Lübeck, GERMANY -- Back View

The same one as yesterday, but from the back!  Of course, the sun was shining on the other side this time!  Could not resist, and anyway, the back and the front do not look the same, except for the turrets.

Thank you for yesterday's stars!

Breakfast between 08.00 and 08.45.  The hotel has made it a staggered affair -- you have to choose your time and stick to it to ensure social distancing, so three shifts.  Not a bad arrangement.  After that, went through the whole town again and took more shots.  I had already discovered Chancellor Willy Brandt's house as well as Günther Grass's house -- they were neighbours!  Lübeck was also the hometown of another Nobel prize writer, Thomas Mann.  I will look for that house next time ... because I think there will be a next time, although not yet because I would like the motorways close to Hamburg to be finished first.

After the town, back to the hotel to post-process and check-out at 10.45.  Drove along the river till I found a parking spot closer to the museum, which opened at 11.00 (which is why I took my time checking out).  The European Hanse Museum is one of the most COVID-19-organized places I've ever seen.  The tickets have a chip so you can guide yourself around -- just let the ticket hover above the given points and the explanations will appear in the language that you yourself chose before you entered, and focused on the themes that you also chose when you logged in before you entered.  If you have to touch an information screen, you use a pen-like device with a rubber tip so that you don't leave fingerprints and the screen doesn't need to be cleaned all the time.  Spent 1.5 hours in there and learned more about the Hanse cities than I could ever have imagined.  There are at least four such cities here in The Netherlands, and it's now my goal to visit each one, even though they are all in the north.  As it turns out, Lübeck was the seat of the entire 'club' so it was quite a wealthy city-state long before the Black Death.  I really hope to get back to it one day.

As it was now only about 13.00, I thought I'd drive 60 km. north to see Kiel, a small town compared to Lübeck but oh so so clean and quiet.  It was a Sunday, of course, but nevertheless.  I wanted to see the restored U-boat on one of the beaches there, but that meant that I would have had to drive even further, including circling back a bit.  No time for that so I just settled for a rather large plate of potato soup and bread for the trip back.  Left Kiel at about 15.30.

This time, after filling up the tank again, I decided not to return to Lübeck to get back to the A1 but just drive straight to Hamburg on the A7 and then turn right on the A1 from there.  Horror of horrors as the A1 was now completely closed.  We were all forced to continue on the A7, something I hadn't prepared for.  I opened my mental map and knew that at some point near Hanover, I would need to turn right, possibly on the A30 already, in the general direction of Ösnabrück and Amsterdam.  After about 1.5 hours (we're now talking 17.00 or thereabouts), I spotted Dortmund on the road signs and I didn't care if it wasn't the A30 but I just turned right.  The A2, I think it was.  Dortmund would not have been a bad alternative except for the traffic, but I knew the A30 was somewhere along the way as well, and after about 70 km. there it was.  Turned right on it and headed in the direction of Amsterdam.  72 km. up to the German A1, so that was really a huge detour.  Checked my tank and knew I would have enough till the front door.  Another 65 km. and I was back at the Dutch-German border.  This time, the thunderstorm was on our side of the border, but, funnily enough, hardly rain on the motorway I was on.  We did have some lightning and it was dark very quickly.  By 23.00 I was home, too tired to eat but AW was ready with a cool glass of fresh tomato juice.  It is so good to come home to such a wonderful person ... hahaha!

The last week of MOOCking next week, and then a 7-week break, if I remember right.  I do look forward to that!  But what an adventure this was!  Keeps the blood going, for sure.  And it has kept me from following the news.