Llllllllllllllllllluebick!

Yesterday we took a Smithie excursion to the city of Luebeck, which was about a 40min. train ride from Hamburg. It's a city that's been around since the 1200s, making it around 900 years old, therabouts. Many of the medieval structures were destroyed over time and have since been rescued and rebuilt. Unlike Hamburg, it escaped a lot of destruction during WWII, though not completely. I really liked the mix of ancient buildings and modern architecture.

We arrived in the rain. Rain here has a mind of its own. It will pour one minute, then the sun will come out and trick everyone into putting away their umbrellas before it spontaneously starts to rain again. It will continue on and on like this for hours. 'Tis very sneaky.

Anyway! Parts of the city's outer wall still fortify it against today's savage neighbors, trolls, and the like. Neat!

There are many canals throughout the city, thus many bridges. This statue was built on one of these bridges. It's a Greek god of somethingsomething and carries a strong political statement. For some reason however many years ago, this part of Germany and Denmark were not getting along. Guess which part of the statue is directly facing our northern neighbor.

We were first led on a guided tour of the city. (It reminded me a lot of Bruges in Belgium.) We walked all around through huge ancient churches and tiny allyways until finally, FINALLY arriving at destination Mittagessen!

Lunch was in a VERY spiffy restaurant that had been around for hundreds of years. It was quite beautiful and had models of old ships hanging from the ceiling. Apparently that's where tradesmen and other adventurers would meet to discuss possible excursions and could handily point to whichever ship they wanted to use. The food was very classy, very expensive, and very delicious. Thanks, Smith College tuition money/Mom and Dad!

We were very much hoping to have more freetime in the afternoon to check out all the marzipan stores that Luebeck is famous for, but sadly lunch ran a little long and we had to catch our train. Guess I'll just have to go back.


That evening after Kassia and I found some cheap rainboots (Gummistiefel!), most of our group crashed at the Smith Center and watched The Wedding Singer auf deutsch. Oh, what a clash of worlds.