Today we will see three countries. We leave Sweden to drive back across the beautiful, but horrendously overpriced Oresund bridge (one way crossing in a Motorhome invokes an eye watering £70 toll) into Denmark. We then drive to Rodby to catch the ferry across the water into Fehmarn in Germany.
Before boarding the ferry we booked a little stop at Lalandia holiday resort for a few hours in the brilliant Aquadome. This indoor swimming resort has loads of flumes and huge water rides as well as a restaurant to feed the kids lunch. There is also the brilliant WaveSurf artificial surfing machine to have a go on. It proved to be a great stop off point for the kids to burn off a bit of energy before boarding the ferry for the 45 minute crossing to Germany.
We are on our way down to Berlin for a few days, but on the way we are gonna drop in to see some old friends in Lübeck. Supposedly the bonds you make with your childhood friends are stronger than most of the friendships you make throughout the rest of your life. A good way to test that theory is when you meet up with old school friends you haven’t seen for years, sometimes even decades, and the dynamics haven’t changed. You still call each other by your old nicknames, and the same old jokes are still funny. You don’t get many friends like that in this life, I can count mine on one hand. I first met Ben at primary school at the age of 5, and we went through three schools together. As always happens with school friends you all end up going your own ways, but if you’re lucky you get to periodically meet up once every so often.
Ben is married to Freddie. They met when Freddie came to our school from Germany when we were 16, and some years later they moved to Freddie’s hometown of Lübeck to settle down and start their family. Last night we set up camp in their driveway, waited for Ben to get back from his parent-teacher meeting, and then drank beer until the wee hours like we used to all those years ago.
This morning Ben and Freddie took some time out of their busy lives to show us around their town, and what a beautiful town Lübeck is.
This town in Schleswig-Holstein was once the capital of the Hanseatic League, a medieval confederation of merchant guilds and market towns stretching over most of Northern Europe, and much of its medieval architecture still exists resulting in the town centre achieving UNESCO world heritage status. It’s skyline is dominated by the spires of the five churches dotted around the town, the oldest of which dates back to 1230.
We took a lift to the top of the church of St Petri to get an aerial view of the town. You could really take in the local architecture from this viewpoint, including the medieval marketplace and famous Holstentor or old city gate.
Another thing Lübeck is famous for is apparently marzipan. We took the kids into the vast marzipan shop and they were eager to try this almond based sugary treat prized by so many German children. One bite later though and they were both perfectly happy to leave it to the local kids to enjoy, suffice to say they were not instant fans.
Having explored Lübeck with Ben, he took us to a local supermarket to grab some supplies for the road before dropping us back to our van. We took a few more selfies to mark the occasion, had a manly hug, and he waved us off to continue our journey down to Berlin.
We said we’d try to not leave it so long next time, maybe sometime we could all go camping in Scandinavia together as two families, hopefully not in another ten years time!
