Berlin & Copenhagen

Part 1: Five Cities

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Introduction

Though Berlin and Copenhagen were our main destinations, we visited five other historic cities along the way: Osnabrück, Schwerin, Lübeck, Hamburg and Münster. In this part I'll describe our itinerary and show pictures from those five cities, while skipping Berlin and Copenhagen which will be shown separately in the next two parts.

This was the first time I made a car trip with a GPS unit and let me say right away that it would have been worth buying one just for this trip! What a great comfort to drive straight to the places you want to visit and the hotels you're staying in, and always have an accurate prediction of when you'll arrive.

March 31st (day 1): Osnabrück

We left Belgium the evening of Friday March 30th to drive to Osnabrück, arriving at 23h. The next morning we checked out the historic center.

Osnabrück is an old town which has been a bishopric since the 8th century. Nowadays it is a charming place that still has the appearance of a medieval town, although much has had to be reconstructed since WW2.
The most significant event in Osnabrück's history were the negotiations for the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, during which the protestant delegations resided here and met in the town hall, while the catholic delegations did the same in nearby Münster.
Some more pictures made around town...
The painter who taught Lotte at the Academy of Antwerp, Tobias Magaß, lives and works in Osnabrück, so after touring the city we paid him a visit. He showed us his atelier and many of his recent paintings.
We left for Berlin around 3pm, arriving nicely in time for dinner. Part 2 is all about the three and a half days we spent there, for now let's skip those and move straight on to our next destination.

April 4th (day 5): Schwerin

We left Berlin at 2pm, much later than intended, but we still managed to visit Schwerin on our way to Lübeck, just as we'd planned. Schwerin is an old town that became the seat of the dukes of Mecklenburg in 1358. After WW2 it was in the strip of German territory that was first occupied by the US and UK but then ceded to the Soviets in return for West-Berlin, and thus ended up in East Germany. After the reunification, it became the capital of the recreated state of Mecklenburg.

Schwerin's principal landmark, and the reason we visited it, is Schweriner Schloss (Schwerin Castle). This palace dates from the 19th century and stands on an island in one of the lakes that surround the town, on a spot where a fort or castle has stood since the middle ages. The palace used to house the dukes of Mecklenburg and is now the seat of the state parliament.
We spent most time walking around the castle, pausing for a picnic in the little park behind it, but we also strolled around the town center.
In the early evening we drove on to Lübeck, which was less than an hour away. It turned out the hotel owner had forgotten to write down our reservation, but luckily there was one room left and soon we were enjoying dinner in a fine Italian restaurant. We visited Lübeck the next morning.

April 5th (day 6): Lübeck

During the late middle ages Lübeck was one of the most important cities in Europe, being the leading city of the Hanseatic League. Its restored city center is a World Heritage Site because it features many medieval buildings in the Brick Gothic (Backsteingotik) style. Lübeck is probably the city with the most sights of the five discussed here, but the sky was overcast during the half day we spent here.

Marienkirche

This church was built in the 13th and 14th centuries and is considered the prime example of Backsteingotik. Many other churches were modeled after it, for example the cathedral of Schwerin shown above. The two towers are both 125m high.
On the outside the church isn't that pretty, but inside it's among the most beautiful churches I've seen

Rathaus

The Rathaus (town hall) of Lübeck was built in 1226. It was impossible to make a decent picture because the street in front is too narrow and behind it there was a market.

City gates

Two of Lübeck's original four city gates are still standing. The Holstentor is a symbol of Lübeck and is said to be built after a Flemish design, but I can't think of anything like it in Flanders.
During the whole time we spent in Lübeck the sun shone for exactly five seconds when it peaked through a small opening in the clouds, and that happened just as I was holding up my camera to take that picture of the Holstentor. A bit of good fortune :)

View from the Petrikirche

The Petrikirche is not being used as a church anymore, but there's an elevator to a 50m high floor from which you get a great view over the city.

Around town

To Copenhagen

We left Lübeck around 14:30 and headed north towards towards Copenhagen. When we arrived at the Baltic Sea coast we stretched our legs on the beach for a while, so now this was also a beach holiday. It was very windy, and a lone kite surfer was having a good time and making some really high jumps. I was too slow to photograph it a dozen times but on the very last attempt I nailed it.
We got a boat to Denmark in Puttgarden, which cost a whopping 112 euro for a return ticket. We watched a South Park episode on my media player during the 40 minute journey, and then couldn't find our car again when the boat had arrived :) After a steward pointed us to the right door we found it just in time, the first cars were already leaving. We reached Copenhagen around sunset and spent the next two days there. Part 3 has text and pictures of that, for now we skip it and move on to the last part of this trip.

April 8th (day 9): Hamburg

This day was Easter. We left Kopenhagen around 9:30am, got on a boat back to Germany and this time made sure to remember where we put our car, and arrived in Hamburg around 1pm. We parked our car near the center, which is beautifully located between two lakes, and set out on a tour of the monuments right away.

The Rathaus (town hall) was finished in 1897 and features a tower of 112m high.
The St. Michaeliskirche was finished in 1762 in barock style. It has a cool, 132m high black tower and a very beautiful, unconventional white interior. It was full of chattering tourists but while I was making pictures a very sour looking bearded guy started banging hard on the far end of the bench on which I was steadying my camera, came to me and said "Fotografieren ist nicht erwunscht" (photography isn't wanted) like I'd just performed a satanic ritual. I was just about finished anyway :)
The neo-gothic St. Nikolaikirche was built in the 19th century. When its 147m high tower was finished in 1874 it was the tallest building in the world (!), but two years later it was already surpassed by the cathedral of Rouen (I just edited that Wikipedia article btw, it wrongly stated the tower was already the highest since 1847). The church was ruined during WW2 but luckily the tower remained standing. Nowadays it has an elevator that takes you to a height of 70m for a great view on the city, I really enjoyed that.
The viewing platform has impressive pictures taken there at the end of the war, showing Hamburg largely in ruins.
Finally a picture made in some random spot.
At around 15:30 we finished our tour in Speicherstadt, a huge collection of old warehouses by the water, and decided we still had enough time left to visit the Kunsthalle that day.

Kunsthalle

The Kunsthalle has three collections of paintings: old masters, 19th century and modern masters. Among the old paintings only a portrait made by Van Dijck when he was a mere 19 years old interested me, while the 19th century collection was entirely forgettable. The small modern collection was pretty good though, especially these two works of Edvard Munch.
There is also a large collection of contemporary art, but it was atrociously bad. Lotte and me lost sight of each other in this maze but afterwards it turned out we had both liked the same single work here...
While Lotte went to see a temporary exhibition, I explored further and was surprised to end up in a fancy building with the biggest painting I've ever seen. I liked it immediately, and after reading its title I (being a chauvinist) loved it: it's called "The Entry of Charles V into Antwerp". Open the middle image (550kb and very big) in a new tab to see it in detail. The painted figures are life-size, yet all are fully detailed. The painting must be about 5 by 12 meter big. Hans Makart is an Austrian painter I'd never heard about, but I've read up on him meanwhile. Nowadays he is most well known for his influence on Gustav Klimt, but in his own time he was a much admired painter. This particular painting caused some controversy at the time because Charles V was surrounded by nude virgins in it. In the USA it was blacklisted by Comstock, which only secured Makart's fame there.

There was also an exhibition about Kazimir Malevich here. I didn't have a ticket but could just walk in. I didn't like it much.

April 9th (day 10): Münster

We hadn't planned to visit another town on this last day, but since we'd already seen the museum we left Hamburg at 9am and had plenty of time. We were parked in front of the Dom of Münster before noon and set out on a tour of the city.

The most famous building in Münster is the 14th century Rathaus (town hall), where the Treaty of Münster was signed in 1648. Along with the Treaty of Osnabrück (see above) this started the Peace of Westphalia and ended decades of war throughout Europe.
Near the Rathaus stands the gothic St. Lambertikirche, finished in 1375. Three big metal cages have been hanging from its tower since 1535, when they were used to put the tortured corpses of Jan Van Leiden and other leaders of the Münster Rebellion on display for all to see. In 1534 he had established an anabaptist theocracy in Münster (which he called the New Jerusalem), crowned himself king and promptly taken 16 wives, but a year later the expelled bishop took back the city after a siege. Ah, religious history, so very uplifting! Check the Wikipedia article, it's a fun read.
Münster has plenty more old churches, here's a selection.

Going home

We drove back to Belgium from Münster in the late afternoon. We were in Antwerp by 17:30 and a while later I was back at my place in Ghent doing what I always do after a journey: eating fries!
But that's not the end of this report, read on to see the pictures of Berlin and Copenhagen, our two main destinations.

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Part 2: Berlin >>