Let me tell you that a life of 30 days of vacation while living
and traveling Europe is not easy. As I write this, it is the first
weekend we are home by ourselves in about 8 weeks. We capped off our busy
stretch of visitors and trips with a visit to Hamburg for my birthday
weekend. The 100EUR round trip flight deal we saw a few months ago seemed
too good to skip, and so we went, saw, relaxed, and celebrated my 28th birthday in style
along the city on the harbor.
Hamburg is a special place because of its history and
establishment as a harbor port along the Elbe river, which flows North draining
into the North Sea (now the 2nd largest port in Europe). Therefore the
industry, architecture, weather, and culture make Hamburg feel like an ocean
side city even though it sits on a river 100 miles away from the coast.
After checking in the hotel and filling up on some Thai food, we
started our visit at the Ballinstadt Museum. This museum highlights the
emigration of 5 million Europeans who left for a better life from the port in
Hamburg, many of whom spent their last night at the accommodation provided by
Albert Ballin. We saw what it would have been like for our European
ancestors who would have sacrificed everything and endured so much hardship to immigrate
to America. This left us with a rather strange feeling considering how we
had undone all their hard work over a century later by simply taking a 12 hour,
comfortable flight back across the ocean so we could live in Europe. Overall it
was a very cool, well-presented museum.
Afterwards we went to the International Garden Show, which was
being hosted in the area. 25 euros, a lot of unnecessary walking, and one
very confusing return monorail ride back later, we realized that this was kind
of a bad idea. At least we got some nice
photos of the flowers.
We set off our first morning in Hamburg for what seemed like an
easy search for a bagel shop (at least according to Google maps). About
an hour later we gave up and settled in at a chain, Balzac Coffee, at the
modern shopping mall - it was not a complete loss because they did have (two) bagels there. We
always have to laugh at ourselves when we make an effort to get off the beaten
path and discover something new, only to be sucked back into the mass tourist
areas. This was one of those moments.
We spent the first part of the day cruising around the city: the
Rathaus, the Alster lakes, Hafen City and the canals, and doing some window
shopping.
Having adapted to the typical festival in Bavaria, we were naturally
drawn to the Stuttgart wine festival for lunch, which featured food/drink tents
with Dirndl clad waitresses. Maybe we were overly adventurous when we
ordered typical Stuttgart specialties flammekuche and maultauschen for lunch,
because while we could eat them the one time, we won’t be ordering those
again.
Afterwards, we went down to the famous Reeperbahn street/ St.
Pauli district (red-light, bar, party scene). Here we ran into 10,000
biker dudes and loud Harleys because the world’s largest Harley Davidson
convention was being hosted this weekend. We might have sped-walked through
the scene to find something a little more peaceful.
After regrouping back at our hotel, we switched gears and went
up the tower in St. Michaelis church which gave us the essence of Hamburg
impression.
Sunday (my Birthday!!), we decided to scratch the famous early Sunday fish market so we could
take it easy and go for a swim at the hotel spa. Here we were surprised
to find out that most of the people, well actually all of the men, were not wearing swimsuits in the pool. So
that was a more awkward swimming pool experience than expected, but we still
enjoyed our first swim of 2013 nonetheless (as it’s been snowy/rainy/cold
pretty much all year in Munich). Sorry – no pictures for this one.
Thanks to an insider tip from Julie’s coworker, we set sail on
the harbor on the public transit ferry 62 where we got up close to the shipping
industry and some nice views of the city.
Much cheaper to just use the HVV bahn ticket we already had rather than
spend 20EUR+ for a ‘professional’ boat tour.
As the weather was turning south, we took an afternoon break and
watched a movie and facetimed with momma. We then went out for a high-end
fish dinner along the water at the upscale Fischereihafen, which began my
spontaneous birthday evening. Since I was unable to decide from the menu,
I just chose the 4-course chef’s surprise. All four courses were equally
delicious (tuna tartare, prawns, local fish battered, and a mixed dessert
plate), but it was extra special because it was the first time I ever had a
waiter reveal my entrée in front of my face by removing one of those fancy
silver covers. Man, this was the ultimate birthday surprise!
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| Not the prettiest looking building for a fancy restaurant, but the views the other way are much nicer |
Afterwards we climbed stairs to the top of a building near the
restaurant to catch some nice sunset views. There we asked a German man
to take our photo and we got to talking in German for a bit. After a few
minutes he told us about an open-air concert along the Reeperbahn which we must
go see and offered to drive us himself. It took him a bit of convincing,
because Julie was playing old episodes of CSI in her head, while I was thinking
hitchhiking to the Reeperbahn is probably not a good idea. But once I met
the man’s wife and learned he worked for a public TV broadcast station, and
they had a daughter studying in California, they passed my ocular pat down. So
we went along and were dropped off at the concert on the Reeperbahn (without
anyone being kidnapped or drugged). The concert was actually a fundraiser
for victims of the recent flooding. It was a really cool, pleasant event
and we heard a new German artist whose album we bought later.
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| Sunset |
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| Benefit concert. The artist on the right - Anna Depenbusch - is whose album we bought |
When we made it back to the hotel, we decided to give ourselves
a bit of a tour to see what else this place had. When we went to the top floor, we noticed the
door to the penthouse suite was open. We had a look around to see how the
other half lives and caught some nice views from the private balcony. It
was the perfect end to my spontaneous birthday evening.
On Monday we had half of the day to kill before catching our
flight back home. So we scheduled a tour at the Miniatur Wunderland,
which is an enormous display of small worlds complete with planes, cars,
people, animals, culture, and of course lots of model trains. They have
around 10 different countries on display, including a special feature of our
own Bavaria and one of USA. It was all very awesome, but it’s the kind of
place where two hours of fighting through crowds and children for a view can
wear you out.
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| Bavaria, Hamburg, Las Vegas |
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| They even simulate night vs day |
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| You can see the planes take off |
After
4 great days celebrating me, it was time to make the 1-hour flight home.
Auf Wiedersehen Hamburg!
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