Thu, 17 Jul 2003

author Tim	location Billund, Jutland, Danmark
posted 08:52 19/07/03 CEST	section Europe2002/Europe/Deutschland/Deutschland 1 ( all photos )

Lübeck and Timmendorfer Strand ( 9 photos )
Sebastian was getting up early for a lecture, so we had breakfast before getting our things organised and updating the website. We left with Jessi at about 10:30, dumping our things in Rosie before going to what would have to class as the world's cheapest supermarket, Aldi.
Actually, I'm sure the ones in Australia are cheaper, it's just that Aldi is so much cheaper than where we have been shopping recently that it was quite a shock. Needless to say, we stocked up fairly heavily for not much money with enough pasta, sauce, rice and anything that won't go off to last us through expensive Scandinavia.
We needed to get our spare tyre fixed since the episode on the ferry, and finally located a convenient place in the suburbs of Hamburg. Communicating with the staff was quite interesting at best, as only one of them spoke a little bit of English, but in the end we organised two replacement tyres (the old ones were very worn), and a spare from the old ones. We should get the other two changed at some stage in the future, but they are quite pricey.
Onwards from there, we headed up the A7 motorway to take the scenic route across to the city of Lübeck. We located the Park and Ride on the outskirts, fired up the GPS and got the bus to the Hauptbahnhof (central train station). From there, it was a quick walk across the river which surrounds the city, past the impressive huge, inwards leaning gate tower to the city itself.
Besides a nice walk around the town square where we ate some fresh raspberries and a strange street with British flags everywhere, by far the highlight of the town was a trip to the Lubecker Marionettentheater Fritz Fey, a puppet theatre. Everyone else there was either a child under four or looking after one, so we felt a little out of place. However, combining our almost total lack of understanding of the language with a great display of puppetry, a plot we have no idea about, and fifty or so three year olds constantly screaming out the Deutsch equivalent of "behind you!" (we think) whenever the goodie was looking for the baddie was a sure-fire winner. Just laugh when everyone else does and you will be fine.
With the combination of the American military's satellites and Liz's excellent memory for streets, we decided to walk the three kilometres or so back to Rosie at the Park and Ride and save some money. Being quite a hot day, we grabbed some water first, and were tempted to stock up at The Bierspezialist we found along the way, but made it in the end.

It wasn't far from there at all to the village of Timmendorfer Strand. This was on our destination list due to it being where Liz's father Ingo was born. However, we suspect the town he remembers is not very similar to what exists today. Plenty of high-rise tourist accommodation, expensive beach huts, shops selling lots of things nobody really needs and map-dispensing machines which eat your money. Should have learned my lesson after Chester, but I'm a sucker for information. As it turned out, the actual Information Centre was right behind it, but was only given away by the tinyest of plaques. We dropped in and were directed to Vogelpark - which was essentially a carpark nearby to camp in.
Driving there, we relaxed for a while before going off for a wander down to the little harbour. If you look around hard enough, this is still a great little place. As we walked around the beach, past plenty of boats and trying to ignore those trampoline-with-bungie cord tourist traps, we found what is almost a different town.
Back to relax at the van until the morning.

(customised)