Lubeck to Gudov

The next day, we were due to leave Lubeck, but not till the afternoon. So we went into town for a bit more urban tourism.  We started with the medieval Hospital of the Holy Spirit, mentioned in the last instalment.  The main hall, that had been the chapel, was an inmpressive Gothic interior.  One could not see much more of the rest, but there was a good model in the main hall, showing it had been a pretty well self-contained entity in the middle ages.

We then moved on to St Jackobi's church (St James in English). Here, there was a touching memorial to both World Wars, in the this rather poor photo

We then went on to St Mary's Church, the big one in the city centre.  It was badly damaged in a British air raid in WW II, in this photo on display shows

but has been totally restored.

They have left the bells where they came crashing down.

It has several other points of interest.  Not least, the fact that Buxtehude was the organist and was visited by JS Bach, who had permission for a short visit but actually stayed several months and got into trouble in consequence,  There is some work by Bernt Nokte, and a bit about his Dance of Death.  Outside, something about how the devil helped build the church.

Lunch. We then got going on our bikes again.  Due South, on the main road from near our hotel, then turn left to get to the East side of Lake Ratzeburger to Kalkhutte, where we camped for the night. 

Next day, to Schlagsdorf, quite near the camp-site, though we still lost the way getting there.  Schlagsdorf has a special museum about the German-German border, the Iron Curtain in Germany.  There is quite a bit of stuff inside the musuem house about the border, its impact on the neighborhood and individual accounts about the few people who manged to get through it, while there is also an outside area where they have reconstructed a section of the border fence

We had lunch in the garden of the museum cafe.  There was an art exhibition.  This picture matched some of my prejudices:-

This museum was the first time that the Iron Curtain and its impact had hit us quite so much. The border had cut a swath up to 1 km broad across Germany, and beyond, for hundreds of kilometres.  There was a series of photos showing a tract of it, immediately after it came down, then about 15 years later and now.  It started as a a scar of bare earth, then some vegetation, and now full trees growing.  Almost of it all has been left to return to nature, and it is now a green swathe across the country.  

Then it was time to go. The border next ran along the length of a largish lake, the Lassahner See, and the installations to stop people crossing it would have been on the east bank.  The ICT route went this way, though there are no border installations to see there now.  We took a bit of time to get on to this bit of the route.  It was nothing special; ordinary roads weith no sign of any border, that took us to Zarrentin at the south end of the lake.  Stopped for shopping, and then it was not much further to Gudow, where there is a camp-site by another lake and where we stayed the night.