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!

Deutschland mit Malte: Alemania con Malte: Germany with Malte

So the day started off like any day...except that we are in Germany! :)

We got up around 7:30 for breakfast--which was awesome! They had cereal, coffee, cappuchino, tea, bread, deli meats, fruit, nutella...it was definitely a treat. Had breakfast with the German Soccer team...well, in the same room...and then we had time before Malte and his friend were coming, so we decided to do one of the best-known German pasttimes: wandern...that is literally the verb for hiking...pronounced "von-dern." Tom and Bob got a kick out of this.

There was a trail behind the hostel, so we climbed the stairs, and just wandered around in the woods for a while. We saw a soccer field that was actually made of grass, a mini-playground...which we clearly took advantage of, and lots of mud...which took me a while to clean when we got back to the hostel. We also happened upon a colony of birds with HUGE nests who lived in a flock in one section of the woods, and close-by we came across the zoo...who knew?! We also saw a memorial sign for students and teachers killed in a bombing of the area during the war. On that sad note, we wandered back to the hostel and got ready for our day with Malte and his friend, Daniel.

As previously mentioned...these are our two guides and their wall of TP from around the world, in the bathroom of their apartment! If you have some, I'd be happy to send it on to them, I'm sure it would be appreciated. Daniel, on the left, is Malte's apartment-mate and a fellow Lingen-er (which is my way of saying they are both from the town of Lingen). He is studying physics. Malte is one of my friends, who I met through Phil (an exchange student in Buffalo and friend of my neighbors, who introduced us). Malte and I have kept in touch since we met on his visit to the US back in 2003...hard to believe I hadn't seen him in almost 4 years!

Well...as our tour began, it ws obvious that Daniel and Malte were hungry, and in one convo they has in German, I was attempting to understand and only caught "Barcelona"...and so...we walked around the block and I came to understand even better what they meant!

We continued on to many of the sites we visited in the dark last night, and made it to the same plaza, which we NOW realized is home of their City Hall ("Rathaus"-funny name, no?). We learned that Osnabruck is known as the City of Peace because, if I'm not mistaken, the treaty at the end of the 30 Years War was signed in this building. The boys are chatting on the right.

This church is in the same plaza, to the right in the previous picture. Apparently most days you can go up to the steeple, but it was closed on Saturdays...bummer. We managed to get some interesting insight on architecture in the area from Malte, since he was interested in architecture before beginning his studies in law. There is an entire architecture style named after this city. It consists of a facade that steps out over the street so that the walls collapsed into the street in case of fire so people inside wouldn't be crushed by the walls and would have a better chance of escaping. While this system's validity was questioned, it was still really cool to hear about, it to see...all over the place!

This is the Felix Nussbaum house. His works are house in this building which is comprised of an old part and an addition, done by famous architect, Daniel Libeskind. We didn't go inside, but admired his choice of material, form, strange window treatments, etc from the outside, before heading to brunch. I got currywurst; basically a sausage with medium-hot curry sauce and fries...it was reaaaally good. We are loving the food and the boys are especially loving the portions since the ones in Spain are so tiny!

After brunch, we walked to the rest of the university of osnabruck in the rain that had started since entering the restaurant. This is the main building, which was originally part of a palace, but now serves as an admissions/office building. After this, we had seen most of Osnabruck, or at least what we were told was worth seeing, so we headed back to their apartment, grabbed our cars, and went on a road trip at speeds of up to 170 km/hr to the "city" of Lingen...home to Malte, Daniel, Phil, and about 50,000 others.