Banana Kuchen and Bach

This will be my last post! Tomorrow we’ll spend the day following the sun west to Minnesota, and resuming "normal" life. It’s been so nice to hear that some folks have been reading this — thank you for sticking with it!

Last night we celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary at the Schiffergeschellschaft restaurant, a few blocks from our flat. The building dates back to 1535 and hasn’t changed much since then. Here is what the interior looked liked in the 19th century:

.... and here's what it looks like now, along with a happy diner:

Today (Thursday, Feb 14) was our last full day here. This afternoon we took our final bittersweet walk in Lübeck. Our destination was the Dom cathedral for a free half-hour organ concert of Mendelssohn and Bach. Poor Gary — this is not his thing at all — but he obliged me and I really enjoyed it. I think a Bach sendoff was appropriate! Here is the Dom, a very old cathedral:

This church was founded in 1173 by Henry the Lion, completed in 1230. It stood for 700 years, and then was partly destroyed in WWII. Here is what it looks like on the inside. Not bad for a Lutheran cathedral!

The Dom had to be rebuilt following WWII.  The bombing of Lübeck is something I haven’t mentioned yet. It’s such a sad story because it was so unnecessary: the citizens of Lübeck refused to allow Hitler to campaign here in 1932, and he never forgave the town after being slighted. So choosing Lübeck as a bombing target was a terrible mistake in every way. 

Lübeck was the first German city bombed by the British Royal Air Force. Lübeck’s location between two rivers, which reflected moonlight under a full moon that night, made it an easy target. 234 British bombers dropped about 400 tons of bombs early on Palm Sunday, 1942, killing 301 people, leaving 15,000 homeless, and destroying much of the city center.

After the bombing raid, the air force commander said of Lübeck:  “It was not a vital target, but it seemed to me better to destroy an industrial town of moderate importance than to fail to destroy a large industrial city.” And that is how the decision was made to bomb this lovely old city.

Fortunately, this was the one and only bombing raid on Lübeck in WWII, but the results are apparent today. The center of the city has new buildings, surrounded by the original older ones. I would have loved to have seen Lübeck on Saturday, the day before Palm Sunday, in 1942.

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On a happier note, after the concert we went to one of our favorite bakeries for our favorite kuchen, their banana kuchen. It even has a little marzipan banana on each slice. Not too sweet, lots of whipped cream with a hint of banana -- it's just perfection:

And that is the end of our story! We'll be leaving tomorrow morning for Hamburg Airport, then on to Amsterdam and to Minneapolis.