Tangermünde

In the olden days, before Werner retired, having a few days away between Christmas and New Year was so necessary to refresh ourselves and get a new outlook on the work year to come. After retirement, it still seems necessary! Of course, only one of us is retired; not sure exactly what that means.

Looking at the map, seeing what was within reasonable driving range, finding some place with charm * we'd not visited before (heaven forbid we should visit the same place twice!), Werner settled on Tangermünde, a small town on the Elbe in the former East Germany. It's about three hours' drive from here and about an hour south of Berlin. (charm is generally defined by hotels that have window boxes with flowers.)

Getting there the quick way means using the Autobahn, driving like the devil, and passing through Braunschweig. Towns and regions here get abbreviations for license plates and Autobahn exits and such; for Braunschweig, it's BS. BS. Even knowing what it really stands for, in my American eyes, it looks very strange on these big signs: BS east, BS west, BS everywhere you look.

At the border between the former East and West Germany, there's a museum where they used to have the control areas, where cars lined up for hours to be thoroughly examined before going into the East. Still very creepy to see even looking through the rain-spattered car windows flying down the road. So many masts with flood lights, huge flat parking areas, swaths of nothing so the

guards could see anyone trying to make a run for it.

The entrance to the town center of Tangermünde is through the gates of the old Dominican monastery built in the 1400s. After the Reformation, it was closed and fell to ruins. This is all that remains.

Our holiday apartment was on the top floor of the bakery here on the Kirchstraße (Church Street). Cute little eyebrow windows allowed us to see the church the street was named for, though there was a good bit of fog most of the time we were there - as you can see since you can't see the church tower so well!!

This type of architecture is known as Brick Gothic - lots of Gothic elements but instead of stone - which is not as easy to come by in this region - made of red brick. It is imposing. The church - along with much of the rest of the town - has benefited substantially from reunification.

This is one of the side doors - the Gothic elements are easier to see - but all of it in brick.

And here's the town hall, petite compared to the church, but in the same Brick Gothic style. On the first floor and basement were artifacts from the history of the town including old torture instruments. Yuck. We haven't changed enough in the last 1000 years. (You can barely see Werner there on the right on the stairs.)

Like I said, LOTS and LOTS of brick - miles and tons of it. This picture was taken looking down from the city through the "Horse Gate", the one gate on the river side that was large enough for horses and carriages to drive through.

Can you see the birds? Crows, hundreds of them, came at dusk (which explains why the picture is so dark! ) and roosted in the bare trees and on the roof of the castle. They were very Harry Potter-ish, or Hitchcock-ish. Creepy.

Of course, the castle is now a hotel, and a bit rich for our budget. But when we win the lottery, we'll go back again and stay there.

Our second day there we woke up to snow! What a treat! It's been way too warm for winter. That day we drove to Stendal about 15 minutes away, home to another of the many Rolands in Germany - I think ours is much more attractive, but this one is much funnier.
More of the Brick Gothic style was there too but since it's a much bigger town (relatively speaking - Tangermünde is barely more than a village!) there were lots of other styles and newer buildings mixed in.

Werner knew, but I didn't, that Stendal was also the home of J.J.Winkelmann, A Famous Person. Famous for what, you're asking? Something near and dear to my heart - the person who established the modern approach of classification to the study of archaeology and art history. Wow. Not quite chill bumps, but that was a nice surprise. There's a memorial to him of course, and we visited the museum there in his honor. I picked up a copy of the exhibition they had a few years ago on Livia, wife of the Emperor Augustus and the subject of one of the many term papers I wrote in graduate school.

So, that was that. I've rambled on a bit long for only a three day trip. We read (I finished Paul Auster's Brooklyn Follies, definitely worth reading), did some needlework, got some sleep, let someone else do the cooking.

Happy New Year to us all

Peace and Love