Days 8 & 9 in Germany – Sunny Hamburg

Kyra relaxing at a beach cafe

It's the middle of our trip, and we're drooping a bit. I skipped a day of blogging because I went to bed when we got home last night instead of writing about our day, and then I slept in this morning too. We are kind of drifting along in the middle of our trip, enjoying Britta's company, and enjoying the sunshine and beautiful weather, which is a happy change from the weeks of dreary cold rain they'd been having in Hamburg.

Britta took us to all of her favorite haunts, downtown, at the docks, in the Portuguese enclave, around a lake, and gave us a running travelogue as we went, one of the advantages to knowing geographers. We took a boat up the Elbe, to see the container port, which was pretty fascinating. We watched ships being loaded and unloaded by robotic cranes, and enormous ships being tugged out of the dock and sent on their way to the sea.

The Hamburg port

We spent a leisurely hour on the beach, lounging in deck chairs at a beach café – right on the Elbe, across from the docks. We rode the ferris wheel and drank BubbleTea at the carnival near her place. We spent some time in her apartment with our feet up, enjoying the view and cold drinks, and caught a cool water and light show in the park last night.

At the carnival

Today we went to the world's largest model train exhibit, and it was incredible. It's so large that they have divided the exhibit into countries. In Switzerland, there's a miniature Matterhorn, with a moving tram to take skiers up the mountain. In Austria there's an airport with model planes that actually taxi, land and take off. In the Hamburg area, you can see the building that houses the model train exhibit we were in, and when you peak in the tiny windows, you can see an even tinier model train exhibit. It's kind of like a diorama of model train infinity.

After a week in Germany, I am in better shape than I have been in years, despite the fact that we've been eating ice cream every day. (Kyra's idea.) It's been like a week on a medieval stone stairmaster. Everywhere we go we are walking up and down stairs. Yesterday we decided to climb to the top of the tower of Michaeliskirche (St. Michael's church) to look out over Hamburg, and Kyra objected. There was an elevator, and she wanted to take it. But first we had to climb three flights of stairs to get to it.

Kristin and Britta

Tomorrow we head to Berlin, the last stop on our trip. We won't be sorry to leave our hotel, which has the worst coffee I've ever tried – so bad that we actually went without caffeine this morning rather than drink it. It has a laundry room with a washer and dryer, which was nice, because we wanted to clean a few things before we packed. But when we went to check it out, we saw that it had only a washing machine, and that what they called a dryer was actually a wooden rack where you can hang your wet clothes. So we washed a few things out in the sink, and we're hoping for better luck in hotels when we get to Berlin.

Hamburg - The New York of Germany - Day 7

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.