10 Oct: Last Day in Hamburg

The schedule was for an easy last day in Hamburg... OK, you know how our easy days work out, right?

Anyway, David had scheduled a visit to the Carl Zeiss Bird Observatory maintained by NABU, a wildlife/ecology organization (Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union). This spot on the western outskirts of Hamburg was said to have hides from which you can watch lots of water birds (Google translated page on it).

The NABU website had a clear map showing how to get to the place from Wedel, the end of the S-1 train, which David had printed out back in February for pete's sake. What David the Doofus had failed to note until this morning was, the directions with the map clearly say "walking 60 min." Oops, an hour walk? (and at whose pace?)

So, with low expectations of actually reaching the place we set out on the most beautiful clear bright breezy autumn day you can imagine, the best weather we've seen the whole trip.

The walk did not start auspiciously when we spent 10 minutes walking the wrong way and had to walk back to the S-bahn station and start over. We won't mention whose fault this was since he's in enough trouble already.

Once on the correct route we soon reached the end of a city street which continued as a woodsy footpath for half a mile and then opened out onto a grassy flood control dike on the bank of the Elbe.

Sheep on the path? Shades of New Zealand!

There were many, many people out enjoying the beautiful day.

Click through to see many, many people. And sheep.

We watched people flying kites.

We watched boats passing on the Elbe.

At what we calculated was about 3/4 of the way there was, out in the middle of the fields, a restaurant. If we had had a car, or if we had taken a taxi from the station, we could have gotten to that point without walking. We stopped and had lunch.

And then resumed walking toward the bird station which we finally reached. It's a lovely facility with walkways tucked in between levees so the birds don't see the people (of whom there were many) coming and going.

And well-maintained hides from which to observe.

After looking at swans, zillions of Gray Geese and a few grebes and egrets, we started walking back. And walked and walked. In round numbers, we walked for three hours at two mph, or six miles. Easy last day, yup.

An interesting thing happened after we reached the Wedel S-bahn station. We got on the train and it started and went one stop, and didn't start again for many minutes. Every once in a while there would be a brief PA announcement. These are the times when you really wish you understood the language!

Anyway after one announcement, quite a few people, but not all, got off the train. This was getting serious so we spoke to the nice-looking family across the aisle, "bitte, do you speak any English?"

The young woman didn't answer but waved to the elderly man across from her, who immediately said, "Oh, yes, how can I help you?" Anyway, long story short, there was a fire at a station two stops down the line, and the train was going back to Wedel and we would take a bus around to another station further down. The people getting off were local or wanted to take a bus from where we were.

This chap was born in Hamburg but now lived in Victoria BC, but he actually learned his English in South Africa. He was visiting his son and daugher-in-law (who was from the Ukraine) because he needed a hip replacement and the German medical system was much better than the Canadian one. He was a boy in Hamburg when the RAF bombing caused a firestorm (as we described some days ago) and his family only escaped alive by very good luck. We chatted quite a while as the train rolled back to Wedel and we waited for the bus.

The bus got us four stops down and we got a train that finally got us in to the Hauptbahnhof at 7pm. We grabbed a sandwich supper in the station and got to work packing. We need to rearrange luggage and simplify in order to avoid another overweight bag charge.

Last Journal Entry!

Tomorrow we catch a 10am train to Frankfurt airport, from whence we fly at 5pm, arriving SFO at 8pm (twelve hours, minus 9 time zones, equals 3 hours).

So, this will be our last post to this blog until next week, when we will add perhaps a few general comments to sum up the experience of six weeks schlängel-ing around Germany. We hope you enjoyed taking the trip along with us.

9 Oct: Bremen

This post edited to add info about the strange metal plate in the Bremen town square, see below.

The trip really feels like it is winding down now. Today we completed the final day-trip in the plan, visiting the town of Bremen.

Bremen has a special place and reputation in German culture as an independent town that insists on doing things its own way. It symbol and guardian is the great knight Roland, a popular figure in Medieval culture. Bremen is known around the world from the title of the Grimm fairy tale, "The Musicians of Bremen" (Wikipedia about the story; full text for reading).

Only a few steps out of the Bremen Hauptbahnhof we turned and beheld the most magnificent Bahnhof we'd seen yet:

...an impression aided, no doubt, by the backdrop of blue sky, the first we'd seen in some time.

A few blocks further we found a sculpture of a swineherd and pigs. No fairy-tale connection here that we know of.

Rathaus and Rathaus Platz

The civic pride of Bremen is expressed in its magnificent Rathaus.

The basic structure was built in 1409, but in 1590 the merchant's guild put up a fancy building across the square. The city burghers were jealous and had their facade upgraded with "let's see you top this" decoration.

Standing in front is the city's icon and mascot, Roland.

Nearby is a charming sculpture by Gerhard Marcks of the Musicians of the tale.

If you make a wish holding the donkey's left foot, your wish will be granted.

Now, here's a puzzle (edited and expanded with a solution 14 Oct.) This plate is set in the ground across from the Rathaus, not near the Musicians sculpture. It is not mentioned in either of our guide-books, but we were led to it by watching other people. If you drop a coin (any coin) in the slot, the sound of one of the four musicians (cat, rooster, dog, donkey) will play loudly several times.

Google translate fail.

The outer lines of text read

WILHELM KAISEN BURGERHILFE
DER FREIN HANSESTADT BREMEN

The latter is "The Free Hanseatic City Bremen," emphasizing that Bremen was self-governing and a member of the Hanseatic league of cities, but we couldn't make sense of the first line nor of the lines in the center,

Kreih nich
Jaul nich
Knurr nich
Segg I aa Doh wat rin
In't Bremer loch

The puzzle was cleared up by our friend Wally, who writes in part,

I've gone to two authoritative sources for the answers to your Bremen mystery concerning the wording on the perforated brass plate across from the Rathaus. Cathy L. in San Francisco is my German-to-English translator... [and] Jutta S. ... was born outside of Bremen during World War II and still has a condo in Bremen that she lives in 3 months a year... Both of these experts gave me detailed concurring answers which I will meld together and pass on to you.

The name in the upper ring is not Kaiser Wilhelm, but Wilhelm Kaisen. Kaisen was born in Hamburg of a very poor family and had only a grade school education. After World War I he moved to his wife's city of Bremen, became a city councilman and in 1928 held a position called Senator of Social Service. From 1945 to 1965 Wilhelm Kaisen was mayor of Bremen. A fund has been established in his name to raise money to help needy people of various sorts in Bremen. The words in the upper ring refer to the Wilhelm Kaisen Citizens Assistance Fund. As you know, the purpose of the holes in the plate are to receive coins for this fund.

The words in the middle are in the low German of the Bremen area and not in standard German. They refer to the animal musicians that are activated by dropped coins. Cathy had to translate the low German into standard German and then into English to get: "Don't crow, don't yelp, don't growl, say yes and put something in Bremen's hole." Jutta's translation is similar and perhaps a bit freer: "Don't cry, don't growl, don't complain, say yes and put something in Bremen's slot."

My friend says he was told by a nurse in Bremen that the current major use of the funds raised is to help children with cancer.

Thanks to Wally M. and his friends for the explanation!

Böttcherstrasse

From the Rathaus square we headed down Böttcherstrasse. Once an alley inhabited by craftsmen, this narrow lane was in the 1920s purchased and renovated by Ludwig Roselius, who had gotten rich from his invention of decaffeinated coffee. He encouraged a sort of Jugendstil look, called by one of our guidebooks "a combination of Gothic and Art Nouveau." The entry to the alley is overseen by a gilded relief called "The Bringer of Light."

The alley is so narrow you can get a crick in your neck trying to see many of its features (and as for getting a decent photo, forget it).

The alley buildings are occupied by art galleries, museums, and high-end shops.

Window sill support in Bochterstrasse

Elaborate brickwork.

Partway along we heard, and by pushing into a packed crowd, saw, this tiny carillon whose bells are made of Meissen porcelain.

Its noon concert seemed to end but after a few seconds of silence it played "shave and a haircut two bits" producing a big laugh from the crowd.

Nearby was a small fountain with really cute figures of the Musicians.

And So On

We had lunch in a cafe in a former fishermen's neighborhood, now a quaint district of narrow alleys full of tourists, then headed back through the Rathaus plaza where we poked into the Dom.

Dom from a main street, Rathaus in front.

This guy was guarding the door.

Ow! ow ow ow... ouchie ouchie ... ow!

It was quite colorful inside.

Earl directed us past the Department of Weights and Measures,

We get the balance scale but why an angry cherub?

...and then on to the green perimeter of town where they have thoughtfully placed a windmill for a visual accent.

From there we headed home—well, the Hotel Kronprinz is starting to feel like home after 9 days—and then had a disappointment. We strolled down Monkbergestrasse, the insanely busy shopping street of Hamburg, to a church where we'd previously noted the time for an organ concert this evening. Or thought we had, but the church was dark when we got there. So no music after all.

8 Oct: Full-Value Day in Schleswig

So we finally got to Schleswig, and saw some nice things, indeed on the train ride home we counted five things that we couldn't have seen anywhere else in the world.

First, some geographical orientation. Schleswig is way up the neck of the Jutland peninsula whose upper part is Denmark. Here's the zoomed-out view.

View Larger Map

This has always been an important crossroads for trade, because if you have goods or a market over there on the right, around the coast of the Baltic (the Ostsee, "oast-zay" in German), and you want to do business with anybody on the left, around the coast of the North Sea or the Atlantic, you have two choices. You can ship your goods wayyyy north around the top of Denmark—exposing your stuff to stormy seas and Norwegian and Swedish pirates—or you can somehow schlep your stuff across the 100 kilometers of flat farmland at the narrow base where Jutland joins Germany.

Today there's a sea-level canal, the Kiel canal, that lets you steam right across from Kiel diagonally down to the mouth of the Elbe; it is the most heavily-used artificial waterway in the world, more traffic than the Panama Canal.

The Rendsburg Loop

We didn't know about this when we set out. But an hour out of Hamburg, we noticed that the train was rising up over flat terrain, house roof-tops were below us. And we passed over a very high bridge, looking down on the town of Rendsburg from a height that rivalled the 75 meters of the Nikolai church tower. And then the train continued around in a loop and passed under the same bridge!

The bridge was the Rendsburg High Bridge, which clears that Kiel Canal by 50 meters. (Click for a picture by somebody else.) When the canal was built the only way to get the railroad up on a bridge of the necessary clearance, and then down to the existing station, was to go in a full circle. So that's pretty unique (although in the Canadian Rockies we've seen a train do a full loop with a tunnel).

The Bordesholme Altar

So we arrived at the Schleswig bahnhof and went outside and found a bus and had the driver sell us tageskarten. (At that point we thought we would use the bus more often than we did; in the end we only used it twice and would have saved a couple euros by paying per ride.) Anyway, got downtown and, guided by Earl, went to the Dom to see a carved wooden altarpiece.

Dom. (da dom dom)

The altar was a stunning piece of craftsmanship, carved by one man, Hans Brüggeman in 1521.

It was also a very difficult photo subject when lacking a tripod. Numerous well-composed shots were discarded due to motion blur. A few that more or less came out:

Adam.

Eve.

Click through to appreciate delicate filigree work.

Also in the same church was a large and very attractive wooden statue of St. Christopher by Brüggeman.

Viking Museum

Schleswig was at one time a Viking colony. Around 800, they established the town of Haithabu from which they controlled access to that easy passage across the neck of Jutland. There was no canal of course, but Schleswig is at the innermost end of a long skinny arm of the Baltic. From here it was a relatively short land portage to the head of the river Eider, on which you could float to the North Sea.

Haithabu on the south bank of the lake was abandoned around 1100 and the town of Schleswig built on the north bank, leaving the old Viking town site open fields. A lot of archeology has been done on it, thousands of bits and pieces picked out of the muck, and there's a Viking museum to display it all.

We had a firm deadline of a 6:34 train home, and lots to see, so we got a taxi to take us the 5km around the lake to see the museum. Some of it was quite interesting; there was a book of English translations of the placards we could refer to. The Haithabu people were busy traders and craftsmen; goods were found here from all over the continent.

The museum's best exhibit is parts of a Viking ship that was found buried.

Partial planking, ribs.

Related to recontructed front half.

A kilometer from the museum following a footpath along the original perimeter earthworks of the town, volunteers have built a group of houses using the same materials and construction methods found by the excavators.

Old village, modern wind turbine.

Viking chicken run.

Viking ventilator.

Bed/kitchen/living room.

Next up, to Schloss Gottorf. Yes, another schloss, but we had to pretty much ignore the schloss itself because of what's to be seen another half-mile walk beyond it in the garden, a building housing the reconstructed Gottorf Globe. This was a project of the Duke in 1664 to display the best geographical and astronomical knowledge of the time. Seen from afar the globe doesn't look like much.

The globe in the modern reconstruction of its original building.

It was getting late and we were tired, so didn't get any pic of the surroundings. Here's the globe up close.

Still doesn't look like so much.

This is a reconstruction. The original (as the Wikipedia link above says) is in St. Petersburg, where it was sent as a gift to the Tsar, and where it burned and has been reconstructed also. The outside was painted with geographical info of the time (1650s), but the artist filled in any gaps with imagination. Especially interesting to us was the representation of California,

Was this ignorance or ... a prediction!

But the big deal with the globe is, you can get inside it.

It's roomier than it looks.

The inside is painted with zodiac and other mythological figures of the sky, quite amusing and pretty, and also has over a thousand little gold stars placed accurately according to the positions collated and published by the contemporary astronomer, Johannes Kepler, pupil of a local boy, Dane Tycho Brahe.

This is less than 50 years after the invention of the telescope.

Leaving the schloss we took a quick look at its prize exhibit, the Nydam Boat, a Viking longboat dug out of a bog in 1850.

It is much more complete than the one in the Viking museum, above.

It is older, too: the planks are stitched to the ribs with rope, not riveted.

With that it was time to head for the bahnhof to catch that 18:34 train back to Hamburg. As it was we didn't get to the hotel until after 8pm. But we had ridden the Rendsburg loop, seen the Brüggeman altarpiece, visited reconstructed viking houses, sat inside the Gottorf Globe, and looked at the Nydam ship, all things that could only be done in Schleswig.