My last few days have been pretty good, although not quite so jam packed with things (which I am actually happy with - it makes it so that I can relax a little bit). Today, however, Elizabeth and I were taken to Lübeck, a beautiful old city in Northern Germany. When you think of a typical old fashioned German city or village you are probably, whether you realize it or not, thinking of Lübeck.
It is a beautiful city in which you can see the history in even the newest of buildings, and of course also in the oldest. So today mostly entailed a lot of walking and sight-seeing, but the sights we saw made it worth it! I took a lot of photos - actually, I spent most of my time, except for when I was in a church that does not allow pictures, taking photos. I will have to sort through them at a later time to see if there are any photos that didn't turn out well, or were blurry, or are practically duplicates of another, so that I can open up more space on my phone (which actually takes some pretty good quality photos, with the right lighting). Here are a few photos (there are way more) of Lübeck:
I have also been noticing a few small things that are different here. I will try to include some more in future posts, but for today, I will focus on a really simple one, but one I did not expect at all: the playing cards. Yes, that's right, the playing cards are different here. I am a lover of card games, like Crazy 8's, Spoons, War, and Solitaire. The lady that Elizabeth and I are staying with did not know of the card game Spoons, and I thought "Well, that must be fixed!" (If you don't know how to play the card game Spoons, you can find out here) So later that night, Elizabeth and I got the lady to take out a deck of cards, and - after explaining the rules - we started to play. Luckily with this game, the difference I am about to tell you about in cards really doesn't matter, but if I were playing another game, it might. While playing, Elizabeth and I discovered that the Queen card is, in Germany, a Lady (with a 'D' for the German word for lady, Dame). The King remains a King, and the Jack is now a little boy (although I can't remember what letter/word is used for that card). Although it is only a small difference, it really threw me off at first!
I have a lot more I could talk about, but I have to end this post for now! Hopefully you are all doing well, and I will talk to you in my next post!
-Jason