July 18- Lauenburg

The girls woke up on their own this morning, and Emma had slept through the night. We had breakfast at the hotel and headed north to Lauenburg, which is a town on the Elbe river just east of Hamburg.

In 1857, Joseph Langhans and his family left Lauenburg and came to America (using the port of Hamburg, no doubt). The family lost a child on the trip, but by January 1858, they had arrived in New York City. They moved to Cattaraugus County. The oldest son, John Langhans, eventually joined the 154th New York Volunteer Infantry to fight in the Civil War. He was Scott’s great-great-grandfather, on his paternal grandmother’s side. Our trip to Lauenburg today was to see what the community is like now.

We crossed the Elbe River on the bridge from the south and after a quick view of the riverfront, we parked by a riverboat at the docks, and walked inland. We found signs for “information” which directed us uphill to the Schloss (castle) tower. The information center wouldn’t be open until one o’clock, but we looked around the tower. The tower itself is one of the icons of the town, and the girls were excited to see the bride to a wedding party arrive in a limousine. We explored the tower itself and climbed to its top. Scott hit his head (twice, on the same beam) as we came out onto the highest point. Two bells are hanging up there, but the platform was quite small. Julie wanted to take pictures quick and work our way back down the steep stairs slowly.

We walked into the business district in town, not knowing exactly where we were headed, but hoping we might find an internet café or a Laundromat to use. We passed a bookstore where Scott bought a book on the town and a couple of CDs with music about the town by local artists. (The music didn’t end up being all that good, but they’re interesting to have.) We asked about an internet café in several stores and eventually found the public library. One of the people working there was kind enough to log us on to use the computers. It’s a good thing too, because people at home were starting to panic. The last time we had a chance to log in was the morning of the 13th. Today is the 18th, so people at home were in the dark. Scott’s parents sent an e-mail asking if we were ok. Julie’s dad sent one asking if the computer was “kaput.” There were also several birthday wishes for Anastasia. We answered the e-mail, but the computer wasn’t recognizing our thumbdrive, so the postings would have to wait.

We went back through the town, and found our way back to the dockside again. The old town is along the river, of course, but we were surprised that there were not the very old buildings that many other towns have had. The town of Lauenburg celebrated it’s 800th anniversary this year, so it has been around for awhile. Flags were flying around town with the celebration logo on them, and there were several displays that we found on buildings that showed what those buildings looked like back in 1900. But by European standards, 100 year old buildings aren’t that old. We wondered why the town was like that.

In addition to the schloss tower, another emblem for the town is the statue on the waterfront of a boatman calling out. He’s called “Der Rufer.“ We saw him on posters and all sorts of things throughout the town. We ended up eating lunch at a restaurant by the docks, and we sat outside at the table that was closest to that statue. The girls had spaghetti, Julie had a salad and Scott had schnitzel. We took our own photos of the statue and the boats.

After lunch we continued through the old town section, and found the Lutheran church. We don’t know if the Langhans family attended here, but it is a pretty church with a high steeple. We didn’t find a date for the church but the interior of it didn’t seem that old. We then went back to the car, and drove to the visitor’s center that was closed earlier. Scott bought a pin there and a few postcards for the scrapbook. We then crossed the bridge to the Southern shore of the Elbe and took a few quick photos of the town from that perspective. By then it was time to leave Germany.

From Hamburg to Holland. That was almost the title of this blog entry, just for the way it sounds to someone from Western New York. In fact we drove from Lauenburg, avoided the traffic in Hamburg by swinging on the autobahns furthest south around the city, and continued on to the Netherlands. We’ve seen a lot of windmills over the past week, but as we drove west, it sometimes seemed like forests of them. These are the large ones like the kind that they just put up in Lackawanna. The cows have changed too. We’re now seeing the more familiar white and black Holsteins. Schleswig Holstein is the German state that is just north of Hamburg, so the cows are close to home.

After a rest-area dinner that none of us really liked, we continued on to Holland. We splurged tonight and got a “real” hotel that we saw from the road. We should have internet access tonight, so with any luck, this entry will be posted to the blog by the end of the day. [Note: Well, that didn’t work as we had hoped.] The girls are in the pool right now. It’s not really a kid’s pool. It’s deep and marked with lanes for competitions, it seems, but Anna is in and Julie is sticking close to Emma. It’s actually in a field house, back behind the hotel complex.