Wanderung 32

Monika had arranged a layover day in Wittenberge as we both needed a day to rest and recuperate a bit, and Wittenberge seemed to be a large enough town to spend a whole day in. The day dawned cold but sunny, which was unexpected, so we hustled out to take some morning pictures before we settled in for breakfast. As we were right on the small harbor leading directly into the Elbe River, we saw boats moored along the shore, and my favorite shot of the morning was the full moon shining over a nice motorboat moored on the bank across from us. It reminded me of the song "Boat On The River", so I made up some new lyrics for that song and posted the pic on Facebook.

Breakfast was in a large hall in the old owner's residence of the Oil Mill complex, and it was a grand room. We speculated that it was originally either a banquet room or a ballroom, or possibly used as both back when the oil factory was in its heyday. The breakfast buffet was more like a breakfast banquet, with just about everything you can imagine available except USA stapes like pancakes or waffles, which just aren't done that much in Germany.

After breakfast it was still sunny, so we opted to walk around Wittenberge. Wittenberge turned out to be a pretty city, with a shoreline promenade along the Elbe that featured both nice old brick buildings like the old Customs House, together with some rather odd but humorous bronze sculptures depicting musicians and possibly the history of the area. Someone had also knitted colorful scarves and even booties for the statues, which I thought rather added to the humorous effect!

The current pretty city was not, however, accidental, but rather in large part due to a systematic, expansive, and expensive 20-year restoration effort after the collapse of the old East Germany. Western sources invested 9.2 million Euro in restoring old properties in the downtown area, and 4.6 million Euro in restoring streets, sidewalks and city parks. Just in case anyone becomes nostalgic for the old "Workers' Paradise", I took a copy shot of a plaque that showed both "Before" and "After" rehab pictures of about 20 of those properties. To cure any nascent nostalgia, simply take a close and careful look at the drab, dirty, and decrepit buildings of the Soviet Era compared with the clean, colorful, and carefully preserved buildings of today.

The center of Wittenberge was, as you might expect, a nice brick church, surrounded by an oval-shaped plaza in this case. Many of those renovated homes were on the periphery of that plaza, and I thought they were both pretty and surprisingly unique, possibly due to being from different architectural periods.

We turned left on Lenzen Strasse to find the Lidl store that Monika had noticed on our ride across the old town district the day before. They had the size Large bicycle shirt I was looking for and we bought that, but they did not have ready-made sandwiches. However, we had seen a Netto store just off Lenzen Strasse on the way out, and we cut over to it on our way back to see if they had some sandwiches for lunch, which they did. We also checked out the pizza parlor right across from the Netto store as we both craved a hot meal, but it was closed until later that afternoon. Nuts.

But just in front of the pizza parlor we saw something I have never seen before, a huge vending machine that apparently would cook and serve you one of two styles of pizza in 3 minutes for 6 Euro! We have never had vending machine pizza before, though, and we were somewhat apprehensive about trying it out despite the machine touting its left-side pizza as being "Chicago Style", which did make me laugh when I read it.

In the end, we ate the sandwiches for lunch and had some leftover rolls with butter and marmalade for our evening snack after we got back to our room. Actually I would have walked back to see what the pizza parlor offered that evening, but the bursitis in Monika's left hip was acting up and we forwent the evening walk as the walking seemed to be making it worse. But we had a nice, relaxed evening reading together and playing on our iPads a bit before turning in for the night.