So today we took the train to Travemünde, a beach resort town on the Baltic Sea (or Ostsee as they say in German). As you might expect, it was very touristy (says the tourist!) but fun to see. Jim got to see a lot of sailboats! There were tall ships from Poland and Russia:
And we saw the largest Windjammer in Germany, the Passat, which is celebrating its 100 anniversary this week!
It was plenty windy out there!
Those are the beloved 'Strandkorben'- wicker beach chairs that keep you out of the wind.
Also in bloom- chestnut trees!
Back in Lübeck, we stopped off for another round of coffee and cake. This time, I had a piece of Lübecker Kranzschnitte, which was a light, flaky pastry with nuts on top and marzipan in the middle, and Jim had an amazing piece of chocolate truffle torte, with layers of chocolate mousse and yellow cake with a hard chocolate layer on top. What astounds me is how subtly sweet these confections are, and although they look (and taste!) very decadent, they are not heavy at all.
Has anyone ever read 'Buddenbrooks' by Thomas Mann? It won him the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929.
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| Thomas Mann |
Buddenbrooks is all about the decline of a merchant family in Lübeck, Mann's hometown. It is an excellent book; I highly recommend it. Of course, I've only read it in English. Someday I will tackle it auf Deutsch!
This is the Buddenbrookshaus on the Mengstrasse:
It's a museum dedicated to the work of Thomas Mann and his brother Heinrich. A couple of rooms are decorated in the style described in the book. I felt it would be fitting to read some Mann while I was here, so I downloaded a volume of short stories to my Kindle, and I'm enjoying rereading 'Death in Venice'.
Oh, I almost forgot: while we were walking along the harbor in Travemünde, we walked past a one-man-band playing, of all things, 'The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald'. That made me laugh! I'm halfway around the world, on the Baltic Sea, hearing a song about a shipwreck in my home state!
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