DAY 5
When I woke up and looked out the window, I saw a huge backyard with a babbling stream and a robotic lawn mower busily making its way across the grass. The sun was shining brightly, and another hot day lay ahead.
My first stop was the town of Warburg. After photographing several interesting buildings, I went in search of the Church of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary (St. Maria Heimsuchung). I had read that this late 13th-century church contains an antisemitic chimera depicting a half-human, half-animal creature with a long neck and enormous eyes. After descending into a deep ravine, I reached the church, but I couldn’t find the room where the chimera was supposed to be, and there was no one to ask — the church was completely deserted.
From Warburg, I drove to a place called Externsteine, a name that literally translates as “outer stones” — in other words, rocks protruding from the ground. It is a miniature “rock city” consisting of five enormous pillar-like rock formations and three smaller ones. Passages and stairways have been carved into the larger rocks, allowing visitors (for an admission fee) to explore inside and around them, cross the walkways connecting them, and climb all the way to the viewing platform at the top.
In front of the rocks is a beautiful wooded park with lakes, while behind them stretches a forest where you can hike along trails of various lengths, from 1.5 to 6 km. The longest trail leads to the Bear Rock.
After the rocks, my next stop was the attractive Renaissance-style Neuhaus Palace in the town of Paderborn. According to what I had read, the city also has an unusually designed cathedral and a beautiful Town Hall, but I didn’t manage to get to either of them.
My final stop was the town of Lemgo, from which, for some reason, I hadn’t expected anything particularly special. Instead, it turned out to be a real gem. There are dozens of beautiful historic buildings, concentrated mainly — though not exclusively — along the pedestrian Mittelstraße and around the Market Square (Marktplatz). The square itself is remarkable and is listed among Europe’s notable heritage attractions. The famous Gothic-Renaissance Town Hall is relatively restrained, but it is surrounded by magnificent stone buildings, each one more beautiful than the last. Although Lemgo also has some very interesting half-timbered houses, most of its historic buildings are stone. We’re moving north now, and soon there will be almost nothing but stone — or rather, not stone but brick. The Market Square also stands out for the successful way in which old and modern buildings have been combined.
The most famous building in town is the Hexenbürgermeisterhaus — roughly, the “Witch Mayor’s House” — built in 1571 in the Renaissance style. Its unusual name is connected with the story of Hermann Cothmann, a 17th-century mayor who exploited the widespread fear of witchcraft at the time (“Hexen” means “witches”) to get rid of his opponents. One of the most striking features of the façade is a biblical scene of the Garden of Eden, with Adam, Eve and a serpent coiled around the tree. Today, the building houses a museum displaying replicas of instruments once used in witch trials and torture.
Another place in Lemgo that is definitely worth visiting is the Junkerhaus Museum. This half-timbered house was designed and built by the artist Karl Junker in 1891, and he continued working on it — including the interior, furniture and virtually everything else inside the house — until his death in 1923. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it there before the museum closed at 5:00 p.m. — I simply missed my chance. I left Lemgo in high spirits after such an inspiring encounter with beauty.
DAY 6
Having escaped from an apartment as cold as a cellar, I drove to Bückeburg to see its Renaissance palace. I wasn’t particularly impressed by the palace itself, but the freestanding Baroque wings are beautiful. I had actually planned to go inside — something I rarely do — tempted by descriptions of its magnificent interior. Unfortunately, a guided tour had just started, and I didn’t want to wait almost an hour for the next one. It simply wasn’t meant to be.
The palace is surrounded by a circular, river-like moat where fish splash in the water. The bridge crossing it is decorated with sculptures, one of which is easily recognizable as the Abduction of Proserpina. Passing through the magnificent gates — once the entrance to the residence of the prince who owned the palace — I emerged onto a square with a beautiful Town Hall and the lavish Rococo façade of a church. I would have liked to see its interior, but the church was closed until two in the afternoon, and it was far too much to wait.
After that, I made the long drive to Weltvogelpark Walsrode, the World Bird Park, which I had dreamed to visit ever since my first trip to this region 32 years ago, when I simply couldn’t fit it into my itinerary.
The park was founded by a local businessman in 1962 as a breeding farm for pheasants and waterfowl. That same year, he handed it over to his daughter and son-in-law, who transformed it into a “bird zoo.” It gradually expanded to become the world’s largest bird park in terms of the number of species and its grounds, which cover 24 hectares. The park is home to around 4,000 birds representing 600 species from every continent and climate zone.
The park is an explosion of greenery and flowers, with plenty of oleanders in different colors — a veritable jungle where it’s not easy to find your way around even with a map. I diligently covered a huge part of the park and managed to see an enormous variety of birds, even if some only briefly. I never made it to the pink flamingos (no great loss — I’ve seen plenty of them in the Camargue in southern France and elsewhere), and somehow I also missed the toucan, the symbol of the park.
What’s not there! There is a tropical bird called a “Schuhschnabel” in German — literally “shoe-bill” — with an enormous shoe-shaped beak. Nearby, another huge bird, about half a meter tall, with an incredibly large, oddly shaped and brightly colored beak, stomps heavily along its perch and lets out short, loud barks in a deep voice. There are parrots of every kind, of course. Black swans, awkward and rather unattractive on land. A small red crane. Red birds with long beaks that look a little like kiwis. Birds of prey, among which a sea eagle with a huge yellow beak is particularly impressive. And on and on it goes. They even have bees and grasshoppers here — for the children, of course.
The park also has a huge children’s playground, a restaurant and a hotel. There is a schedule of bird feedings — visitors can even help feed the penguins — as well as other activities, including shows with trained eagles. It’s a paradise for children, who seem to make up the majority of visitors here. You could easily spend an entire day in the park.
DAY 7
Today was going to be a long day in terms of distance but relatively light on sightseeing, so there was no need to rush in the morning. For the first time on this trip, I had spent the night in an actual hotel, albeit a tiny one far from the main roads. It was a very pleasant place, as well as the cheapest accommodation of the trip and the only one that included breakfast — and a good breakfast at that. Out in the countryside, traditions seem to die more slowly.
I made quite a detour to visit Lüneburg, a town that promised to be interesting — and it lived up to that promise. Since I wasn’t in a hurry, I was able to explore all the main sights at a leisurely pace. I even went up the water tower — fortunately, there was an elevator — and photographed many beautiful buildings, including what may well be one of the last half-timbered buildings on my route as I continue north. It is a former mill, now converted into a restaurant, where I “had lunch” on a slice of rhubarb cake (disappointing), washed down with a delicious lemonade with mango juice added, which gave it a very interesting flavor, followed by a cup of coffee. I’m very disappointed that I still haven’t managed to drink a single glass of German beer. It’s a serious omission, but somehow the opportunity just hasn’t presented itself.
There are practically no foreign tourists in these places, although there are quite a few domestic visitors, including many Russian speakers. In fact, Russian can be heard fairly often, no less frequently than Arabic. Strangely enough, I haven’t met a single Israeli yet. I’m used to running into them actually anywhere in the world.
I had considered to drop into Hamburg for at least an hour, but then decided against driving into a large city with its heavy traffic. More that that, it would have required setting off much earlier to make it worthwhile. Bremen isn’t all that far away either, although it’s farther than Hamburg. I’ve visited both cities before, but anyone traveling through this part of Germany for the first time should, of course, include them in their itinerary.
Instead, I stopped in the town of Stade. By then I didn’t particularly feel like walking around anymore, and after Lüneburg it wasn’t quite as impressive, although I still managed to photograph several interesting buildings and places.
Since I had chosen to drive through Stade rather than bypass Hamburg and continue along the right bank of the Elbe (which would have been faster), I followed the left bank to the ferry and crossed the Elbe “by water” for €17.60 — €10 for the car and €7.60 for the passenger. At the ferry crossing, the Elbe is quite narrow and rather unimpressive, but farther downstream toward its mouth it widens and begins to look like a proper river. The only question is what it carries more of — mud or water.
I’m spending the night in Schleswig-Holstein, a region that was once under Danish rule, at a time when Denmark was one of the strongest powers in the region and controlled Norway as well as extensive territories in what is now northern Germany.
