Lübeck | Crazy Chinese Family

Over half of the year 2017 is over and much has already happened. Untill the birth of our daughter in May we were very busy trying to “stabilising” our little business. From January till the beginning of May we were investing so much time into our business that we had no time to do anything else. We did not travel anywhere, we didn’t visit any neighbouring towns, we did not even go shopping or eating in some nice restaurant (with the exception of birthdays and the weekend Family Gathering in March).

Basically all we did was work and spend the little free time with Nathan. Due to our work we do not even have any free weekends which can be sometimes very hard when the work seems to have no end. By the time our baby girl was born we had reduced the workload already in order for my wife to find some rest. However it was just reduced workload and thus just two days after Nathalie was born I started working again. Now two months after our family grew by one we started to wonder what we can do to enjoy life a bit more once again after those hard months.

No, we won’t have any big travels planned such as last year. However we have some smaller trips planned already within Germany. For one we want for Nathan to have some more fun by going to a little theme park in the next few weeks. That theme park is perfect for little kids like him as he can pretty much go into every amusement ride as there aren’t any “wild” ones and there is also a deer park! Besides the theme park we will go to a few cities this summer such as revisiting Lübeck and Flensburg for some day trips. In August we have then our “biggest” trip which will lead us to the dark East of Germany.

That big trip developed only because I got an invitation for a Class reunion from my high school in Chemnitz (East Germany). As my wife had no interest in going there at all just for some reunion I had to come up with some plan. So now we will be driving first to Quedlingburg which is a very old town first mentioned in the records in 922 AD. The old town, the church and the castle are on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1994. I was there already once back in 1994 or 1995 with my parents and brother but I do not remember much of it anymore. There we will stay for one night right in the historic old town and then on the following day travel to Chemnitz. Except meeting with some friends and then having later on the reunion I have not planned anything yet. The problem for me with Chemnitz is just that I have no clue what to visit there even though I lived there for two years from 2005-2007.

My father on his way to his old home in 1991

In the late summer we will be trying to travel for a weekend to Poland to revisit my father’s birthplace Kołczewo on the Island Usedom. That trip will be especially important for my father as he had revisited that place only twice before, both between 1990 and 1991.He has not much memories from that place as he was very young when his family had to flee back in 1945 and become refugees till settling down in my hometown (they were living in camps for the first few years here). After that trip we will have only a few more day trips in mind. For us it is only important to get out of the daily routine from time to time. Next year shall be different again for us and I will write about it at some point towards the end of this year.

1990 My father carrying me in front of the old family house. The child standing there belongs to the “new” residents, let’s see if they are still there this year

What are your plans for the second half of 2017?

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My Chinese mother-in-law is gone now, she just left a few hours ago from Hamburg Airport and life goes on its normal path once again. This week was pretty busy as we had some little sightseeing tours in different cities around here which started with Kiel last week. The next stop on our sightseeing list was Lübeck, another port city in this state and roughly 45 min driving distance away from my hometown. I have been there before only for swimming competitions and once long time ago during a school trip and thus I had to check myself what to visit before going there.

Lübeck16 — Nice cafes are all over the place

Lübeck or the Hanseatic City of Lübeck is the second largest city in the state of Schleswig-Holstein and has around 200.000 inhabitants. It got its Hanseatic title back in the day and was known as the “Queen of the Hanseatic League” during the 14th century. Even though the city suffered also a lot during the air raids during the second World War there is still very much of the historic center left. Lübeck is also home to Niederegger. I know, many people outside of Europe are not the biggest fans of Marzipan and especially Asians have a dislike for it however for most people here it is just wonderful.

Lübeck1 — Lübeck recreated with Marzipan!

Enough of all the background info and lets start with our little trip around the city. We had luck with the weather as it wasn’t so hot anymore as the previous days and a little breeze from the ocean kept the air nicely fresh. After some confusing ride through the city (thanks to the GPS device slowly failing me…) we arrived at a parking garage and we could start our sightseeing tour. Okay, we actually headed straight to the restaurant I had picked out as it was already past noon and our stomachs were growling. Our destination was the restaurant “Kartoffer Keller” (Potato Celler) which had a variety of different dishes made out of, guess what, potatoes! The restaurant itself is located in the historic vault of the old Heiligen-Geist-Hospital (somehting like Holy-Spirit-Hospital). It looked pretty impressive in my opinion especially as I havent been before in a restaurant located in a vault. I have only read about them such as Leipzig’s Auerbachs Keller featured on Henry Lee’s blog Fotoeins. I surely enjoyed my meal which was of course with potatoes (grilled potatoes) with egg, some unknown vegetables (all vegetables are unknown to me, I just call them the green stuff) and a steak, more than enough for me. The women however are not really fond of German food so they did not enjoy it so much. Nathan was a real hero and after he finished his own baby food he helped to empty his mother’s plate, he surely does love German food!

After this was survived we started our sightseeing tour/ shopping tour. Sightseeing in a way that we went through the historic city center and took some nice pictures and shopping as the entire city center is filled with stores those two women just had to visit. This gave me the chance to go around on my own with the camera. Lübeck certainly offers a lot of opportunities to take pictures however I faced the dilemma of being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of photo opportunities that I gave up after a while and headed back in search of my family. Somehow this short shopping time was enough for them and they were ready to head back home but I decided to have a stop at St. Mary’s Church. This I did as MIL is a very religious person so I thought it might be interesting to take a look inside. However once we were inside and MIL realized that the entry fee was 2 Euros she didn’t want to go inside anymore. The entrance fee is basically there to finance the restauration work as this church got some years on its back and needs constant fixing as any other old building does but MIL did not really comprehend this and was asking my wife non-stop why there would be an entrance fee for a church…

Though the day seemed pretty short in Lübeck we did in fact spent nearly half day there and the only reason to head back home was because Nathan’s dinner time was approaching. I certainly hope to go to Lübeck with my wife again in the near future as there is still so much I want to discover in the historical city center. One thing became clear during this trip: No more German food for the two women!