Adventures in Hamburg!
These past two weeks have just flown by. I don’t think I
have been in so many new places and seen so many old friends in such a short
period of time. It was really wonderful, but let me tell you, getting back into
the normal routine after 2 weeks of fun and travel is a major challenge. The
last two days I’ve been feeling quite stressed and depressed...mostly due to my
parents leaving. I think the hardest part was before, I was always looking
towards the visit of my parents at the end of March, and not really thinking
about how I would feel after they left again. It came up so fast, and now it’s
hit me that I have to go back to living on “my own” again with the knowledge
that my whole family is far away across the ocean. The only thing that has
really helped me keep my spirits up is knowing that I have some really great
friends here who are there for me to talk to whenever I want, and I am really
thankful for that.
Anyway, let me tell you a little bit about these very full
past two weeks. First of all, I left on the plane to Hamburg on March 22nd
to visit Kim. She was a German exchange student at my high school last year,
and we became really close. I remember we would use German as our “secret language”
and speak it during ski club when we wanted to talk about something private. No
one liked it, because they would always think we were talking about them, but
we found it very amusing.
Kim and her American boyfriend Tim who is living with her
for a couple of months, gave me some great tours of the city, even though the
weather was freezing! I can imagine the city is really great in the summer
though, with the big harbor and areas to sit out in the sun. All the same, I
really got to know the area in those 4 days, and I think it is now officially
my favorite German city :) Even though it was cold, there was sun and
blue sky most days, which made for great pictures. Take a look:
One thing Hamburg is quite famous for is it’s unique
Miniatur Wunderland, a museum of a number of different cities and towns from
countries all over the world, all made out of extremely detailed miniature
replicas. They even had the lighting set so that every 15 min the entire place
would change from day to night and back again. One of the coolest parts was the
mini airport! It looked so real, and even had planes coming in and taking off,
all controlled by timers.
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| Switzerland at night |
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| Switzerland day |
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| A very accurate replica of a European outdoor music festival (of which I will officially be attending in early July! I will be going to what was voted "the best middle-sized European music festival" by a lake in Hungary! Can't wait!) |
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| Train through the Alps |
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| Airport! |
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| Dad would love this part... |
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| Airport by night |
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| Yes, this is a replica of naked people skiing...only in Europe |
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| Hamburg soccer arena |
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| Hamburg Harbor |
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| Highway by night..looks so real! |
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| Las Vegas |
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| Grande Canyon |
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| Yup, there had to be a Burger King |
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| Sweden, autumn |
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| Germany, winter |
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| Close up of Hamburg Hafen |
Other activities included visiting the famous St. Michael’s
church, which has a full 360 degree view of the entire city, as well as a visit
to the giant town hall, and the Alster lake with the giant fountain in the
middle. It even makes a rainbow with its sprays on some days :) I think it’s really
neat how this big city has made room for this quite large lake in the center.
It’s a unique addition and provides a nice spot to relax and sit at a café,
listening to the soothing sound of the spray of the fountain hit the water.
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| St. Michael’s from a distance |
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| St. Michael’s close-up |
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| Giant organ! |
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| Beautiful Pope's chair thing (I know there is a special word for this..but it escapes my mind at the moment) |
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| Stunning view of the harbor from the top! |
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| The Ferris wheel you see there is part of the Dom, a GIANT carnival that is in the middle of the city (near to the main clubbing street, Reeperbahn) and is open almost all year-round! |
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| Just by the number of giant cranes you can see here shows you how busy and used the Hamburg Harbor is! |
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| The large building on the left with the green roof is the town hall. |
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| At the top! |
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| Of course we had to blow bubbles inside the church! |
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| Caught the rainbow on camera :) |
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| Kim and I by the Alster in late evening |
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| Skateboarder enjoying the evening on the Alster :) |
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| Birds enduring the ice cold water |
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| On top of the Landungsbrucke metro stop, with a great view of the harbor. Too bad the weather was literally freezing that day! |
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| We also walked through the famous 426m long Elbe Tunnel, which runs under the Elbe River, connecting the city center to the shipyards across. It was a technical sensation when is was built, and was a big improvement for the workers. It is made for pedestrians and cars. They even have car elevators at bother ends to bring the cars down to the tunnel level. Of couse, we had to blow bubbles inside of it! |
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| Inside the square of the town hall |
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| A view of the beautiful town hall over the canal |
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| Main post building (as in for mail) in Hamburg. It is huge and also has some clothing stores in it, including the biggest Abercrombie store I have ever seen! |
Another exciting experience was the night out on Reeperbahn.
“Reeper” means a large rope in German, and back in the day, this area was where
the factories for making the big, thick robes for tying up ships were. Now, the
large street is full of sex shops, erotic cinemas and clubs, as well as more “normal
clubs” and a giant casino. Times have changed, I’d say.
Of course, Kim had to take me into one of the major attractions
there, a giant shop full of sex toys, costumes and scary masks. I guess you can’t
go to Reeperbahn and not at least take a peek at this stuff. It’s something
that is very difficult to find in other places. After showing our ideas and receiving
our free condoms at the door, we wandered around the place, taking in the most
outlandish masks and tools I have ever seen. Was actually quite scary… No
wonder you have to be 18 to get in.
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| On the way for a night out on Reeperbahn! |
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Saint Pauli is the area where Reeperbahn is
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| Interesting name... and it's not even a strip club! They do have poles everywhere around the dance floor though, for girls who want to pretend... :P |
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| Club Grosse Freiheit--One of the most famous clubs in Hamburg |
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| For some reason there were a lot of police there that night! |
After, we went down a side street where all the other clubs
were (with and without strippers..). Kim told me about how before midnight,
many of the clubs allow girls in for free, and then you get a stamp at the door
and can go in and out as you please. What she usually does with her friends is
go into many different clubs before midnight, so that after she can leave and
go to different clubs throughout the night, all without charge :) This is exactly what
we did. It was definitely a new experience for me, since here in Brussels, you
have to pay at least 10 euros for any club you want to get into.
The harbor was also one of my favorite places. I got to eat
some really yummy fischbrötchen (fish
sandwiches, of which they have all different kinds, including a breaded
pan-fried white fish, a fish frikadelle (kind of like a small hamburger, which
is where I think the American dish actually came from. Not the fish one, but
they also make normal meat ones in Hamburg, which I think was the beginning of
the famous American dish). The most popular fischbrötchen, however, is the Mahja, a raw
looking fish with the skin still on, but I believe it is actually pickled. I
was brave enough to try it, and was not a huge fan. It’s very salty.
Another Hamburg specialty (and it is really a “specialty”
because according to Kim, you can’t get it anywhere else) is the Franzbrötchen. It is a sweet pastry that
has kind of the shape of a squished croissant. I believe that is where its name
came from, since “French” in German is “französisch” (Franz, for short). So basically
it is a “French roll.” But oh, is it so much more than that. It is much more dense
than a croissant and is filled with lots of cinnamon and sugar, kind of like a
cinnamon bun. I enjoyed it with a coffee at a nice café.
Apparently, they even make
different sizes of them. I saw advertisements for XXL Franzbrötchen…wondering
what that means by German standards. If we were in the US, it would most likely
be as big as my head.
I also got a chance to enjoy the unique Hamburg beer called Astra. It is only produced and sold in Hamburg, nowhere else in the world!
A big building project which Hamburg is working on right now
is the new opera house. It is already almost finished, and looks great. It is
mostly made out of glass and has a wave kind of shape to it, going very nicely
with the wavy harbor just in front of it. Apparently, the glass and shape were
designed especially for the perfect acoustics. Take a look at some pictures:
Another remarkable, and very “up-and-coming” area of Hamburg,
is Hafen City (Hafen=harbor). It is a large area just down the river from the main harbor and
is also known as the “historic warehouse district.” It is filled with 100 year
old, giant brick buildings which used to be storage houses for cocoa, silk,
oriental carpets, spices and coffee waiting to be exported. It is very pretty, with little waterways and
bridges and cobble stone streets weaving around the buildings.
Some of the buildings are now museums, such as the Minatur
Wunderland, an art museum, a Spice Museum (yes, a museum just about spices) and
a Hafen City museum, which explains the development of this unique part of
Hamburg. In the past couple of years, the city has been planning the building
of new homes and apartments in the area, all along the harbor. They held a
competition between architects from all over the world to design an interesting
building structure for a residential area which is environmentally friendly and
fits in with the harbor scenery. The finalists included architects from the
U.S. (Chicago, I believe), Sweden and Portugal.
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| Entrance to Hafen City |
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| View of Hafen city from top of church |
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| Inside Hafen City! There are not many cars driving around here because most people who live there have everything they need in walking distance. |
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| A cool apartment building with a nice big porch on top |
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| Apartment buildings looking out over a small boating dock |
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| Cool building, not sure what it is. Has an aquatic feel to it though.. |
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| German art museum building |
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| Interesting stairs going right out over the canal |
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| Sunset over Hafen City :) |
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| Moon over the brick buildings |
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| Night falls over Hafen City |
In the coffee storage building, there is now a big coffee store and café, where they ground and package the beans right there in front of you while you sit and sip your coffee.
Friday night, Kim brought me to the Chile House, a very large cocktail bar with a Mexican vibe inside one of the spice storage buildings near Hafen City.
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| Strawberry cocktails at the Chile House! (those white puffs on the sticks are marshmallows with a chewy candy on top) |
I spent my last day (which was fabulous weather) wandering around the city by myself since Kim had to go to school. That morning I actually went with her to school for a bit, just to see what it was like. We rode bikes from her house and in 5 minutes and we were there. I had never seen so many high school students on bikes before...it fascinates me how different the idea of riding a bike can be depending on which country you are in. In NY, no one ever rode their bike to school, and if someone did, they would be made fun of. In Germany, it's just seen as an easy way to get around if you don't have your driving license yet.
Anyway, here are some pictures I took (the ones of Hafen City were also from that day):
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| A Lindenbaum in front of the town hall. These trees can be found in almost every major city in mid-northern Europe. And in the winter, they all look like this--big balls of twisted branch. I asked Kim's dad about it, and he said they cut them this way because it helps them better survive the winter. |
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| A number of big buildings in Hamburg have very detailed sculptures of ships on them. This was a large building over-looking a canal. There are similar looking ships on top of the flag poles in front of the town hall. |
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| Cars stopped in traffic going over one of 5 bridges serving this canal. This is what rush hour in Hamburg looks like! |
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| I like how you can see the harbor and a bunch of the cranes when you look through this canal |
I visited the Rickmer Rickmers, one of the most famous ships in the Hamburg Harbor. It has a long history, going back to when it was first built in Bremen, Germany and was used on the Hong Kong route carrying rice and bamboo. Then the ship was bought by a man from Hamburg, renamed Max, and transferred to the Hamburg-Chile route. In World War I Max was captured by the Government of Portugal and loaned to the United Kingdom as a war aid. For the rest of the war the ship was named Flores and sailed for the UK. After World War I the ship was returned to the Portuguese Government, becoming a Portuguese training ship and was renamed again, as Sagres. In 1958, the ship won the Tall Ships' Race (A European race for international sailing ships).
In the early 1960s the Sagres was retired from school ship service and was laid up in a shipyard. In 1983 she was bought by an organisation named "Windjammer für Hamburg" and renamed for the last time. Rickmer Rickmers is now a floating museum ship.
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| Standing below the Rickmer Rickmers on a beautiful blue-sky day! |
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| I guess I'm still a little kid inside...I just couldn't help laughing about this! |
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| A little tug boat being pulled by the Kumano, a ship from the Imperil Japanese Navy, built in 1937! |
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| People busy at work at the harbor! |
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| The Alsterarkaden (Alster Arcades) |
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| Old man happily feeding the birds. He was smiling at them the whole time! |
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| Seagulls flying over the canal near the Town hall |
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| Duck! |
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The stairs in the Hauptbahnhof (main train station). They are a bunch of different flavors of Rittersport chocolate, the most famous German-made chocolate, which comes in square shaped pieces and has hundreds of flavors, from coconut, hazelnut to yogurt!
And I leave you with that... Thanks for reading! Comments appreciated :) |
