic pan pipe along with his partner (and another guy was selling CDs nearby). Occasionally Germans would come up and dance to the new age sounding music coming out of speakers they had set up. Now I have seen it all!