Day 2 – Braunschweig: The Old and the New Side By Side

Last night was long. None of us really adjusted to the time change very well. No one except Kathy slept on the plane. This meant that everyone was ready (over-ready) for bed by 4:00P. We all went to bed thinking we would sleep the night. This was not to be! We were all up by 10:00P and ready to go. But, of course, it was too late. We stayed up a bit and tried to go to sleep again with varied success.

Today was a whirlwind…

Everyone was up by 6:00A. We took a self-guided tour around Landhaus Duerkop. We found out that there are x single, x double and 2 apartments in this hotel. We also took a short walk around the block. Here we saw a community garden where they grow all sorts of vegetables. We also found the bus stop that will take Kathy and the kids to Braunschweig (BS) while Tim is teaching.

We began our day with breakfast. We thought that we would fill up at breakfast since it is included in the price of the room. We had cheese, meats, bread, yogurt & granola, scrambled eggs, coffee and juice. The food was outstanding!

Friedhelm picked us up at 11:00 to take us on a tour of BS. We began our tour by driving from Wolfenbuttel (WF) to BS. Once in BS, Friedhelm took us to the church he and his wife attend, St. Andreas-Kirche. Before we went over to the church, we were distracted by a building next door called Alte Waage. The former “weighing house” was beautifully reconstructed after being destroyed in 1944. Originally, the building was built in 1534. We proceeded to the church. St. Andreas-Kirche is a Lutheran church and is is BS’s highest accessible point at 93 meters. It also has 389 steps from bottom to top. Kathy, Tim, Adam and Friedhelm know this for a fact! We climbed to the top while Annya and Noah stopped about half way up. Once to the top, the sites were breathtaking! We walked out on a caged-in ledge to take in the sites of BS.

After St. Andreas-Kirche, we went into “downtown” BS. There is so much to see here that it is a daunting task to describe it all… but I will try…

First of all, BS is “divided” into 5 parts, each with its own church, town hall and fountain. Unfortunately, most of BS was destroyed in WWII but most has been rebuilt. Thus, the recurring theme of today is traditional (old) and modern (new) coexisting side-by-side. Buildings from the 15^th or 16^th century right next to buildings from 1970, 80, 90 and 2000’s.

Secondly, the entire “downtown” area is a walking mall. No cars are allowed in the area. The streets are brick and cobblestones. There are many modern stores here: ESPRIT, DKNY, Tommy Hilfiger, etc. Again, these modern shops are alongside old buildings from the past. This is the recurring theme…

The first contrast we saw was the area around the Altstadtrathaus. In this area is a town hall (the Altstadtrathaus), a fountain (Marienbrunnen) and a church, St. Martini-Kirche. This area shows some excellent examples of Gothic period architecture and art. Inside the Altstadtrathaus is a model reconstruction of BS in the 15^th century.

We proceeded down the walking mall to the next contrast: Burgplatz. The statue in Burgplatz is a statue erected by Henry the Lionhearted in 1166 and is called the Brauschweiger Lowe or the Brauschweig Lion. The statue currently in Burgplatz is not the original. That is in Burg Dankwarderode. This castle was built by Henry the Lionhearted in the 12^th century and is now a museum. Henry also built the Dom St. Blasii between 1173 and 1195. The crypt under the cathedral has the remains of Henry and his wife Matilda.

On our way to our last contrast, we saw the Residenzschloss or Ducal Palace. This building was badly damaged in WWII and was completely demolished in 1960. They rebuilt just the front and put a modern shopping mall behind the facade!

Our third contrast is the St. Magni-Kirche. This area was the smallest of the three we saw but not any less impressive. St. Magni-Kirche is the epitomy of” old meets new”. Half of the church was destroyed in WWII but the other half was not. They repaired the damaged part and put in modernistic stained glass windows showing the flight of the children of Israel through the Red Sea.

We came out of St. Magni-Kirche and saw that it looked like rain. We were pretty tired and decided to call the quits. Friedhelm had invited us to his house for brats and beer so we headed over there. He lives within walking distance of the University in Brauschweig and in the shadow of a very large, very high smoke stack. His yard is beautiful with a small garden and plenty of room. We ate sausages, salad and macaroni salad, drank some beer and wine and ended with “cougan”. Friedhelm then drove us back to WF and dropped us off at the hotel.

We had a wonderful day!

Day 1 - Kenosha to Chicago to Amsterdam to Hanover to Wolfenbuttel

... and so it begins.

Our first day of travel began with a limo picking us up. First of all, Tim was under the impression that the limo was picking us up at 1:00P CDT. So Tim was sitting at the kitchen table monitoring the weather situation (which had taken a turn for the worst, not wurst). It was raining in Chicago and raining pretty good - at least that is what the radar said. Of course, the limo cares nothing for that. We left Blake in his kennel (Aunt Michelle would come to get him later) and headed off to Germany. Of course, Annya, Noah & Adam though the limo was pretty classy!
We arrived in Chicago with plenty of time to spare. Mark (our limo driver) dropped us off at the KLM spot in the International terminal at O'hare. We checked our luggage and went through security. This is a very laborious process. Shoes off, computers/DVD players out, no liquids over 3 oz... the rules are endless and the "professionalism" of the security staff is unnerving. Unfortunately, Noah & Adam's juice boxes did not make it through.

We had to wait about an hour and a half for our flight to Amsterdam to leave. We waited by our gate with Tim reading a newspaper, Kathy meandering around and the kids watching a movie. The rain seemed to be getting worse but it was not storming. This is the first time we have flown on a 747 - there are lots of people. The crew arrived late and we left our gate about 45 minutes late.

The flight over was uneventful, though cramped. Tim tried to tell the kids that they needed to sleep on the flight to Amsterdam but it was a loosing battle. Tim did not sleep either. The food was good: pasta for supper and yogurt for breakfast.

We arrived in Amsterdam on time. The airport in Amsterdam is quite large and we needed to go from one side to the other to make our connection to Hanover (of course). We needed to go through security again in Amsterdam. Before going through security again we looked around in a shop or two. There was all sorts of "stuff" - handbags, shoes, liquor, Cuban cigars, $45,000E Rolex watches, Dutch wooden shoes... the list goes on. Unfortunately, while browsing, the line into security went from short to very long. After clearing, we needed to get to our connection gate in 25 minutes. We made it. They were already boarding; not boarding a plane, mind you, but a bus. They bussed us from the terminal to our plane going to Hanover. The plane was sitting at an out-area with other planes of its type - a prop plane.

Again, the flight from Amsterdam to Hanover was uneventful... well Noah and Kathy might beg to differ! Lets just say that the decent was "turbulent". Coming through the cloud deck caused a few "roller coaster" drops (as Noah called them).

The Hanover airport is fairly small. In comparison, it seemed to be about the same size as the airport in Bozman, MT. There were no customs to clear in Hanover as we seemed to do that in Amsterdam.

Reinhard picked us up at the Hanover airport in the University van. We drove from Hanover to Wolfenbuttel in about 30 minutes. We took the Autobahn and yes, they do drive really fast on the Autobahn. We did not drive very fast, but many of the others do.

We arrived at our hotel, Landhaus Duerkop, and unloaded the van. We carried our luggage to front desk and checked in. The hotel is very, very nice and very "local". Unlike our "chain" hotels in the US, the hotel we are staying at is more like a "Bed and Breakfast". Our room is on the third floor... the entire third floor! Annya was set up for her own room but once we saw our "apartment", we decided that she did not need (nor want) her own room.

After check-in, Reinhard left to return the van to the University while we carried up our luggage to the room, changed cloths and waited for Reinhard to return. Reinhard was going to show us around Wolfenbuttel "quickly" to show us some spots we can return to latter in the week.

Our walking tour was outstanding! Reinhard is very knowledgeable about Wolfenbuttel and its history. We walked down the long narrow street out hotel in on to reach an intersection (4 blocks). When we got to the intersection, we saw we were at the "Kenosha Bridge". Kenosha and Wolfenbuttel are sister cities: Kenosha has Wolfenbuttel Park and Wolfenbuttel has the Kenosha Bridge.

We seemed to be making our way toward the center of the city and the shopping district called Lange HerzogstaBe. It was fairly busy as it was Saturday; everyone getting things done on the weekend. We headed around a large "hill" that was left over from the old city fortifications and went to Wolfenbuttel's "Little Venice". This is an area of the city where the city canal meets some homes, much like Venice, Italy.

As we approached the "downtown" we saw many different buildings and saw many different people. One building Reinhard showed us was the narrowest building in Wolfenbuttel. (BTW, it seems the housing slump is here in Germany too. The narrowest building in Germany has been on the market for a while!)

We walked through a archway and came into Lange HerzogstaBe. We walked on a bit and cam to Stadtmarkt. On Saturdays, Wolfenbuttel has market day and many vendors are selling fresh fruit, vegetables, sausages and bread. The smells of cooking sausages and fresh bread were amazing. We looked around for quite a while, stopping and sampling "currywurst and fries", one of the local favorites.

Going through Wolfenbuttel's Lange HerzogstaBe and Stadtmarkt is quite amazing. Since it was market day, there were many people all over the place. But they did not seem to be hurrying hectically. They were getting dinner or just looking around like us. Old people and kids, everyone was having a good time!

Next, Reinhard took us to the Ducal Palace. Built in the 18th century, this is the largest surviving castle in Lower Saxony. There is a tall tower and an inner courtyard. Today, there was a wine and cheese sampling going on! What luck! This building is now a high school and Reinhards sons attend school here. We looked around and sampled some cheese. Noah liked the Gruyere so much he bought some!

After wine and cheese, it was the library! The Herzog-August Library has some very old volumes in it. Some date back to the 15th century.

At this point we were getting pretty tired. We started to head back to the hotel. But before going back, we stopped at a supermarket and picked up some fruit and soda. We walked back to the hotel and left Reinhard.

Tomorrow: Brauschweig with Friedheld.