Nach Lingen: A Lingen: To Lingen

At the end of our road trip, we found ourselves in Lingen, hometown of Malte and Daniel, and our friend Phil. It's a small town with big traditions and lots of history. I love it!

This is the town square. The old town hall is the white building. It was restored a few years ago by Malte's dad, who is an architect.
Our two guides, Daniel and Malte, show us the restored guard tower exploded during an unexpected attack on the city. It has an interesting story, as the city decided that it needed to either build bigger walls to protect themselves, or to tear their walls down altogether (because having walls meant there was something worth protecting-ie: worth attacking for). The city took the walls down and no one attacked again...armies would apparently march right by, assuming it was just a poor town.


Malte explaining a statue given to the city as a gift from the young men's club in the town, the Kivelinge.

We got special priveleges since Malte has keys to the Altes Burgerhaus, which is home of the Kivelinge. The group was started to recognize young men in the town. This started after a war in which all of the men in the town were killed or wounded and the only people left were the young boys who went to the front lines and saved the city. Now, the group has about 250 male members. There is a similar group for married men in the town. Every few years they throw what is called Kivelingsfest, to remember the battle won by the boys, and they consider themselves service-members of the town.

After snacks and chatting at Daniel's, and a rest and planning-for-Cologne (Koln) adventure at Malte's, Daniel and Malte brought us to Gruner Jager, a bar/restaurant where we had fantastic Schnitzel and the boys had their first truly German beer(s). Apparently the men's and women's bathrooms were separated by fishtanks, one of which was for baby fish and was labeled "the nursery"...in German, of course.

Next, we headed back into Lingen, where we went to their favorite local bar, and we were served by their favorite waitress. An interesting thing about Germany is that in bars and some restaurants, your coaster is your bill, which is also a contract. Malte said there is a saying that says the world's greatest deals are made on coasters...meaning that big things happen in small, community-oriented places, and a signature on a coaster is as good as any written contract because it is so personal. Really an interesting concept. Too bad, I'm pretty sure "coaster-contracts" wouldn't work so well in the US.


Me, Dan and Tom at the bar...which is not like a US or Spanish bar. It is more like a restaurant with tables and chairs that just serves drinks.

Daniel convinced Tom to have "JUST ONE MORE" beer...so he got a baby-beer, which was still huge!

After the bar, we headed to get "Doners" which is equivalent to going to a Kebab/Durham place in BCN. They were super-excited, and when we saw how much better they were in Germany than Barca, we understood why! We sat and yapped for a while, then it was finally time to hit the road so I wouldn't fall asleep at the wheel. We dropped off a Daniel who was ecstatic about the option of visiting us in Spain for less than 200 Euro-COME SEE US! Then we drove to Malte's and left him to fend for himself in the rain as we took his directions back to our hostel in Osnabruck for the night. It was sad, but the day with them was fantastic. Hopefully they will actually look into coming to visit--there's always room for friends!