It was sad to say good-bye to Tina, a good friend I only see about once a decade or so. Sad to say good-bye to leisurely breakfasts over bread and cheese and really good coffee, and to talks late into the night. But it was time to press on to Hamburg.
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| Rest stop on the way to Hamburg |
Our fantasies about driving 100 mph on the Autobahn were just that. The trip from Frankfurt to Hamburg is supposed to take about four hours, but it took eight, because the Autobahn was a parking lot most of the way. Germany is about the same size as Wisconsin, but with about 16 times more people, and they were all on the highway to Hamburg.
We're staying at the Suite Novotel, a new, modern hotel that strikes us as a Budgetel for international business travelers. Our room is very sleek, but very compact, with bamboo screens that slide across the middle of the room dividing the desk area from the bed area, and thus qualifying as a suite. The bathroom is in two parts, with a shower, bathtub and sink in one modular unit off the bed area, and a toilet and sink modular unit off the desk area, apparently so your guests to the desk area don't need to see your shaving and bathing things, while still being able to do their business, in all senses of the word.
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The Hamburg port
and the Blockbrau Microbrewery |
After checking in, we met up with Britta, a friend I met in grad school, when she came to Wisconsin for a Master's in Geography. Now she's a professor at the university in Bonn, but she keeps an apartment in Hamburg, very near the port, in the part of the city that must be the Greenwich Village of Hamburg, filled with color and street life and many, many people.
Finding parking near her place was tricky, and involved some nasty, aggressive people in a sporty car, completely uncharmed by Kyra and her stuffed dog Puffy, trying to bully us out of a parking space. And we were again reminded of New York.
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| Dinner |
We walked down to the water for dinner at a wonderful microbrewery in a charming old building, with great food and beer and a great view of the port. I took Britta's dare, and ordered Labskaus, a traditional dish of fried eggs, hash, a little dead fish and a pickle. Apparently these are all things that are easily preserved on a long sea voyage, and this is a favorite comfort food in the area. It was surprisingly good, or else I was very hungry.
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| Tunnel under the Elbe |
After dinner we took a walk along the water, and then took many, many steps down what looked like an enormous underground tower, to a tunnel that runs under the Elbe to the shipyards out on an island. The tunnel was long, probably several football fields, and beautiful – fully lined with decorative tile for its entire length. It was built in the early 1900s for the thousands of shipyard workers who needed to cross the river to get to work. The underground tower is actually a car elevator, which still operates, and it also has pedestrian elevators, and the many, many steps for people like us, who can't seem to avoid treating Germany as a giant stairmaster.
Even late at night the tunnel was packed with pedestrians and bicyclists. On we got to other side, we looked back to Hamburg, and watched fireworks over the city. Very nice.
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