Wanderung 32

Drifting down the Donau; Edging up the Elbe

March - April 2017


 

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Sunday April 16: Tangermuende

Some days we were really lucky with the ubiquitous rain--and today was one of those days! It rained while we were having breakfast at Land-Gut Seeblick, so I took my sweet time about have a large, slow breakfast meal. That actually worked because by the time we set off about 10 am, the rain had, for a moment, stopped.

We were headed South and had to fight a quartering headwind from the southwest, so we both used Level 3 of motor support on our ebikes, which of course tends to drain the batteries more quickly. But when you see the virga from the rainstorms on either side of you, you just want to make tracks as quickly as you can to try to outrun the converging storms! We did make one stop when we found an open gas station, and were very happy to buy some sandwiches there to take with to have for dinner!

Continuing onward, we continued to successfully dodge the rain until we turned due West to take the big bridge over the Elbe River just North of Tangermuende. That's a high bridge, so we had a long, slow climb up to the apex of the bridge, and during that climb we were pelted with sleet, one of my least favorite sensations. The sleet let off as we crossed the apex, but I could see a line of three storms bearing down on us on the other side of the river. So not pausing to take pictures, we hustled across the end of the bridge and then curled around the far end so we could shelter in the underpass there just as the line of storms finally hit us. So we huddled together with our bikes in the shelter of the underpass and at least stayed dry while the storms drifted overhead.

Waiting until we saw the sky clear behind us, we darted down the road the last few kilometers into Tangermuende and then more slowly followed the cobblestone streets into the old section of town where we knew our hotel, the Alte Brauerei (English: Old Brewery), was located. We arrived shortly after Noon, but they said our room wouldn't be ready until 2 pm, so we locked up our bikes in their bike shed (just off the micro-brewery they are installing), and cheerfully set off to walk around the town as it had once again stopped raining.

Tangermuende turned out to be a very pretty and reasonably large old city, which was surprisingly still surrounded by most of its original city wall structure from the Middle Ages. That's very rare, but it turned out that the old city walls were rebuilt and renovated in the 1700s to prevent the smuggling of illegal goods up from the port area into the city! Now that's a reason for a government to step in and spend some money on preservation!


 

Anyway, the old section of the city is about 3 blocks wide and maybe 10 blocks long, and boasts a really large, varied selection of old, half-timber and brick houses and buildings. The town hall was an especially ornate brick structure, with different colors and really intricate brickwork on its towers and walls. In front of it was a statue of Grete Minde, an unfortunate woman who burnt down the town because she was not given justice. One of Germany's well known novellist, Theodore Fontane, wrote a novella about her, but Monika informed me the novella did not have a happy ending as Ms Minde burned herself to death whilst burning down the city, a Pyrrhic victory to be sure.

There were many other very pretty brick structures in town, too, but we were hungry and stopped off for lunch at a "kebob" (English: gyro) shop near our hotel. After that it was already 2 p.m. and we checked into our room. Our hotel was located almost beside the tall brick Eulenturm (English: Owl Tower), an old water tower, and the fancy brickwork just gleamed in the sunlight. Much to my enjoyment, I saw a stork make a landing on top of the Eulenturm as we walked by, and I'm sure he had a nest on top of it somewhere. From our window of our room right on the street, we could see the Eulenturm looking to one side and a row of beautiful half-timber buildings looking the other way. Once again, we had a room with a simply unbeatable view!

But the rain held off, so we popped out to continue our tour of the city. Curiously, I was most impressed by a very minor thing, the carved wooden doorways on some buildings dating from the early 1600s. The carving was very fancy, and most of them had been beautifully painted with different colors, and the whole effect was just very interesting. I'm sure that the original artists, at least, would be very happy that their artwork had endured so many centuries. Notice that the one door was carved in 1618, and very, very few of us will create something that is beautiful and will last for 400 years! (Some of my stained glass pieces could conceivable last that long as stained glass windows in churches can be that old, but the chances of my stuff actually surviving that long are very, very low.)


 

Surprisingly the church in Tangermuende was open that day, so we snuck in to take a peek. We both really liked the light gothic-style interior but had just a few minutes to enjoy it before the deacon closed the church for the day.


 

But of course in the end it started to rain again, so we finally gave up and went back to our hotel for the night. Fortunately, we had the sandwiches we had bought earlier that day for dinner that evening, and could otherwise just relax and enjoy our "room with a view".



Copyright 2017 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt


 

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