Visit to Lübeck (EDHL)

I wanted to visit a town in the Northern part op Germany, either Bremen, Hamburg or Lübeck because they are fairly nearby and Germany usualy offers a good experience flying wise and also regarding culture, history and gastronomy without breaking the bank. After consulting the forum I opted for Lübeck. My wife took my oldest daughter for a mom/daughter weekend so the little one was mine. She is always happy to join me on a flight but asked me if she could go horseriding first. She has lessons late in the morning on saturday so we decided to leave around three o’clock local time from Teuge (EHTE). We would take the C172SP with a diesel engine, G1000 and KAP140. It is a very nice machine, better speed and MTOW would make it even nicer but still… Weather for the way back could be an issue as a warmfront was creeping up from the West with low cloudbase but with a pretty high freezinglevels and no CB’s or other shenanigans other then pretty strong winds as I discovered later.

The flight over to Lübeck was trouble free, we entered clouds at 3.000 ft, it was not an overcast, but patches and layers and we broke free at FL060 and cruised over the undercast at FL090 with a few knots tailwind doing 130 knots over the ground. We passed Bremen with clear sights on the city but Hamburg and our destination were obscured again by a deck of stratus that was beautifully coloured by the setting sun. We enjoyed some snacks, and got vectors for the ILS RWY25 at Lübeck-Blankensee and as we settled on the localiser and descended on the glideslope we broke out of the stratus at 1.800 ft and were met by the runwaylights and the setting sun behind them. Not a bad view at all.

After landing we got to park on the tarmac and walked to the “C” building where we had to wait a little bit on the OPS guy to show up, but he called us a cab and we were on our way to the Holliday Inn, A 15 minutes ride at € 25,00.

After a friendly welcome and check-in we proceeded in to town to Brauberger, a lovely private brewery and restaurant, the kind one finds (only?) in Germany and I just love them. They were fully booked but the lovely owner and his wife managed to squeeze us in after a short wait at the bar, giving me the opportunity to sample some of their homemade beer. Very nice fresh Zwickelbier. Loved it. The guests there were mostly students and men of a certain age, so Julie was a bit of the exception.

After dinner we went for a walk along the river Trave and spotted some nice ships, enjoyed the beautiful buildings, atmosphere and the industrial heritage of the old cranes, warehouses and bridges. A nice mix, all on the island that is the old town of Lübeck. When flying with Julie I try to find a hotel with a pool, so we went for a swim and then to bed.
The next morning the warmfront was starting to do her thing, but that did not discourage us from going in to town to get some of that nice Marzipan Lübeck is famous for. I decided to depart early in the afternoon and file Niederrhein (EDLV) as an alternate in the case the cloudbase would get too low, we always had an ILS to fly.

The taxi took us from the hotel to the airport and the security was no bother at all, and in no time we were back in the little Cessna for our flight back. The winds aloft would not help us, with 24 kts forecasted. We received our clearance and took off the same runway we landed yesterday, on heading to Hamburg. Immediately we were greeted by 40 kts of headwind and that stayed between 40 and 52 kts all the way home. This sucked. We were vectored around Hamburg and after Hamburg we were asked if we’d like a direct to Teuge, we didn’t mind. Battleing the wind Teuge slowly but surely came closer, but so did the warmfront with conditions a bit worse then I had hoped. The last 45 minutes of the flight was in solid IMC but the cloudbase still allowed for a VFR landing at Teuge. Nice trip, great memories! Can’t wait for the next one.

This wind. Brutal.