Day Trip To Lüneburg, Germany

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I was in Hamburg during Easter week.  On Easter Monday, my friends and I decided to do a day trip to Lüneburg.  Not much was open due to it being a holiday in Germany, but we had a lovely day wandering around the town and eating a wonderful lunch.

We stopped to have lunch at Das Kleine, located right on the riverfront.  I had a burger that was a combination of beef and lamb.  It was delicious!

​Lüneburg is a town of red brick Gothic architecture that rose to prosperity during the middle ages.  It's best known for its salt which was in great demand in order to preserve herring that caught in the Baltic and North Seas. 

During our visit to Lüneburg, we enjoyed a walk along the banks of the Ilmenau River which flows through the town.

It's a really picturesque area and if you’re looking for postcard-perfect photo ops, this is where you’ll find them. You have the weeping willows swaying next to the river, you can see buildings in a variety of architectural styles all standing next to each other, and the bridge is covered in love locks.

​Lüneburg’s town hall building is built in multiple architectural styles.

There are a lot of churches in Lüneburg.  The main three are Basilica of St. Nikolai, St. John’s Church (the oldest Lutheran church with its 108-meter tower rises crookedly towards the sky), and St. Michael’s (an abbey church of the former monastery of Benedictines). 

On our walk, I noticed that some of the buildings looked crooked so after I got home I researched why.  

During the Middle Ages, Lüneburg found its wealth through salt, a time when table salt was almost as valuable as gold. The problem is that the salt was underneath the town and water was pumped down to extract it creating cavities. This resulted in parts of the town sinking and it’s something that continues to happen to this day. You can see this as you walk past buildings that aren’t quite level and whose doorways and windows look crooked.

​How do you get to Lüneburg?

The best way to get to Lüneburg is by train. It's approximately a 30-minute train ride from Hamburg Hauptbahnhof to Lüneburg on the RE (Regional Express) for about €12. 

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