Sophisticated dining – including some wurst

Delicate couscous and feta

If Germany provided plenty of hearty, down-to-earth dining experiences, it also provided two really top-notch fine-dining experiences.

But while the food was excellent, perhaps the most interesting aspect of those meals was that they illustrated that German culinary tradition, far from being something to sniff at, is well worth looking at.

For the first couple of days, adjusting to later starts, larger-than-usual breakfasts and then larger-than-usual lunches meant that we were not in the mood to try either of the hotel’s two restaurants.

Belle Epoque is the flashiest of the two, with Michelin-starred food that, as the name implies, has its roots in what Michel Roux Jr would call “The Classics” – or a certain type of French cuisine and approach – and which is open to non-residents.

There's no escaping Thomas Mann

Downstairs, and also used for breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea, is Holstein, the hotel restaurant for residents. And as that name suggests, it has a rather more local ethos.

During last year’s solo trip to Lübeck, one of the highlights – one of the core things I’d set out to do, indeed – was dinner at Schiffergesellschaft.

The centuries-old seaman’s guild is housed in a 1553 building that still serves as a restaurant.

There, I’d tried the iconic labskaus, a seaman’s dish of pickled or corned beef, the meat mixed with onion and beetroot, and traditionally served with a fried egg on top and a plate of good old matjes herrings on the side.

A superb spargel soup

Schiffergesellschaft gets a mention in Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, and I was delighted to find that the Holstein has a large, black and white photograph on the wall of the man himself, taken outside the hotel in 1953.

But then the author considered Travemünde as something close to a paradise.

It too features in Mann’s first great novel, and even if worthy Lübeckers were mightly offended by his 1901 literary debut, there is plenty to suggest that their modern-day descendants appreciate the added value it lends the area – there is even a Buddenbrooks restaurant in a hotel just a couple of hundred metres from where we stayed.

But back to the pickled beef.

The first thing on the Holstein menu that caught my eye – a couple of days before we were first ready to dine there – was a labskaus.

How would an essentially modern and smart restaurant tackle such a dish?

Labskaus, deconstructed

I kept that question in mind until the first evening on which we’d actually left enough space for a three-course meal.

Before we get to that, let’s start by saying that, we waited, we were served with a selection of very nice breads, plus quark (a sort of German yogurt) and a lightly spiced relish, plus butter, and then with a small plate that was less an amuse bouche and more an hors d’oeuvres, involving very delicately prepared couscous and crumbled feta that was, if not very Germanic, then certainly very pleasant.

And of course, since The Other Half doesn't like cheese, I got his feta too.

But as a first course proper, both of us opted for the spargel soup.

The asparagus season enjoys cult status in Germany.

Known by a variety of nicknames, from ‘Königsgemüse’ (king’s vegetable) to ‘Frühlingswonne’ (springtime delight) and ‘Zartes Elfenbein’ (soft ivory), restaurants across the country add special asparagus menus, while little stalls set up on the streets to sell this seasonal glory.

While Germans prefer the white asparagus, the green that we’re more familiar with is not neglected.

Matjes herring on onion

Back in 2009, when we were in Berlin in early June, we ordered spargel soup at the iconic Lutter & Wegner, but were disappointed with the overly salty result, which suggested that it had been hanging around for some time.

This time around, the result was quite simply superb, with a creamy base, slivers of perfectly cooked white asparagus, drops of delightful tarragon oil and a few croutons for added texture.

Next up for me at least was the labskaus – which turned out to be deconstructed.

There’s always a danger with this approach that it can look good but not actually achieve anything much for the palate.

Here, it proved a very enjoyable exercise in appreciating the tastes and textures of a mixed dish – I bet those sailors never thought their dish would assume the level of haute cuisine.

Wonderful blutwurst

The meat, combined with some beetroot, came in quenelles, with the fried egg replaced by a breaded quail’s egg atop onion and herbs, a roasted beet purée, homemade potato crisps, matjes and shredded gherkin.

I opted for the almost inevitable ice cream after – but was too stuffed to make much headway with that.

The Other Half, having opted for a rhubarb crumble after a beef dish, reported himself more than satisfied.

Our final night saw us decamp to Holstein yet again and this time, the hors d’oeuvres was an incredibly delicate matjes herring on top a sweet and gentle onion, very finely chopped, a hint of bitter herbs and a little tomato.

Zander, with beetroot and potatoes

Lovely – and ensured The Other Half didn’t leave the country without at least a taste of herring.

Again, we both opted for the same main course – blutwurst (black pudding).

Gloriously moist and tasty, it was complimented by a bitter salad and quince two ways – as small triangles of jelly and as a rather larger wedge of mousse.

A real joy, this.

For a main course, the Other Half opted for zander, a German fish that is often translated, rather meaninglessly, as ‘pike-perch’, which are two altogether different fishes.

But then there is no British alternative, although it was introduced to the Fens some time ago and is considered a pest – can I try to get rid of it by culinary methods, then?

While he enjoyed that, I dined on lachs (salmon), with new potatoes and white and green spargel, which was very nice if not earth-shattering.

For dessert, however, I picked apple three ways – a slice of feather-light strudel, a sorbet and calvados-infused brunoise on a crisp, all made with Holstein cox. Absolutely gorgeous.

Apple, three ways

On the matter of wines, we drank a German red with the first meal at Holstein: that was a first, and very nice it was too.

For the second meal, we opted for a white – a Grauburgunder: a 2012 Kabinet, trocken, Weingut Bimmerle from Baden, which was also extremely nice.

We left thinking that that was food we’d be more than happy to eat again.

What Holstein perfectly illustrates is that German cuisine is very far from being sausage and pickled cabbage.

It can be hearty and simple and comforting, but done like this, it can also be as sophisticated as anything that most of us are likely to eat anywhere.

Perspectives on Buddenbrooks

The (white) house on Mengstraße, from the Marienkirche.

Time flies. And it's already nearly four weeks since my departure for Lübeck. But the end of that trip was not the end of the story.

Quite apart from anything else, there was still my reread of Buddenbrooks to complete. And completed it has been, with the benefits of insights gained from a variety of sources.

I was about to say that my first reading of it, back in 2001, was flawed. But that's not the case. It was a face-value reading and I loved it as such.

But whereas my subsequent readings of Thomas Mann fed a view that it was a straightforward novel, a reappraisal leaves me thinking quite differently.

Long regarded as being close to an historic record of life in 19th century Lübeck, it's far more than that. I touched, in an earlier blog, on some of the themes, and particularly that of coming modernity. But as my background reading widens, it's possible to see much, much more in it.

It is a novel of layers. There's nothing wrong with reading and enjoying it as a straightforward family saga, but it has a lot more going for it. And a great deal of that is related to philosophical ideas of the time.

The title - or more accurately, the subtitle – is crucial. It charts the "decline" of a family. And it certainly does do just that: the business, the political influence and the reputation and status, built up over generations, are whittled away.

But the interesting question is why the decline occurs and whether, indeed, Mann meant it simply to represent something negative, which is how we tend to automatically interpret that word.

The Buddenbrook family does not simply decline: what happens is a metamorphosis.

The change, simply, is that over three generations, introspection and philosophical and cultural awareness develop.

We open with old Johann presiding over a housewarming party on Mengstraße. A merchant with little thought for intellectual matters, he has brought his house to its highest point.

Yet even as he himself nears death, he is starting to look around and question.

For his son, also Johann, such questioning takes the form of religious piety - something that the father lacked.

 But in his the younger Johann's sons, that changes again. First, the younger of the two, Christian, sufferers from childhood fears and panics and doubts that turn, as he grows, into self-indulgent and ill-disciplined self obsession.

Later, the older son, Tom, who has taken over the business, also finds himself grappling with questions about the very meaning of his existence. Indeed, at the end of Tom's life, we have an episode that is little other than existential angst.

And then finally there is Hanno, Tom's son, whose own, juvenile philosophical internal discussion leaves him, at 15, with a death wish as he views what he believes to be the utter pointlessness of life.

Only his own music - and hearing the likes of Wagner's Lohengrin - gives him a feeling of any meaning.

There are a number of things going on here, and many of them are reflections of the influences, philosophical and artistic, on Mann at the time, and more widely, of 19th century German philosophy and art.

We have moved by stages from an essentially simple internal life to a complex one in those three generations. This is the root of the decline from 'vitality' - a Nietzschian idea - to one of philosophical and artistic contemplation and action, which itself is in keeping with Wagner's post-religious belief in the centrality of art to human life.

At its most simple (as I understand it, in other words) Nietzsche's idea of vitality is about being energised and lively - without introspection. The conflict occurs when you have that internal growth, which is desirable, but which diminishes the vitality.

In Nietzchean terms, vitality was represented by the blonde, blue-eyed archetype: it's was not created by or unique to Nietzsche, and while we know where it went, he did not use it to represent some idea of racial perfection.

But this explains to us what Mann means, in the late stages of Buddenbrooks, when he represents the fellow pupils that Hanno and his equally intellectually inclined friend Kai are isolated from as being blonde and blue-eyed.

It's so easy to think now that this is so much bunk, but it makes great sense. From a personal perspective, I see how my own immediate family has 'declined' as each new generation has explored the same issues more and more.

My father came from rural, working-class stock, but moved beyond that - including simple, rural religious belief - into the clergy. It's probably fair to say I've gone further still in terms of the 'philosophical life', and certainly the artistic one.

It's a pattern that is partly reflected in the declining size of families.

We know that, when women have educational and career opportunities (internal growth), the birth rate declines - in Karela in India, ensuring this is the case for women has resulted in precisely such a decline in population growth to some 40% below the national average, with concomitant declines in infant and maternal mortality, and rises in life expectancy.

So while it's easy to view the idea of decline in Buddenbrooks as negative, it has a concomitant benefit - personal growth.

It ties in too, with the German idea of bildung, which I'm not going to claim I understand in detail, but seems, in essence, to be the personal quest for knowledge and understanding: growth in the internal life, in effect.

So hence the German Bildungsroman is 'a novel of ideas' - and Mann was arguably the last true exponent of that, taking it right into the post-war era.

All this in turn offers a clearer picture of what the Nazis misappropriated from Nietzsche (and others) and why Buddenbrooks specifically was burnt as a 'degenerate' work of art, on that night in Berlin, exactly 80 years ago this month.

Bildung - central to the German renaissance - was the antithesis of Nazi ideology, while unthinking 'vitality' was its lifeblood.

And it is one of the tragic ironies of history that it was not a disaffected older generation that organised the book burnings in 1933, but students.

But back to the book.

Another aspect is the increasing passivity of the Buddenbrooks by generation, which also corresponds to intellectual/artistic questing.

Old Johann plays the flute - but it is not Mozart that he plays, and there is no indication that he plays with particular fretting for any deeper emotional meaning or as 'art' - the same can be said of the poet, Hoffstede, who delivers a poem at the housewarming.

Rathaus, chancellery & Marienkirche

Yet within two generations, Gerda, Hanno's mother, is playing her violin in exactly that manner: music has become a vital part of her own internal life - and Hanno follows in her footsteps, taking it further.

But while old Johann's son continues the businesses, with moderate success, his increased religiosity reduces his vitality and it doesn't go forward with the same vigour.

Christian is redundant where the family business is concerned, as his introspection has already consumed him. To begin with, Tom makes progress with the family firm, but he reaches a point where it ceases to give his life meaning, and his own existential angst starts to hamper him and the business.

It eventually leads to him reading some philosophy (presumed to be Schopenhauer), shortly before he dies.

By now we have another reflection of vitality - or a lack of it - represented by bad teeth. A fatal stroke directly follows a nasty visit to the dentist for Johann, while Hanno has problems with his teeth from birth.

It's an idea that crops up again in Mann's masterpiece of a novella, Death in Venice (1912), with Aschenbach observing that Tadzio's poor dental state probably indicates that he will die young.

And it works at quite a specific level to illustrate the contrast between vitality and inward growth, when Hanno is rewarded for a series of painful dental visits with a trip to the theatre to see Lohengrin.

But back to the passivity. It reaches its apotheosis in the book with Hanno, who does nothing to defend himself from the bullying of those blonde, blue-eyed types, but accepts in a the manner of a martyr.

Interestingly, Kai - who wants to be a novelist - does strike out to defend his friend on one occasion: an indication, perhaps, of the next stage of development, where the internal life can combine more with the vital one?

In his book, Aspects of Wagner, Bryan Magee points out the passivity of Wagner's characters. While he represents the internal life in a way that no other composer had come close to, he also leaves his characters as being recipients of actions rather than causing actions.

And this is reflected in Buddenbrooks, with Hanno as the ultimate realisation of it.

Mann's characters develop beyond this in his later works - to mention Death in Venice again, Aschenbach almost falls victim to the same attitude, but earns his ultimate 'salvation' by recognising his duty, wrenching himself out of this state and warning Tadzio's mother of the disease bringing havoc to the city.

Perhaps it should be argued that the very search for inward development is the antithesis of passivity?

However, to return to Buddenbrooks, though, from the perspective of my visit to Lübeck.

Such a visit gives a deeper sense of a novel, certainly, but it can also offer specific insights.

For me, the central benefit came from understanding the physical and political make up of the old city itself.

Where the Dom (cathedral) had been built some way away from the Rathaus (town hall), the Marienkirche was built right next to it - and built bigger and more splendidly - creating a corner of  the Altstadt that was the centre of mercantile power and achievement. The court for the whole of the Hanseatic League sat in the Rathaus.

The house on Mengstraße is simply across the street from the church. It could hardly be closer to those seats of power and authority and achievement.

By contrast, when Tom decides to build a new house for himself and his family, he moves away from Mengstraße to Fischergrube.

Eventually, the house on Mengstraße is sold too - to Tony Buudenbrook's enduring chagrin, to an upcoming family that she sees as rivals.

And ultimately, the remaining Buddenbrooks find themselves living beyond the Holstentor, outside the old city itself.

Travemünde operates as an interesting contrast to the city.

In general terms, it is somewhere that is closer to nature, yet it is far from immune to internal development.

While summering there to escape the attentions of Bendix Grünlich, Tony comes as close to internal development as possible, both directly in her relationship with Morten, a trainee doctor, and also less directly, in her spending time "on the rocks" in lonely contemplation.

But Tony's opportunities for such reflection are limited by conventional demands to marry well, and she never again comes close to such learning. Indeed, we can read the rest of her role in the novel not simply as comedic, but also as indicative of the restrictive role of the conventions of both Lübeck specifically and the period more generally on women.

Beyond this, food has an interesting, if minor, role to play.

The housewarming that opens the novel is a feast - and one that, straight away, gives the child Christian a serious attack of indigestion.

Family doctor Grabow advises a lighter diet for a while, musing at the same time that such a heavy one is what ultimately sees off most of his patients.

But the earliest sign of Christian's own growing and unhealthy introspection comes a short while later in his panic at imagining choking on a peach stone, and his trouble with swallowing that follows it.

It is not indigestion from good eating that will bring about the decline of the Buddenbrooks, but indigestion of a different, more cerebral variety.

Overall, it's important to stress that all of this is written in a dispassionate and ironic style: it is far from a depressing or po-faced book.

It's also too easy to say that Mann sympathised exclusively with the exchange of vitality for inward growth, with passivity as an outward.

Although there are substantial autobiographical aspects in the novel - it's certainly easy to see Mann himself in both Tom and Hanno - his own dedication to his art, itself perhaps a continuation of the Protestant work ethic of northern Europe, illustrates how he himself always related that art to something other than an apparent lethargy.

There is humour here too. Near the end, as Hanno recalls the previous evening's performance of Lohengrin, is the following: "It was true that the music of the overture was too much for the cheap violins in the orchestra ..." which did make me laugh out loud.

And there are times too when Tony is, in her absolute lack of self awareness, hilarious, although Mann never overdoes the fun he pokes. At the end, she is a tragic figure.

There are issues with translation. HT Lowe-Porter did an immense job in providing the first translations of Mann's work for English-language readers, but it is far from flawless.

In his introduction to his own translation of Death in Venice, David Luke slams Lowe-Porter's work, not least because she also removed things she didn't like.

But some of the flaws are obvious even for someone with a very limited knowledge of the language themselves.

When a character is translated as presenting a meal with the words, "good appetite", even I know there are problems. That is a literal translation of 'guten Appetit'', but it doesn't mean that any more than 'bon appétit' means 'good appetite'. The nearest would be 'enjoy you meal' or even, simply, 'enjoy'.

She also had a tendency to use archaic words where they're not needed, which can give Buddenbrooks a rather older feel than it should have.

Mann acknowledged Lowe-Porter's work, but would never be drawn to criticise her: he said instead that his English was not good enough to allow that.

Hopefully, better translations will come about. And in the meantime, I shall return to my own German studies with greater vigour, determined that one day I might be able to read them in the original.

Buddenbrooks, then, can be read on a number of levels. But digging deeper is a fascinating and rewarding exercise, and helps to emphasise just what an extraordinarily precocious literary debut this was.


• The covers illustrated above are from, top, the Vintage 1999 edition. The second, is a German edition, with the original cover design, which I bought at Buddenbrookhaus.

From the beach to the wood

If Sunday had dawned in such good form that it felt as though spring were finally with us, Monday could have been mistaken for summer.

For the second day running, I was up early and down to breakfast pretty much as soon as it opened.

Well fed, I headed out into the sun and back to the charming railway station, passing me old friend Otto von Bismarck on the way.

At the station, I was tempted by a bottle of something declaring itself to be 'Fürst Bismarck Wellness Emotion". Given that the only product that I could think of that was called 'Fürst Bismarck' was vodka, this was intriguing.

It contained mineral water, with mango, trauben (grapes) and "Kräuter-geschmack" – 'a herbal taste'. And it was not unpleasant, although the presence of sugar and various additives means it wasn't really as healthy as it perhaps pretended.

And so to Travemünde. Just 30 minutes and 3€ stood between me and the beach.

That’s right – the beach.

After a month of scrutinising the forecasts in detail, I had packed a case that contained enough layers to keep me warm in the Arctic – and indeed there were patches of compacted snow that we passed on this journey to serve as a reminder of the only barely departed winter – but all I wanted was to cast off clothing and feel the sun on my skin.

A very old lighthouse.

The beach was blissfully quiet; strandkörbe standing quietly, waiting for visitors to arrive.

I rolled up my trousers, took off my Birkies – and stepped out onto cool, soft sand.

A slow wander later, I realised that a few of the strandkörbe were available for rent. I hired one, as the cloud cleared further and the sun climbed higher and the Baltic took on an ever more beautiful green-blue hue.

Forget the high culture – this was simply paradise.

Not that I did forget the culture. It took me a couple of hours to wind down enough to sit still for more than a few minutes, and eventually concentrate on a book. But I just about managed it.

The warmth on flesh was amazing. “On flesh”? It seemed to be worming its way straight to the bones, thawing me out all the way through.

Strandkörbe.

A few other people were around, but the biggest noise came from the gulls that shrieked and squawked as they dove at each other.

A little patch of heaven.

A family nearby stayed in bulky outerwear as they sat in their strandkorb and the small children played.

An older woman stripped off to her underwear.

An elderly man walked along the water’s edge in briefs, his stick in hand.

Bathing might not be without some risks to health – the area has plenty of old, decaying munitions on the sea bed.

I pulled my trousers up further and sat there in my Venice t-shirt, watching the ferries putter in and out, and the vast blue canopy above, and feeling the sun brush aside the winter inertia.

Travamünde is at the mouth of the river Trave and began life as a fortress built by the Duke of Saxony in the 12th century.

In 1329, it was bought by Lübeck for the princely sum of 1,060 Lübsche marks as a way of securing the sea entry to the city itself.

A seaside resort since 1802 and still Germany’s largest ferry port on the Baltic, it also has the oldest lighthouse on the German Baltic coast, dating from 1539.

It became a very fashionable resort, a German St Tropez, with the smart, belle époque casino overlooking the sea (now a smart spa and hotel), where gamblers included Dostoevsky, and a regatta that Kaiser Wilhelm II competed in.

For Thomas Mann, he declared it was "a paradise where I have undoubtedly spent the happiest days of my life".

Almost inevitably then, the town features in Buddenbrooks: first when Tony spends the summer there to escape an overly-enthusiastic suitor. And later, there’s a description of a family outing when they order vast amounts of fish and shellfish for a lunch.

I knew what was on the menu for my own lunch – well, approximately.

At something past 1pm, it was hunger that drove me from my strandkorb. That sea air had given me a real appetite.

The day was such that, when a few metres along the promenade I found a rather smart hotel, the Strandschlößchen, advertising lunch in the garden in front, it wasn't a difficult decision to make.

Time for the first al fresco meal of the year.

A very large sole.

With the sun beating down on my neck, sparrows jauntily hopping around and making a joyful noise, and yellow butterflies struggling to get over the clear, Perspex screen dividing this space from beyond, I took up a menu.

A recurring theme. My German is better than many other Brits, but it is far from being superb.

Surprise at my making even a basic effort was as nothing to the surprise when I insisted that a German menu would be fine (I do the same in France).

But food and menus is one way to easily improve your linguistic skills.

With the aid of my delightful waitress, I selected the sole – a whole specimen from the Baltic itself, which she swore was as perfect an example of local food as I could have found anywhere.

It came with a garnish of either bacon or shrimps. I opted for the latter.

It arrived with bread and a quark spread, a bowl of salad and a bowl of boiled potatoes with parsley.

Never mind that – the fish itself was huge!

Travemünde.

And oh my, it was tasty. It was good. Let’s be honest – the ingredients of the salad were fresh only in grown in a polytunnel sort of sense, and essentially as tasteless. Given the winter, it’s hardly likely to be anything else, really.

But that fish was perfection.

I wandered after that, working off the food in the most gentle of fashions.

And after a short while, I found myself in Travemünde proper, the old town, where the pilots used to live.

The main drag, along the water, is very much a resort, although it seems to be primarily a resort for elderly visitors. The beach earlier had seen a few younger couples with very small children, but that was as young it got.

There are little streets in the town, with smaller houses and a smaller church than in Lübeck, but you can still catch a reflection of the city.

And then, since the forecast was for storms and I was wearing only sandals and not carrying a hat or brolly, I headed for the station.

I got slightly lost and ended up asking for directions from an elderly gentleman who seemed completely spooked by my question and toddled off at speed, himself asking another gentleman something a few paces on.

And after I too had asked the second man for directions, I found myself walking through a small wood with vast, skeletal trees soaring above, crows making a racket all around, their circular nests visible everywhere, and just a few hints that we were in April and not February.

The echoing sound of the birds was like nothing I have ever heard.

It was just the tiniest hint of the German woodland/forest and the power that it exercises over the German psyche. Andrew Graham-Dixon's series on German art is fascinating on this.

Into the woods.

We have nothing like it in the UK, having long ago either let our woods and forests be razed or enclosed.

Seeing large numbers of trees now seems very striking to me for the reason of that scarcity.

The fairy tale quality of it was not been hindered by the sight of that first elderly gentleman haring off up a path into the wood, looking so small beneath the towering trees.

I found myself following him most of the way, as though I were stalking him.

And then, back at the station, another old man came to peer over my shoulder as I bought my ticket, informing me that he had tickets for two to Lübeck and did I want to go with him? I politely declined.

It was almost certainly entirely innocent, but that is where, being a solo traveller, you have to exercise some particular care, I think.

Travemünde may be a slightly mixed-up place now, with a vast, rather ugly tower block dwarfing the nearby former casino, but it nonetheless made me want to do was explore the German Baltic coast more.

And to find more days like this one.

Later, having done a little run around the Altstadt to pick up a last couple of souvenirs, I sat outside a café near the Rathaus, listening to a busking violinist play the adagietto from Mahler’s fifth.

According to Rough Guides, Lübeck can seem “terrifyingly cultured”. Terrifyingly?

Nothing terrifying about it all – and hardly as unrelentingly high-brow as that comment might suggest. As if to prove that point, a few seconds after the adagietto had finished, a lad rode past on a bike blasting out something far less classical from speakers mounted behind his saddle.

But perception is nine tenths of the law, so to speak, and I was about to head for somewhere that nobody would dream of describing as “terrifyingly cultured”, even though culture is something that it has in abundance.

So, next up – Amsterdam. But first, all I had to do was get there.

Of marzipan and vampires

Holstentor, Lübeck.

Saturday didn’t so much dawn as emerge, slowly and reluctantly, as the train headed north. We had crossed into Germany at Metz, some hours earlier.

But it was still very much dark by the time my fellow passenger quietly and carefully readied herself and left.

I tried to sleep a little longer, but it was no good. Having the cabin to myself, I lifted the blind and sat next to the window, as we passed a mixture of wide open and wooded terrain, through Hannover, and then beyond.

There was so much space; so many trees; so much sky. Give it a week or so of improved weather and Beethoven's Pastoral will make the perfect soundtrack.

The train had been comfortable – a proper duvet and pillow for sleeping, and a shower just a door along. Then we were served a boxed Frühstück for breaking the overnight fast.

A carton of sweetened fruit juice, a small packet of volkornbrot, some spreadable cheese and a muffin, plus coffee – hardly the best example of German cuisine, but welcome nonetheless, as I watched the countryside roll past.

Hamburg was waiting. I worked out the tickets and the platform and waited, but not for long.

The final leg of the journey took around 40 minutes. I was out of my seat and bending to see through the windows as we approached Lübeck. There on the horizon were the seven spires – I knew already to which vast Gothic churches some of them belonged.

Otto von Bismarck.

Out of the station and into a gloomy day. A taxi would have done the job quicker, but I was determined to make my entry to the Altstadt on foot, past a statue of Otto von Bismarck, over the Puppenbrüke bridge and on through the 15th century Holstentor – such a German icon that it used to feature on the 50 mark note.

It was always going to be this way, but dragging a case through puddles, up steps and over cobbles wasn’t easy.

I wonder whether the group of elderly tourists looking at this leaning, imposing building, who cast a glance, mused to themselves: ‘ah, such eccentric behaviour can only be a sign of someone from perfidious Albion’?

Lübeck was The Queen of the Hanseatic League, the medieval trading and defence organisation of guilds and towns, which operated thoughout northern Europe and beyond from the 13^th century. Although often considered primarily as a German creation, it had significant links in many non-German towns and cities, including Bruges.

The one remaining Hanseatic building in the UK is in King's Lynn, where it is now the registry office. Unfortunately – and yet one more reason why I want to improve my German – this fascinating subject finds little information in English.

The city was independent for 711 years – until Hitler gave it to Hamburg in 1937, in revenge for its having refused to let him campaign there in '32.

Once into the old city, it was an easy passage to my hotel. Check-in was 3pm – hours away – but they happily let me store my case, so I could set off straight away on my exploration.

Buddenbrookhaus.

First stop – Buddenbrookhaus. Over the years, we have managed to forget, so often, to check opening times, and then found ourselves missing something, so on this trip I was prioritising madly.

The home of Heinrich and Thomas Mann’s grandparents, it was immortalised in Buddenbrooks, Thomas’s precocious 1901 debut novel. Deceptively straightforward and light, the book is far more than a story of one Hanseatic family’s gradual decline.

Apart from anything else, it is about the onset of modernity; the hardening of business attitudes and the development of individual sensibilities are just two aspects of the changing times that Mann marked. Like so much of his work, it is partially autobiographical.

And here I was – treading ground that Mann himself had trod and seeing, despite damage in WWII, plenty of buildings that he would have been familiar with.

The original building was bombed in the Easter 1942 RAF raid: the cellar and the impressive frontage alone remain.

Inside are extensive displays about the Mann family. There was also a temporary exhibition about other Lübeckers who were exiled during the Nazi years.

Marienkirche. The lower Death Dance Chapel window.

However much I would love to avoid that subject when I come to Germany, it is not entirely possible. But the key (for me at least) is not seeing all German history and culture through the prism of 12 years.

The British obsession with the years of National Socialism – and the WWII years in particular – to the exception of so much else is, I think, both increasingly negative and self-indulgent.

That in doing so we ignore the massive achievements and influence of German culture, and that it contributes to a widespread, isolationist belief that ‘we’ are somehow not European, are two, inter-linked aspects of a sort of wilful blindness brought on by a surfeit of anti-intellectual masturbation.

Anyway, back to the Manns.

It was an odd visit: I possibly expected too much. But the recreation of two rooms as two of those described in the novel seem to distance it from fact.

I bought a lovely, facsimile hardback edition of the novel – given the issues over translations into English of all Thomas’s novels, and the dearth of translations of most of Heinrich’s work (including the Lübeck-set story, Professor Unrat, which became the film, Der blaue Engel), it was another must-do-better language reminder.

Marienkirche, vault.

Next, the Marienkirche. Oh my. I do not, generally, rhapsodise about much to do with religion, but this really does take the breath away.

Begun in 1250, it's right next to the Rathaus (city hall) and was intended as a bit of a snub to the similarly double-spired cathedral a short way away. Its vast vaulting reaches 38.5 metres and it has become known as the ‘mother of Gothic brick churches’.

Here’s a touch of heresy: for it’s lightness alone, it is better than Notre Dame. I gazed upward in awe.

And then there are the bells. Two of them, shattered at the base of the south tower, lying where they fell in those bombing raids.

It’s all well and good being able to say that one’s country was in the right – explanations in the church itself compare the damage to that which the Luftwaffe exacted on Coventry Cathedral; in effect suggesting that it was like for like – but it is a striking reminder of the divisive insanity of politics by war, certainly in the modern era.

The bombing raids had a rather more positive effect on the church, though, as the fires licked away the plaster that had covered the paintwork from the Middle Ages.

Marienkirche, bells.

On a lighter note, the famous organist and composer Dieterich Buxtenhude (c1637-1707) held post at the church in his late career – and it was to the Marienkirche that JS Bach walked some 400km to hear the master play, while Handel also visited.

Buxtenhude's organ, the Totentanzorgel (Dance Macabre organ), probably played by Bach, was destroyed, along with the 1701 reproduction of an accompanying artwork by Bernt Notke.

But time doesn't have to stand still even in a building such as this, and the stained glass windows where it was housed were created in 1955-56 Alfred Mahlau.

By this time, I was starving. And having wandered out of the Marienkirche and around the corner into the marketplace that is bordered on two sides by the church and the medieval Rathaus (begun in 1226 and with add-ons over the centuries), I spotted that the Ratskeller was open for business.

A ratskeller is a remarkable German institution – a restaurant in the basement of a town hall. And in this case, as in so many, serving traditional German food.

Rathaus. Ratskeller entrance under Baroque arches to left.

I ordered a pork schnitzel with roast potatoes. It was huge! In local style, it came with a sauce/dressing of local shrimps, onions and button mushrooms, in a tangy, creamy sauce.

Now German cuisine may not be regarded as highly as some others, but food like this would very much please the likes of Odin and Thor. It is hearty and simple – and relies on good ingredients, used well.

I had a beer on the side. There is no such thing as a Lübeck beer – the city has the oldest wine merchant in Germany but no brewery of its own – so I had a Holsten. It was a very different taste and I’m not sure it entirely suited me, but it is always worth trying the most local brew – or food. The schnitzel was superb.

A very large pork schnitzel.

My waiter gave me an extra bowl of the onion, shrimp and mushroom mix. Perhaps it actually looked as though I was starving. Or perhaps Germans are feeders ...

And of course, there was the sheer pleasure of sitting in somewhere that, were it not still still in normal use, would be a museum.

Here, just a stone's throw from Buddenbrookhaus, in this very small part of this small city, was another key to “the house on Mengstraße”, as Mann often describes it in the novel.

The Marienkirche and the Rathaus were built close together, where they were, for reasons of local politics. It's no coincidence that Mengstraße is where the best merchant’s houses were.

Marzipan 'last supper'.

And Buddenbrookhaus, with its incredible Baroque frontage, is almost as near to both as it’s possible to be on that street.

It was from such a height that Mann charted the family’s fall – almost as high as possible.

After lunch, I headed to the Niederegger marzipan shop, café and museum, which is opposite the Rathaus.

There are various stories about how marzipan was created – from one of those fortunate kitchen accidents to the ingredients being all that was left during a siege, but the truth is that the only things that we really know is that merchants brought back almonds to the city and somehow marzipan was created there, making Lübeck became the world’s marzipan capital.

Marzipan 'apple'.

So even if, at Christmas, you eat a Dresden stollen, it’s entirely possible that the marzipan will have come from Lübeck.

It’s stretching things rather to call the exhibition area a ‘museum’ – there are a series of boards that tell the story of marzipan, placing particular emphasis on the role of the Niederegger clan.

And then there’s a huge exhibit – a sort of marzipan last supper – with one of the old Niedereggers at the heart of it.

The opportunity to watch a young woman working on various marzipan creations is more interesting, as are the small number of examples of superbly-crafted marzipan ‘fruit’.

The memorial to Thomas Mann.

Later, rather knackered, I headed back to my hotel, and discovered that, in effect, at the top of the road that I was staying on, there was a small memorial marking where the Mann brothers had been born on the street that crossed it.

As I walked down the street, it was past the theatre where both Heinrich and Thomas had first witnessed live performances and, in Thomas’s case, first seen anything by Wagner, which was a seminal moment for him.

I thought back to Buddenbrooks, and the Christmas scene where Hanno gets his toy theatre, all set for the final act of Mozart’s Idomeneo, and like some sort of clearing mist, I started seeing, as never before, the links between this city state, the Manns and the literature that those remarkable sons of Lübeck produced.

After a rest, more walking. This time, starting with the Salzspeicher – six brick salt warehouses next to the Holstentor alongside the river Trave, which were built in the 16^th to 18^th centuries.

The Salzspeicher. Orlok appears in the one on the left.

Not ony are they fascinating to see in their own right, but they were used by Expressionist director FW Murnau as one of the residences of Count Orlok (Dracula) in Nosferatu, his 1922 film version of Bram Stoker’s novel.

The names and title were changed because it was unauthorised, but Stoker’s widow still won a copyright infringement case and the court ordered all copies of the film burned.

Fortunately for posterity – and us – at least one copy had already been sent abroad for distribution and thus the film survives to this day.

Heiligen-Geist-Hospital.

The wandering continued, with a brief look at the outside of Schiffergesellschaft, the city’s 1535 eatery (of which much more tomorrow), the 1335 Jacobikirche opposite and the nearby Heiligen-Geist-Hospital (Hospital of the Holy Spirit) from 1260.

And yet for all this, the place does not feel like a lifeless monument to the past. It is a university town and areas of the Altstadt play host to student housing and bars.

But for Saturday at least, I was done in – and a stationary bed called, in a blissfully quiet room, where the only sounds I could hear were the birds and the Marienkirche bells, its spires just visible over the rooftops on the opposite side of the tiny quadrangle that my window looked out on.

* A note for clarity: all photographs were taken on this trip, by me, but not necessarily on the day described – I've used the best shots I ended up with, where such a thing exists.